Amish Raj Mulmi
The South Asia Program informs policy debates relating to the region’s security, economy, and political development. From strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific to India’s internal dynamics and U.S. engagement with the region, the program offers in-depth, rigorous research and analysis on South Asia’s most critical challenges.Learn More
Since the restoration of democracy in 1990, Nepal has cycled through twenty-seven prime ministers, each averaging barely a year in office. None of them was a woman. This changed on September 12, when former chief justice Sushila Karki was sworn in as the country’s first woman prime minister.
One only wishes it were under better circumstances.
Karki was sworn in via extra-constitutional means by President Ram Chandra Poudel. He had little choice. What had begun as a peaceful protest against widespread corruption by the Nepali youth—flattened under the broad “Gen Z” label by the media—ended with seventy-four deaths. The collective fury of a society mired in corruption, economic distress, and mass unemployment toppled the government at a staggering cost.
After nineteen protesters—most under the age of thirty—were killed by state forces on September 8, vengeful mobs began burning buildings the next day. Offices of the three major parties—the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist, or UML), the Nepali Congress, and the Maoists—were torched. A former prime minister and his incumbent foreign minister spouse were beaten up inside their home, which was later burnt down. The Prime Minister’s Office—a 122-year-old palace—went up in flames, along with the Ministries of Home, Finance, and Health. The Parliament was incinerated, as were the Supreme Court and several other lower courts, and the anti-corruption commission. And this was just in the capital of Kathmandu. Several municipal offices across the nation were also set ablaze, as were tax offices, district administration offices, provincial assemblies, customs offices, private homes, and businesses. Prisons were broken open. The rage was nationwide, and the mob unrelenting.
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