The key issues that drove Gen Z protests that toppled Nepal’s government

Lisa Desjardins:

Nepal finds new calm this weekend with the appointment of a temporary leader following an extraordinary week of violence.

The death toll now stands at over 70 after anti-corruption protests led to police clashes and a host of buildings in the Capitol being set aflame. An interim prime minister is in place today asking for people to come together.

New elections are expected to be held in March, but key issues like unemployment and inflation that drove the protests remain unaddressed.

Earlier I spoke with Alex Travelli, a South Asia business correspondent for The New York Times. He's in Kathmandu and I asked him to describe the situation there today.

Alex Travelli, The New York Times:

The capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, is actually rather quiet now and it looks normal in a lot of respects. There's still a large military presence on the streets, but they're not blocking traffic. There are a lot of burned out buildings.

So if you're looking at the old halls of power, it's like a disaster swept through town. In fact, a few of them are still even on fire. But I would have to say that traffic, business, civilian life, is carrying on almost as if it were an ordinary time in Nepal, which it very much is not.

Lisa Desjardins:

This is a historic time, and it seems like the protests evolved in part because of the bans of some social media platforms, but there also seem to be a lot of more deeper issues there. Can you help us understand how this all evolved?

Alex Travelli:

Yeah. It's becoming clearer and clearer, Lisa, that the social media ban, which was the proximate cause or the trigger for the protests, it was a small part of a great big angry hole. It was Monday of this past week that the mostly young people took to the streets in great numbers.

And you could see already on the banners and placards they were carrying. It's much more about entrenched problems that Nepal faces political problems, corruption, a culture of impunity. And there was a vast amount of anger. And then that all changed on Monday itself when armed police started firing into the crowds. Very quickly, a lot of young people died by police bullets. And then there's an entirely new cause for outrage.

Lisa Desjardins:

What has day to day life been like for the young people, especially those leading this protest?

Alex Travelli:

So life in Nepal is very tough for young people, and often these are young people who've invested a lot of time and a lot of their family savings and education. One of the surest signs of this economic crisis is the number of young Nepalis who have to leave the country in order to find employment.

This is often for menial jobs in the Gulf or in Malaysia. It's not that these are young people who necessarily want to leave Nepal, but almost 2,000 do leave every day. There's, by some estimate, half of the country's families depend on income being sent by Nepalis working abroad. This is a desperate situation, and it's not one that young people want to put up with forever.

Lisa Desjardins:

Can you tell us about the new interim prime minister and why it was that young people in particular wanted her in the job?

Alex Trevelli:

Yeah, it's very hard to get a grasp on really what the young people want, mainly because we don't really know who they are. It's a leaderless movement or that's how it began. And we do know that members of that leadership, however they were chosen, were talking to her.

Her name is Sushila Karki and she came out as the favored candidate. No. She's a former chief justice of Nepal. In fact, the the country's first female chief justice and a jurist by training, so interested in constitutional matters, not especially beholden to any of the big political parties and a satisfying choice if there had to be one for a caretaker prime minister.

Lisa Desjardins:

Help us understand Nepal's role in the region and whether these protests have any wider influence as well. It's a small country, but. But where does it sit in terms of its importance?

Alex Trevelli:

It may be too soon to tell, but Nepal sits between China and India, the biggest countries in the world. The United States, of course, takes a keen interest also in Nepali affairs. In recent years, as China's political and economic power have grown, it's become a more important rival with India for influence in the region.

Each of these giant countries has its favorite political parties within the old political order of Nepal. Now that political order as a whole seems to have collapsed, it looks suddenly like a clear board in which these two, three big countries are going to start competing again.

Lisa Desjardins:

What comes next? We expect elections in six months. Do you think that is the way out of this crisis?

Alex Trevelli:

What's clear is that it's going to be a very difficult path forward. There's no period of time in which you could say, we know how Nepal is going to replace its established political parties, or the parties themselves perhaps will stick around, but they'll figure out a way to replace their tarnished leadership.

Perhaps Gen Z, as they call themselves, the student protesters, will find a party to throw into the fray themselves. But six months is a very short amount of time for anything like that. The country is really going to need parties that can attract popular support, and that's something that is very hard to see from this week.

Lisa Desjardins:

Alex Trevelli, we know you'll keep watching it and we appreciate that. Thank you for joining us.

Alex Trevelli:

Thank you very much.