For the last few years, Nepal's elite opinion makers have been talking about a particular social phenomenon: NIRASHA—frustration, especially among the youth. In newspapers' opinion pages, television shows, online portals' articles, panels of literature festivals and seminars, and lectures, you will find people gossiping about it.
Since then, I have spent hours and hours at tea tables and coffee shops with my friends but never dared to write about it until now. But now, I feel I have something to say, and say I should. What I present here is based on my own reasoning and observations, though I know everything I’ve read and thought about in the past also informs how I see the issue. But here I am not borrowing anyone's theory and fitting it into our context.
Before we enter the question of what the causes of this frustration are, it’s important to ask: why has it become such a hot topic in the public sphere, and who made it a buzzword?
It will be easier to understand if we begin from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Nepal, then, was passing through a nightmare. The legitimacy of the political parties was crumbling because of a series of corruption scandals, the lack of delivery, and poor governance. The Maoist war was at its peak. Every day, state-owned Radio Nepal and Nepal Television were filled with a list of names of people who died in the war: how many insurgents were killed, how many soldiers died. No one could trust the system. And then came the royal massacre of Narayanhiti.
Until that moment, the monarchy was still seen as a spiritual institution and also a force of stability. But the massacre wiped out almost the entire royal family, sparing only Gyanendra Shah and his immediate relatives. People began asking: how? Why? Was this a setup? Suspicion and conspiracy theories ran deep. Gyanendra’s sudden rise didn’t restore confidence; it further shattered the public's faith. People did not believe in the official report about the massacre, read out in a loud voice by Tara Nath Ranabhat. In that darkness, there was no institution or leader left that the public could believe in. There was no alternative to choose from for the people.
Interestingly, no one at that time described this societal collapse as frustration. People were lost, uncertain, angry—but that word wasn’t used. The intellectual elites had two buzzwords at that time: terrorism and dictatorship. They knew who should be blamed.
Then came the People’s Movement of 2006. The political parties, admitting their past failures, sought forgiveness and promised to build a new Nepal. They joined hands with the Maoists and vowed peace and prosperity. The people believed them. When the movement succeeded and the monarchy was abolished, it truly felt like a new beginning. That darkness now had a faint light.
I don’t know how long that light lasted. But soon, the same parties that had asked for a second chance started breaking their promises. Corruption flourished. Institutions were hijacked. Universities, Courts, police and paramilitary institutions, corporations, and almost all institutions of state have been captured by three major parties. The sets of rules and regulations are thrown away on the Bagmati River, which flows downwards from the valley.
In the beginning, it seems like parties are so powerful, but soon, this power of parties is captured by their heads. Power concentrated in a few hands, and within a few years, three men—Sher Bahadur Deuba, KP Sharma Oli, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal—emerged as near-unchallenged rulers. They became like a cult-head, instead of political leaders. The political parties that once fought for democracy and change were now vehicles for individual ambition and dynasty-building. These three men captured state power like fiefdoms.
Still, the public tolerated it—until something unexpected happened.
New political figures and parties began to emerge. Rastriya Swatantra Party (RaSwaPa), Balen, and Harka. Optimal utilization of the new technology of social media, they successfully exposed the major parties and their heads' incompetence and worthlessness. They became a hope and alternative to the major parties. That means they challenged the throne of the cult heads.
Madhesis are angry, worried and misinformed about the citizensh...
That’s when the noise started.
The intellectuals—many of whom were directly or loosely affiliated with the mainstream parties—began crying out: There is mass frustration! Suddenly, this word—frustration—was everywhere. But why now? Why wasn’t it used in the chaos of the 2000s?
Because this time, frustration wasn’t just a feeling—it was a challenge to power. It questioned privilege. And it was unsettling for those who had long enjoyed influence and comfort in the system.
So, instead of engaging with it, they began reducing it. They dismissed the rise of Balen, Harka, and RaSwaPa by saying, "These are just expressions of youth frustration." Between the lines, what they were really saying was: the old order will continue. These new actors will come and go. Our three lords will rule.
And that’s why they never tried to delve deep into the issue of frustration. They weren’t interested in understanding it, they were only interested in managing its threat.
But if you really want to understand the frustration, you have to go back, not just to Nepal’s history, but to global history. You have to understand the political and economic systems that have shaped the modern world. And, you need to know who sets the standard for everything in the contemporary world.
Until the 15th or 16th century, the world was not divided into developed, underdeveloped, and least-developed countries. There was inequality, yes. But there wasn’t a system that made one part of the world feel inherently superior and some inferior officially. The language of development came later, after colonization.
How did the colonizers become rich? It's simple: by looting. By occupying land, enslaving and selling people, extracting resources, and establishing systems of control.
The gold of the Americas, the spices and textiles of South Asia, the rubber and minerals of Africa—all flowed into Europe. The wealth of cities like London, Paris, and Amsterdam was built on this stolen capital. Colonization didn't just transfer material wealth; it created a hierarchy of civilization. People worked hard on an empty stomach in India, Indo-China, Africa, or Latin America, but the fruit of their labor was stolen by the colonizers.
Even after formal colonization ended, the structure remained. It transformed into international aid, foreign investment, and development agendas. The same powers that once ruled with guns now ruled with policies, debt, and diplomacy. Global institutions were created not to equalize but to maintain control.
They set up narration, a country should be a developed country like England, France, Spain, or later the USA. What did they have? Monostorous physical infrastructures, roads, railways, and airports. They said you need to build it to be a developed country, and it needs a lot of money. But their treasury was already empty because of colonial looting. So, they offer, with the money they have looted in the past, we will provide you with debt, with interest and service charge, and a time schedule of repayment of installments. The IMF became the head of this strategy of neocolonialism.
The story doesn't end here. To get a loan, you need to go through structural adjustment, or any similar provision of vulgar privatization, which critics like to say. They said, You are a poor country. To be developed, you should put everything in the private sector's hands. Otherwise, you will be an authoritarian country.
But, once these poor guys of the global south agreed to privatization, they said: But you are a poor country, you don’t have capital, you don’t have technology, you don’t know how to do business and keep accounts. Let our rich man do this for you.
Companies from Europe and America will go to Africa and dig for diamonds and gold, and sell them to the party they want. What do Africans get in the exchange? Guns, dictators, poverty, Christianity.
And, they set up foreign-aid agencies- USAID, UKAID, AusAID, etc. They came to teach you how to keep accounts, how to make a budget, how to write a proposal, and a report. They came to teach you how you should do agriculture, how you should plant potatoes or paddy. They came to teach you what you should teach in schools and colleges. They gave you distorted portions of Plato and Aristotle, Newton, and Shakespeare. And said, knowledge comes from the West. You are a poor, illiterate, backward country and people.
They challenged, said be like us: developed, educated, progressive. We, the global south, accepted it, you are the master and we the servant, and we want to be the master like you.
If any country tried not to accept their generous offer of unnecessary debt, privatization program, and looting the capital, they would declare you a communist country, and start to bombard you with fighter jets or send an army to dethrone you. If you said you are not my master and don’t come to teach me, they make you Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, … and the list goes on. They will dethrone the ruler who doesn't cooperate with them and establish a puppet ruler. But, rulers from most of the global south countries accepted to be a puppet before putting up any resistance, like our rulers of Nepal.
They came to Kathmandu and said, Oh! You poor guy! You don’t have water to drink, and you should bring it from the Melamchi River. Make a dam and a tunnel, it will cost some billion dollars, just above your national budget, and we will give it as a loan. Be thankful to us.
Our rulers agreed. Why won't they agree? They had plenty of money for corruption, commissions, and bribes at every step, and gifts like luxurious cars, purchased from Western companies. And, the masters made all arrangements for their puppets to hide the money they earned by working hard for corruption. They set up secure Swiss banks and Tax havens. They gave them the opportunity to invest in businesses like share markets, Real estate, and casinos. The leaders have purchased luxurious bungalows and vehicles (even some of them private planes) in European countries.
Give a pause for a while, where is the money going that our ruler accepts as a loan? The gifts of luxurious cars are purchased from Western companies, the money is deposited in Western banks, and is invested in the Western market. Most of the money has already gone back to the Master's treasury, but here we are again paying back the debt, cutting from our budget of healthcare and education. People are dying because of hunger in Madagascar, but still, they are paying back the installments to the Western institutions and countries. Here in Nepal, the government don’t have enough money to provide salary and social security, health insurance is not working because government doesn't have enough money to pay back to hospitals, but we need to payback loan of Melamchi Project, which is not providing drinking water to Kathmandu, and its future is so uncertain because of the climate catastrophe.
You saw the picture, the money they provided is going to them underground, through Tallo Bato, and we are paying it with interest and service charges in a formal way.
Again, we are a poor state, so we are buying everything from others, from planes to cars from Europe, Apples, seeds, and corn from the US. The list goes on. Money is again flowing to the West. And, look at the contractors, who build large infrastructure (China and India have huge numbers in our case, but in recent development, they are emerging as a new player), most of them come from the West. Again, they are taking the money to the west. We have a few factories that produce alcoholics and cold drinks, like Calpurnia or Coca-Cola, but where does the profit go? Obviously, to the country of their owner.
The capital flows from the global south to the west. To Europe and, now, almost all to the USA. That’s why the US is a super-rich country and Madagascar is super poor. That’s why Nepal is poor.
You accepted the idea of being like Switzerland, you never dreamed what Nepal should be, and you failed to achieve your accepted goal. You accepted all the knowledge our society acquired yet is useless and bullshit and the knowledge the westerns are providing is superior, and you failed to reach their level on the standards they set. You had desired to be a citizen of a developed country, and an educated and progressive citizen like a white American, but you failed. Then, who won't be frustrated?
But, till the 1960s and 1970s, the cost of labor reached a new high in the West, and the profits of the rich people were decreasing rapidly. Now, they wanted to bring cheap labor from poor countries and set up their factory in countries where labor is cheap and they don’t have labor rights as in the West. They articulated it with the beautiful name and slogan- Globalization: the free flow of labor, technology, and capital. How sweet it is to hear, but the reality is exactly opposite.
Capital, or the money, kept flowing to the West, and labor flowed to the West in a controlled manner. Still, even if you went to a Developed country and became a citizen there, you are still a backward Asian, or African, or Hispanic, from a poor, illiterate, backward country. You are representing the underdeveloped world in the developed world and exporting their frustration to their home country.
Thus, you dreamed of being a developed, educated, civilized country like the West, but you did not do anything to achieve your dream. And, you never realised this dream was sponsored by them, and they will never let you achieve it. When you remain a citizen of a poor, illiterate, and backward country. Why won't you get frustrated?
Obviously, the cult-like leaders are the problem, and we need to dethrone them, the puppets of the global system of injustice. But, they are not the root cause. Yes, Balen, Harka, Ravi are products of this frustration, they are not the solution, who have no Idea about global injustice and the system that is bankrupting us financially and morally. The hope they have given may not last long if they don't try to understand the system of neocolonialism and try to restore our self-respect first.
What will restore our self-respect- understanding the system of global injustice and resistance against it. Only resistance can take us out of this deep social frustration. Resistance, only Resistance.
Those who knew the importance of resistance and took the responsibility on their shoulders became frustrated.
Thank you for reading. I would love to hear from you on this topic.
