Why Nepal Just Overthrew its Government

Nepal — a country of nearly 30 million people — recently elected a new Prime Minister using Discord — the free social platform used mainly by gamers.

Between memes and emojis, thousands of users voted in an anonymous poll for their favorite of five candidates.

Less than 48 hours later, the winner — 73-year-old former Supreme Court Justice Sushila Karki — was formally sworn in as the nation’s leader.

Needless to say, this is not how elections typically work in Nepal.

This extraordinary sequence of events was set in motion two weeks earlier, when the previous administration sent letters to dozens of social media companies, demanding that they immediately register with the government.

Those that refused (or were simply too slow to respond) were banned from the country just seven days later.

With hardly any warning or explanation, Nepalis were suddenly cut off from the apps and websites they used every day — apps like YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

Outraged, a group of students and young activists began peacefully protesting in the capital, Kathmandu.

Little did they know, they had just lit the match to a fire that would soon grow far bigger than they could possibly control.

Within hours, thousands had joined them. Their demands grew broader. And the crowd, less patient.

The government, it quickly became clear, had been caught flat-footed and was now completely overwhelmed.

The Prime Minister first repealed his social media ban and when that didn’t work, resigned from office. But this only emboldened the protestors — proving they had the upper hand.

With no one to hold them back, some seized this opportunity to truly vent their frustration.

Over the next few days, at least 70 people — mostly protestors — were killed, billions of dollars worth of property was destroyed, and all three branches of government were set on fire.

Finally, seeing the writing on the wall, the army brokered a deal.

It asked the leaders of the protests to propose the name of a new Prime Minister.

And those leaders, in keeping with the spirit of the movement, deferred that question to the wisdom of the crowd.

They did this the fastest, easiest, and simplest way they knew how — using one of the very same platforms the government had only just tried to ban: Discord.

And just like that, Nepal had a new leader.

But make no mistake: this revolution wasn’t really about Discord or Instagram or YouTube. It was

about the government’s decades-long inability to solve one basic yet fatal economic problem… Sponsored by Private Internet Access. Stay

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Looking at a map, it’s unfortunately no mystery how Nepal became one of the poorest nations in Asia.

It doesn’t have oil, like its Central Asian neighbors.

It doesn’t have access to the sea, like Bangladesh.

It doesn’t have India’s flatter terrain, making transportation cheaper and easier to build.

And it’s not subsidized by a central government like Tibet.

Tourism helps, of course, yet the very qualities that make it so attractive to a certain kind of thrill-seeking traveler also limit its mass appeal.

If anyone could climb Mount Everest, after all, far fewer would want to.

One thing Nepal does have an unusual amount of, however, are people.

Despite being only four times bigger than Bhutan, its population is thirty-seven times larger.

Not only that, it’s the kind of population a rapidly growing economy needs: a young one.

The median age is just 27 and a full 60% of the country is under thirty.

So, what do you do with all this young, able-bodied labor when you have no oil to drill or garments to weave?

Well, in Nepal’s case, you send them abroad.

Women tend to work in India; men in Korea, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

The former are often recruited as maids, nannies, and cooks; the latter as drivers, construction workers, security guards, and electricians.

South Korea, with its median age of 45, is always in need of helping hands. As is the Middle East, with its well-known addiction to building flashy megaprojects.

Once overseas, Nepalis can earn about $340 U.S. Dollars a month. …A tiny sum by global standards, but consider that the country’s per capita GDP is just fourteen-hundred dollars a year or $120 a month — only a third as much.

And because migrant workers are generally provided with food and accommodation, they can keep nearly every dime they earn.

…Meaning: they can send nearly their entire paycheck back home.

These transfers — called “remittances” — are life-changing for wives, husbands, children, and parents in Nepal.

Between 1984 and 2022, the share of its population earning less than three dollars a day fell from 83 to just two percent.

The World Bank called “the speed and scale of [its] success in eliminating extreme poverty,” “unparalleled among its peers.”

But there’s a catch.

Paradoxically, what’s life-changing for each individual family can still be disastrous for the nation as a whole.

The problem is that migrant labor isn’t just a fallback — a useful “Plan B” for those unable to find better work at home. No,

it’s practically *the* default pathway — a virtual necessity for all but the luckiest few.

Two thousand Nepalis leave for new jobs overseas every single day. 76%

of households rely on remittances from at least one family member.

And these are low estimates. Many Nepalis work next door in India, where they don’t need a permit, or even a passport, to enter.

When you add up all these remittances, they comprise, by some estimates, two thirds of Nepal’s entire GDP. Two thirds!

For comparison: remittances are also quite common in India — millions of Indian-Americans, in particular, regularly send money back home — yet they represent just three percent of India’s GDP.

In Nepal, remittances overshadow all foreign aid and all foreign direct investment. It’s not even close.

direct investment. It’s not even close.

Now, a large influx of cash, one would think, is surely a good thing. That’s the whole rationale, after all, behind foreign aid. And indeed, for any one family, it is.

But consider what this does to an economy over time… The reason this income is so life changing is that, for many, it’s the difference between having dinner and going hungry.

Yet for that same reason it doesn’t allow Nepalis to save, never mind invest.

The vast majority of this money (79%) is immediately consumed — in the form of basic necessities like food, rent, and clothes.

Now, that alone isn’t the problem.

The problem is that, remember: all the would-be farmers and factory workers are off building World Cup stadiums in Qatar and off cleaning houses in Korea.

All those products must be imported from abroad.

In other words, money flows in to Nepal as remittances and then immediately flows out as imports. When all is said and done, nothing is actually built domestically — no new factories, no new jobs.

In short: Nepal has been hollowed out. It’s little more than a “pass-through” economy.

In a cruel twist of irony, nearly everyone who stays in Nepal is a small-scale farmer — 66% of the workforce — yet the country struggles even to feed itself.

It’s forced to import a significant quantity of its food because without capital to invest in fertilizer or equipment, agricultural productivity is so incredibly low.

It’s in the strange position of having too much labor and therefore too little. Too much — so millions go overseas. And as a result, too little is left at home — particularly the youngest, most able-bodied, and skilled labor — the kind who would ordinarily, for example, start businesses.

If there were more opportunities at home, more workers would stay there. But for

there to be more opportunities, workers would first have to stay — starting the companies and attracting the investment that would eventually create jobs.

Nepalis have no choice — they can’t turn down work overseas, forcing their families to starve, hoping everyone else will do the same. Nor can

they wait around for years while domestic industries take off.

But this means that nothing. ever. happens.

And that’s just the economic problem.

Now consider what this does to a nation politically.

As a “partly-free” democracy (even before the recent “Discord revolution”), the government is theoretically accountable to the public.

Yet whenever unemployment rises, it can simply channel this “surplus” into migrant labor.

Remittances are the “perfect” low-effort government policy: they’re easy to implement, the consequences are delayed, they shift the burden of structural problems onto individual citizens, and they outsource potential unrest to a faraway place.

Addressing root causes, on the other hand, is hard work and doesn’t happen overnight.

Nepal, for instance, has the potential to generate massive amounts of hydropower, ample demand for which lies right across the border in India. Yet building dams requires diligent planning, long time horizons, and is capital-intensive.

Unsurprisingly, every government over the last 20 years has done the same thing when faced with these two choices: take the easy way out — using remittances as a substitute for real policymaking.

With the nation’s future on autopilot, politicians are free to focus their efforts on collecting bribes.

Since the end of the monarchy in 2008, governance of Nepal has been passed around like a hot potato. One after another, thirteen governments have gotten in, used the treasury as their personal ATM, and quickly moved on. Not one finished their full term.

For decades, Nepalis have shouldered the burden of their government’s poor choices.

Migrant labor is stressful, demanding, and sometimes physically dangerous. Long hours are the norm and passports are often confiscated by employers, restricting their freedom. Even in the best of cases, working overseas means being away from your family for months or years at a time.

Meanwhile, social media provides a window into the extravagant lives of the nation’s tiny corrupt elite.

In 2012, the son of a former prime minister was given a quarter million dollars by the government to hike Mount Everest, quote “for the sake of the country.”

Another young princeling posted photos standing next to a Christmas tree made of Louis Vuitton boxes — in a country, recall, with a $1,400 per capita GDP.

Nepal has been cruising on autopilot for so long, even the slightest patch of turbulence was bound to unleash this fury.

In September, that long-simmering discontent finally boiled over.

The social media ban wasn’t just unpopular. It was a painful slap in the face to millions who used these platforms to stay in touch with their loved ones working overseas.

That — not young people’s “addiction” to social media — is why Nepal overthrew its government.

Those protests required enormous courage, quick thinking, and discipline. Also essential to their success were VPNs — Virtual Private Networks — without which protestors would never have been able to access Discord.

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