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00:00I was tired of living in a country where not my capabilities or my competence, but the
00:13connection that people have takes them forward. We plan to have a very small peaceful protest.
00:21Did you stay off of social media or did you go back to posting?
00:25No, I went back to posting. I will never stop posting.
00:28It's fine even if I die, but I will be dying, speaking of former countries.
00:33There is a huge class difference and all these people, they get these opportunities
00:37not because they are capable of it, just because they know somebody.
00:41Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Maldives, East Timor, Nepal.
00:47Government properties being demolished, burned down. Did we ever think that we will be targeted next? No.
00:55The big question is how many other similar countries does this spread to?
01:00Now more than ever before, people have a window into the lives of others. Social media connects
01:07youth across countries and continents, but it also shows them riches beyond their reach. And as
01:12inequality and unfairness become more conspicuous, some Gen Zers have taken to the streets.
01:19But nowhere was the movement more visible and more violent than in Nepal, a small democratic
01:25country wedged between Tibet and India. We were marching towards the parliament gate.
01:31And I was always very opinionated. I used to have opinions and everything. I was a rebel kid.
01:38This video is about me. Prashamsa Subedi is a 22-year-old law student who lives with her parents
01:44in the outskirts of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu. Not long ago, her life took a surprising turn.
01:50It was 2024 when I started uploading the videos about my political opinion, what I
01:58felt the government was doing wrong. And that's when it took off.
02:02In late June, after a Nepali politician downplayed the country's poverty,
02:08Subedi posted an angry response on TikTok. A day later, her clip had over a million views.
02:20Before, when we think of it, these politicians would not have their life public. So we would not
02:25know what their lifestyle was, how everything was going. But then there is a very famous
02:31politician. One of his family members was a vlogger. And she used to document their lives,
02:38and every clip used to go viral. And people used to see what lavish lifestyle they were having,
02:43which we could not even imagine. So that is how it all sparked. That is how it all triggered.
02:49In Nepal, there are so many people who have an out-and-to-mouth situation. And then you
02:53show off your luxury, this and that, everybody would get angry. So was I.
02:58Although inequality in Nepal may be more visible, its existence is hardly new. Its 31 million
03:04inhabitants make an average annual income of less than $2,000. And at around $40 billion per year,
03:12Nepal's GDP is lower than that of any US state. But GDP has been on the rise, climbing at an average
03:19annual rate of over 4% in the last 10 years. It's also got a Gini coefficient that's fallen over the
03:25past two decades, showing that with the limited data we have, the gap between rich and poor in Nepal
03:32seems to be shrinking. Gansham Uphadyai is Nepal's finance secretary.
03:38We have experienced the 4.2% economic growth in the last decade. One year, we faced the negative
03:47growth that is of the COVID-19 year. That's why the economy of Nepal is resilient. Inequality is reducing.
03:59Small steps towards stability, but seemingly not enough. Anger and resentment over perceived
04:04economic injustice built up over the years and seeing stark inequality on social media
04:10pushed people over the edge. There's sudden visibility to how much richer the rich are
04:16than the poor, right? That ability to kind of see over the palace walls.
04:22Clay Shirky studies the effect of social media on politics at New York University.
04:26In revolution after revolution, there has been some sudden change in perception of how the wealthy are
04:33living. In Nepal, it was around this idea of Nepo babies, right? It was the idea that the children
04:39of the rich were not suffering the way the rest of Gen Z was. There's a case, one of the famous Nepalese
04:46influencers, she was a former Miss Nepal, she was a Harvard graduate, and she was widely followed on
04:52Instagram. And once the idea of the Nepo baby arrives, many of her followers turned against her.
05:02She suddenly became a target for outrage for exactly the same thing she'd been posting all the way along.
05:09Something had changed about the way Nepal's youth saw their country and the lives of its wealthiest
05:14citizens. It was not just the inequality that felt wrong, but the inequality of opportunity. The idea
05:21that those at the bottom would never have the chance to rise up and those at the top might not deserve to
05:26be there at all. And although generational wealth, corruption and nepotism had always existed in Nepal,
05:33today they were in your face, on your phone, seemingly flaunted. As the online furor grew,
05:40the government made a dramatic decision. And Nepal has cracked down on a number of social
05:45media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X. I was, first of all, utterly hopeless and
05:53helpless. 18-year-old Shaswat Lamachand was one of the many Gen Z-ers who was angry about the social
06:00media ban. Talked with some activist friends, figured out what we could do, and we concluded
06:07that doing a protest would be the best way to do it. Lamachand says he expected 200 protesters to show up.
06:15But across the country, others like him were putting out the same call to friends
06:19and influencers. Today, we are here to say enough. First, never ending corruption.
06:29The collective action problem is if one person goes to the government and is protesting out front,
06:34they are completely helpless. But if a thousand people do, they have to pay attention. And if 10,000
06:39people do, they're overwhelmed. Everyone we spoke with said the plan was for a small, peaceful protest.
06:46But in the three short days between the social media ban and the protest on September 8th,
06:52the call to action spread like wildfire.
06:54By that point, the evening of September 7th, we figured out that this would be huge because
07:00everyone was talking about it. It ended up becoming a national thing.
07:03Well, tell us what happened on September 8th when you woke up in the morning.
07:08I didn't sleep that day.
07:20We started marching and we were chanting slogans and we were having fun.
07:26We were singing songs. Some people were playing Uno there.
07:29And we were 100 meters away from parliament where we were sitting and we got the sense of tear gas.
07:36In an instant, everything changed.
07:40That is when I got the news of a person being killed.
07:44We didn't think it would go that far, but there was a news of a person being targeted.
07:50I was just scrolling through the news. I could not work. I could not do anything.
07:52I was just scrolling through the one scroll, one death, one scroll, one death.
07:57After the news that one person is shot and he's dead,
08:00I felt so guilty because he might have come watching my videos.
08:04So maybe I am responsible for his death.
08:08Police firing echo source at children, children dying.
08:13News of the violence traveled quickly and then escalation.
08:20The very clip that I would say that ignited the fire in the people was a 17 year old getting shot on his head.
08:29It outraged the whole population.
08:32The next day, it was not Gen Z anymore. It was the nation versus the government.
08:38The Hilton got burned. They started burning all the government buildings and everything.
08:44Our palaces were burned. Our banks were looted.
08:47This factory belonged to the family of Nirvana Choudhury, whose home was also set ablaze.
08:52His family owns one of Nepal's largest businesses.
08:55So they went after your parents' house and then one of your factories.
09:02Our showrooms got burned down and motorcycles looted, vehicles looted.
09:07People are frustrated. People are jobless. Do they want to see big homes over there?
09:12The frustration was what was targeted towards individuals and families like ours.
09:16By the end of the violence, over 70 people had died, 2,000 injured.
09:22All the Gen Zers who spoke to us on camera made clear they never advocated violence
09:28and were far away when the situation escalated to the highest levels of government.
09:33On September 9th, one day after the protests began,
09:37many of Nepal's top leaders resigned, including the prime minister himself.
09:41We never imagined the situation. It was like nobody told us we would be a country without a government.
09:49The Gen Zers worried that in trying to improve their democracy, they might have inadvertently ended it.
09:55The army was taking control, stepping into the vacuum left by Nepal's leadership.
10:00But then, an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night.
10:04The army invited us to sit down with them at the army headquarters to talk on what to do next,
10:12what the future of the country should look like.
10:15Subedi also got the army's call, along with a handful of others.
10:19They asked, you helped start this, now come fix it.
10:24Lama-chan, who had started a chat room to organize the protests, helped create another,
10:29this time to pick a new leader.
10:31Over 100,000 people joined, and for hours they debated and voted.
10:36The name they chose?
10:38Sushila Karki, a retired Supreme Court justice known for fighting corruption and supporting women's rights.
10:45Subedi, the law student, got her phone number.
10:48She was asking if we were okay and everything, and we asked her to step up.
10:52And then she said, if you guys are trusting on me, then I will have to step up, because it's not about me anymore, it's about the country.
10:59Do you look at this and think, how amazing, I spoke into this camera and look what's happened?
11:07Actually, no, because I still have that guilt of posting the video, and I still think some
11:17people might have come watching my videos and they had to lose their lives. But if something great
11:24happens in the days coming forward, then in that day I might be able to grasp that I was one of the
11:32major people who was responsible for this change to happen.
11:36In the weeks since Nepal's government was brought down, so-called Gen Z protests have erupted in other
11:41countries, including Morocco, Madagascar, and Peru. The outcome of these movements is uncertain,
11:48and their motivations are varied. But they are each grounded in the economics of inequality,
11:53and a belief among younger generations that the system has, in some way, failed them.
11:59Has something changed in society that makes people angrier about their condition? We've had
12:08the peasants and the royalty forever.
12:12So there is a general anti-royalist and anti-elite sentiment that is spreading from country to country,
12:21a sense that the leaders of the country are not natural rulers. And there's also a sense that the economy
12:30should work for young people. And some of this is really just comparative, right? If you live in a
12:37place and you have a certain kind of life, and you have no idea what anybody else's life is like, it's easy to just
12:44say this is how the world is. But if you can see across, right, if you can see to other countries,
12:50if you can see to other cities, that comparative sensibility makes it harder for a royal family or a
12:56set of hereditary elites to maintain legitimacy. And just the idea that the children of rich people
13:04should not have disproportionate opportunity, that is a surprising new idea.
13:11For Subadi and others, it's an idea whose time has come. A look over the palace wall
13:17made them angry, but then also hopeful for a better future, hopeful enough to take action. And now,
13:26hopeful that their action will be worth the sacrifice.
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