A tale of two elections |
The youth and students who led popular uprisings in Bangladesh and Nepal — toppling entrenched governments in August 2024 and September 2025, respectively — have fared very differently in subsequent elections.
In Bangladesh, the National Citizen Party (NCP) was rejected in the election held on 12 February, winning just six seats and three per cent of the vote. In Nepal, the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP), formed in July 2022, received an overwhelming mandate, winning two-thirds of the seats and giving the country its first single-party government in three decades.
Observers noted that voters in Bangladesh were wary of the instability and inexperience of the youth, while in Nepal, they saw the RSP as more disciplined and reformist.
The results in Nepal surprised people and ‘experts’ alike. The RSP’s landslide victory was fronted by 35-year-old structural engineer and rapper-turned-politician Balendra ‘Balen’ Shah. A former mayor of Kathmandu, Shah will be Nepal’s youngest prime minister and the first from Madhesh in the plains.
Like several previous prime ministers, Shah has an India connection, having studied engineering in Bengaluru. He defeated four-time prime minister and CPN-UML chairman K.P. Sharma Oli in the latter’s own constituency of Jhapa-5 by a margin of 50,000 votes.
The two back-to-back elections had, prima facie, similar preludes and contexts. In both countries, Gen Z took to the streets in protest against establishments steeped in corruption and misgovernance, economic stagnation and perceived nepotism.
In Nepal, it was the government’s decision to monitor social media that sparked the protests; in Bangladesh, it was the movement against reservation in government services and........