READING TIME: 3 minutes

When the revolution, led by banned political parties and with massive backing from the population, toppled the autocratic Shah monarchy in Nepal in 1990, my generation, Generation X, had just come of age. What, to my young mind—and I am sure to the minds of many at the time—was impossible had come to pass.

As a student in his second year of the two-year IB Diploma studies at United World College of the Adriatic in Italy, I had been unaware of everything that led up to and was involved in the movement and the revolution. I was also unaware that, as a generation, we had been provided with an incredible opportunity to forge a path for ourselves and our country that no other generation had. Decades earlier, another generation had also gotten a taste of such an opportunity, but the Shah King, King Mahendra, had crushed it.

After spending most of the preceding 25 years abroad, I returned to Nepal in 2013 to mainly inspire the next generation of Nepalis from similar background to mine and to educate. Keenly studying the country, I became increasingly aware of how much the social, economic, and political climate had degenerated over the couple of decades of Nepal’s experiment with democracy. I came to feel that my generation was partly to blame for it. We came of age during the major upheaval of 1990, Jana Andolan I (“People’s Revolution I”) when the county had been at cusp of major change. But, I felt, we had failed.

My frustration with my generation’s inaction led me to post the following on Twitter.

A few days later, I shared the following on Facebook:

“My generation came of age when the People’s Movement I of 1989-90 toppled the #autocratic, #oppressive, #suppressive, and absolute #monarch Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev — the tenth King in his dynasty to rule the country. And as such, as a generation, we could have been the torch bearers, the trail blazers, etc. Thirty years on, looking back, I am actually embarrassed for and by my generation. By my estimation, as a generation, we weren’t really any of that nor did we do any of that which we could have! What do you think?“

While constantly involved in activities–such as data-driven blog about the myriad of issues plaguing the country and being very active on social media–aimed at raising awareness and inspiring fellow Nepalis to do something about the abysmal state of affairs of the country, I must confess, I was regularly disheartened and dejected. The extent to which Nepalis were tribal was one of the most disheartening discoveries I made. In fact, my last blog post had been an open letter to fellow Nepalis to rise above everything that keeps them so small-minded and so narrowly focused.

But today, all that is behind me. Today is a glorious day. So glorious, in fact, that after months of hardly saying anything on Facebook, I was induced to reshare the above old post with the following words:

“The post below is from October 2021, bemoaning the failure of my generation, Generation X of Nepal. This past week, Generation Z stepped up and did what my generation was too chicken to do for over three decades, forget be what we could have become and what we could have done DURING those decades.

Today is a glorious day nonetheless for Nepalis like me who have been involved in activism for years, hoping for a day just like today!“

Just this past week, within just two days of Generation Z’s protest rallies a”round the country, the devastatingly corrupt and inept Prime Minister KP Oli resigned on September 9. Last night, at 9 p.m. local time, Nepal’s interim Prime Minister Madam Sushila Karki was sworn in by the President (see image at the top). The federal parliament has been dissolved. And this morning, 30 million Nepalis woke up to a new Nepal that once again carries a lot of promise, just as it probably did back in April 1990. But, just as in the Spring of 1990, I am not in the country to experience it. I write this from abroad, from England this time.

What do you think?