“The country’s employees are powerful government

Salary of 30,000, 30 houses

The road in the middle of the market is full of twenty potholes

Pockets are heavy, banks are broken, seven levels of officials

Who will pay the country’s seven debts across seven seas?...

“This is all business, this is not politics

There is no Rajyoga among the kings of this state...”

These words, from the 2019 Nepali rap hit Balidan, meaning sacrifice, were penned by Balendra Shah, also known as Balen among his millions of fans. That was three years before Shah, who studied at an engineering college in Karnataka, took the leap into politics. With lyrics that resonated among young people in Nepal, who were despondent about the perceived lack of opportunities for better prospects in their country and cynical about their political leaders whom they saw as both corrupt and inept, Shah’s Balidan and Nepal Haseko (A happy Nepal) were among the anthems of the Gen Z protest on September 8 and 9, 2025.

Those protests ousted the government of K.P. Sharma Oli, forcing him to flee from his home in Kathmandu. Seven months later, the 35-year-old Shah is the Prime Minister-elect of Nepal, after having inflicted a humiliating electoral defeat on Oli in the Communist warhorse’s own stronghold, and leading the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), which he joined recently, to a stunning sweep of the parliamentary election held on March 7.

The election was held by the Sushila Karki-headed interim administration, which took charge after Oli’s ouster. Although criticised by the established political parties as a violation of the Constitution, which deems that any caretaker or interim administration must be appointed by the parliament, the Karki administration navigated tight political space to return the country to an elected government in an election that was peaceful, free, and fair.

In hindsight, Shah’s election as mayor of Kathmandu was a forerunner to this historic moment in Nepal. Then contesting as an independent, the rapper turned politician demolished a field of candidates from established political parties, including Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and the Nepali Congress. The demand for change by the overwhelmingly young electorate was loud and clear in that election.

This time, Shah joined the RSP, which is led by another political newbie, the 52-year-old Rabi Lamichhane. A former television broadcaster, he too won his first election in 2022, entered the House of Representatives, and joined the government led by Pushpa Kumar Dahal Prachanda (known as Dahal), leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-MC), earlier the Maoists.

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The RSP’s debut was impressive. The party won seven seats through direct elections and 13 more through the proportional representation system, an early sign of the yearning for change among voters. However, Nepal’s young voters gave in to the old political guard in that general election, only to be instantly rewarded with the same old political instability.

Dahal, whose party had won just 32 of 275 seats in that parliament, broke from a pre-election alliance to join hands with Oli to form the government. The RSP, with seven seats, was roped in too, and Lamichhane got to be deputy prime minister. It would not be the last government to formed inside that hung House. Oli stormed out of the alliance and Dahal went back to the Nepali Congress, a pre-election ally, to form the next government. Oli outmanoeuvred Dahal in 2024 to become the Prime Minister with the help of the Nepali Congress, becoming the man in the hot seat, when Gen Z decided enough was enough.

Nepal’s revolving door governments, each lasting a little more than a year, have been a constant feature of the country’s democracy. Nepal has had 14 governments since 2008, when it ousted the monarchy and began the difficult task of constitution-making, and eight governments since 2015, when it adopted the Constitution. India and China, Nepal’s two big neighbours, added to the country’s constant political churn. No party has ever managed a majority on its own. Until now.

The RSP’s landslide victory, with 122 of the 165 directly elected seats, puts it in pole position in the House. Under Nepal’s mixed electoral system, 110 seats are decided through proportional representation, with seats allocated to a party on the basis of its vote share. The RSP may even go on to win a two-thirds majority when all the votes are counted.

Tough way forward for RSP

The RSP’s resounding victory came on the back of Shah’s popularity. He was projected as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. The RSP’s big majority will place an enormous burden on Shah and Lamichhane. Except for Shah’s brief period as mayor from May 2022 to January 2026, and Lamichhane’s even briefer couple of months as deputy prime minister, the RSP has no experience of running a government, being a ruling party, or even as an opposition party.

The RSP declares itself to be a pluralistic democratic party, but claims to profess no particular ideology. At the moment, it is more a coalition of willing individuals who have joined the party for what it stands for: “equitable progress of all Nepalis within a socially just liberal economy”.

Shah campaigned tirelessly, addressing five big public rallies, but he said nothing of note in his speeches. His own social media pages gave nothing away. Shah did not do any media interviews either. But in a sign of the times, his aura on social media grew, especially around the clothes he chose to wear.

Where earlier “Balen style” was all about his direct way of speaking, during the campaign it became about his wardrobe. His top to bottom all-black style—the daura suruwal, which is a traditional fitting kurta pyjama, the bhadgaule topi, a Nepali cap associated with the Newari people, and black goggles—drew comparisons to former King Gyanendra’s look.

In a rare interview soon after he won the Kathmandu’s mayor’s post, given to an international organisation called Metropolis-the World Association of Major Metropolises, Shah said: “I don’t want to make people feel that only young people should do politics, because also, experienced people should do politics. I should have been doing something else, but due to all these politicians not doing well, I am sort of doing it,” Shah said in the six-minute interview available on YouTube.

He added: “We try to inspire youths to not think about themselves only, they should think about society, your city, about your surroundings. We try to inspire young people to be honest to themselves first... only by being honest themselves they can be honest to society, to their city. I also do music, and through my music, I try to inspire young people.”

However, Shah’s term as mayor, during which he was praised for cleaning up the capital, was also known for his high-handedness and his penchant for making decisions without wider consultation. He is reported to have had little time for views different from his own.

Corruption allegations

Under his supervision, the Kathmandu corporation’s removal of homeless people squatting along the Bagmati river in November 2022 led to violent clashes. Shah was also criticised for aggressively going after street vendors to keep pavements encroachment-free.

Some of his other alleged actions seemed to contradict the anti-corruption lyrics of Balidan. Months before he quit the office of Mayor, he was under the scanner of Nepal’s Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority for an expensive visit to the Cannes film festival in May 2024.

The RSP’s election promises are big: a commitment to creating 1.2 million jobs to stop forced migration, doubling the national per capita income to $3,000, and transforming the nation from one that exports labour to a $100-billion knowledge-based services economy in 5-7 years.

Much will depend on the RSP’s internal cohesion and the political chemistry between Lamichhane and Shah. Lamichhane, who won from Chitwan constituency, was himself embroiled in allegations of embezzling funds from cooperative societies. He was arrested in April 2025 and released on bail in December, but has still not been cleared of the allegations.

China and India

China and India, long-standing rivals for political influence in Nepal, and with a long history of backdoor political manouevring in Kathmandu, will be watching the new government for any tilts in foreign policy. But the RSP manifesto gives away little. It declares that it will adopt a policy of “balanced and dynamic diplomacy to turn shifting global geopolitics and the rise of neighbouring powers into concrete opportunities for national development”.

It also promises to transform Nepal from from a “buffer state” between two big economies into a “vibrant bridge through trilateral economic cooperation, regional connectivity, and mutually beneficial partnerships”.

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The party has said that Nepal should benefit from India’s progress in creating digital public infrastructure and physical infrastructure. At the same time, RSP wants to build structured partnership frameworks with China by mobilising concessional finance for world-class infrastructure, adopting state-guided socioeconomic development programmes, and learning from effective inter-provincial competition models.

“Through this balanced approach, RSP seeks to ensure national interest while positioning Nepal as an active, confident, and development-oriented partner in the region,” the manifesto said.

Significantly, the RSP has also said that it wants to re-negotiate the three-decade old fixed exchange rate with the Indian rupee (1 Indian rupee=1.6 Nepali rupees). The arrangement has suited Nepal well, which is why no political party has so far demanded that it should be changed. India is Nepal’s largest trading partner, its main source of foreign investment, and as of now, the only transit provider for the landlocked nation.

First Madhesi PM

Shah’s election is remarkable for another reason. He is the first Madhesi Prime Minister of Nepal, although he has lived in Nepal’s capital all his life and is a Kathmandu native for all practical purposes.

The Madhesis, a nomenclature that includes several ethnicities, live in the Terai plains of Nepal bordering Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal. They form 30 per cent of Nepal’s population. Their relationship with the dominant hill people of Nepal has been politically fraught. Amid accusations of marginalisation, the Madhesis have agitated for their own province, which was granted by the 2015 Constitution as Madhesh Pradesh. Their geographical proximity, and proximity to different ethnicities of the bordering Indian States, has also raised questions about their national loyalties.

But the RSP’s projection of Shah as the prime ministerial candidate worked across these ethnic fault lines. The party won from almost all of Nepal’s districts. The older political parties that fought and won the battle for the removal of the authoritarian monarchy and oversaw the difficult transition to a constitutional republic have all but been swept aside.

The Nepali Congress and the two Communist parties seemed not to have grasped the lessons of the 2025 Gen Z revolt: it cannot be business as usual. By the time the Nepali Congress old guard reluctantly accepted that it needed to hand over the reins of the party to a younger generation, it was probably too late.

The revolt by 52-year-old Gagan Thapa against Sher Bahadur Deuba’s leadership was successful, but only after a bitter and bruising internal battle that has divided the party into several opposing camps. Deuba himself was forced to withdraw from the contest and Thapa was the prime ministerial face of the campaign, but lost his own election. Of the three former Prime Ministers of Nepal over the last 10 years, only Dahal has been re-elected.

It may be too early, however, to write off Nepal’s older political parties. They have deep histories, and long experience of surviving election defeats.

Nirupama Subramanian is a senior journalist.