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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.
07:20I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep.
07:34got the sense of tear gas. In an instant, everything changed. That is when I got the
07:41news of a person being killed. We didn't think it would go that far, but there was a news
07:47of a person being targeted. I was just scrolling through the news. I could not work. I could
07:52not do anything. I was just scrolling through the one scroll, one death, one scroll, one
07:56death. After the news that one person is shot and he's dead, I felt so guilty because he
08:02might have come watching my videos. So maybe I am responsible for his death. Police firing
08:09echo shots at children, children dying. News 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
08:26shot on his head. It outreached the whole population. The next day, it was not Gen Z
08:33anymore. It was the nation versus the government. The Hilton got burned. They started burning
08:40all the government buildings and everything. Our palaces were burned. Our banks were looted.
08:46This factory belonged to the family of Nirvana Chowdhury, whose home was also set ablaze. His
08:52family owns one of Nepal's largest businesses. So they went after your parents' house and then
08:59one of your factories. Our showrooms got burned down and motorcycles looted, vehicles looted. People
09:07are frustrated. People are jobless. Do they want to see big homes over there? Frustration was what was
09:13targeted towards individuals and families like ours. By the end of the violence, over 70 people
09:20had died, 2,000 injured. All the Gen Z-ers who spoke to us on camera made clear they never advocated
09:27violence and were far away when the situation escalated to the highest levels of government. On September
09:349th, one day after the protests began, many of Nepal's top leaders resigned, including the
09:40prime minister himself. We never imagined the situation. It was like nobody told us we would
09:46be a country without a government. The Gen Z-ers worried that in trying to improve their democracy,
09:52they might have inadvertently ended it. The army was taking control, stepping into the vacuum left by
09:59Nepal's leadership. But then an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night. The army invited us to
10:07sit down with them at the army headquarters to talk on what to do next, what the future of the
10:13country should look like. Subedi also got the army's call, along with a handful of others. They asked,
10:20you helped start this, now come fix it. Lama-chan, who had started a chat room to organize the protests,
10:27helped create another, this time to pick a new leader. Over 100,000 people joined and for hours,
10:34they debated and voted. The name they chose, Sushila Kharki, a retired Supreme Court justice known for
10:41fighting corruption and supporting women's rights. Subedi, the law student, got her phone number.
10:47She was asking if we were okay and everything and we asked her to step up and then she said,
10:52if you guys are trusting on me, then I will have to step up because it's not about me anymore,
10:58it's about the country. Do you look at this and think how amazing I spoke into this camera
11:05and look what's happened? Actually, no, because I still have that guilt of posting the video
11:15and I still think that some people might have come watching my videos and they had to lose their life.
11:21But if something great happens in the days coming forward, then that day I might be able to grasp
11:29that I was one of the major people who was responsible for this change to happen.
11:35In the weeks since Nepal's government was brought down,
11:38so-called Gen Z protests have erupted in other countries, including Morocco, Madagascar and Peru.
11:44The outcome of these movements is uncertain and their motivations are varied,
11:49but they are each grounded in the economics of inequality and a belief among younger generations
11:55that the system has in some way failed them.
11:59Has something changed in society that makes people angrier about their condition?
12:07We've had the peasants and the royalty forever.
12:11So 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.
12:28And there's also a sense that the economy should work for young people.
12:32And some of this is really just comparative, right?
12:36If you live in a place and you have a certain kind of life
12:39and you have no idea what anybody else's life is like,
12:42it's easy to just say this is how the world is.
12:45But if you can see across, right?
12:48If you can see to other countries, if you can see to other cities,
12:51that comparative sensibility makes it harder for a royal family
12:56or a set of hereditary elites to maintain legitimacy.
13:00And just the idea that the children of rich people should not have disproportionate opportunity,
13:07that is a surprising new idea.
13:10For Subadi and others, it's an idea whose time has come.
13:15A look over the palace wall made them angry,
13:18but then also hopeful for a better future.
13:21Hopeful enough to take action.
13:24And now hopeful that their action will be worth the sacrifice.
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