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A quarter of Nepalis are adolescent. Half of Nepal's population of 28 million is below 25. Yet we are governed almost exclusively by elderly gentlemen. Many 'young turks' within the parties are themselves grandfathers. Governance in Nepal today suffers from a generation gap.
Nowhere was this as apparent as on the sidewalks outside the CA building in Baneswor last month, when young Nepali men and women camped out day and night to put pressure on assembly members to finish writing the constitution by the 28 May deadline.
What was unprecedented was that the rallies were mobilised not by political networks, but through social networking sites. Nepal's Facebook and Twitter generation, as in North Africa, have found in the convergence of internet and smart phones, an ideal medium of solidarity.
The rallies last month and the concerts this week on Darbar Marg may not yet mark a watershed in Nepali political activism, but it certainly tells us which way the wind is blowing. It indicates a growing disillusionment among the youth that is finding an outlet through the net. With nearly a million Facebook users and Twitter adherents growing exponentially among college students, these are not numbers to be scoffed at. The fact that the top news portal in Nepali language is a blog site also offers a warning to gatekeepers in the mainstream media.
It is hugely symbolic that Nepal's impatient urban youth have seized on the urgency of new media to express their disgust at the rulers who continue to let us down. Everything in the country is at a standstill because of political scorekeeping by a handful of myopic old men who couldn't care less about governance, development and the economy.
Most people had become so apathetic they had detached themselves completely, allowing rulers to be even more unquestioned. The few who want to change things also stand at odds with the unaccommodating nature of Nepali politics, dominated by the same old faces from the 1990s. The student bodies and youth wings are so politicised they stopped representing the aspirations of the youth long ago.
Young people, who used to be removed from politics till recently, suddenly found an outlet in social media, if not for anything else than to have their voices heard, to vent frustrations and assert their presence: just like jobless Spanish youth in Madrid's Sol Square last month. But revolutions cannot be built just on the Internet, especially in a country where only one in ten people have ever been online. Driving social change needs an agenda, a charismatic leader, needs a strategy, it isn't like clicking the mouse to change your FB profile picture.
With Nepal's digital divide, social media can at best organise people around a cause and bring them out to the streets. Even now, the rallying has merely shifted from Ratna Park to the information superhighway. To reach critical mass, it needs concrete goals, not just blanket abuse at all politicians and general calls for a timely constitution.
The campaign has been trivialised by columnists(who are themselves long in the tooth) for being hijacked by upscale celebrities. To discredit Facebookers as an elite club of young, idle, spoilt brats is not just simplistic, it is wrong. The number of FB-users in Nepal is already four times more than the readers of all daily newspapers put together, and they increasingly come from a wide social spectrum from all parts of the country, and this number is only going to grow.
The ridicule heaped on new media by those in old media stems from their inherent distrust of the younger generation and unfamiliarity with modern technology. Just because the campaign was not mobilised by the usual suspects among grey-haired civil society stalwarts doesn't mean it has no meaning. This country has been held hostage to the idiocracy of irrelevant old men for too long.
But go anywhere in Nepal today and it is clear who is driving this country: the resilient, energetic and enterprising youths. Yes, many vote with their feet and hop on to planes for Doha, but even as they sweat in the desert they prop up the economy. The women who stay behind are members of mother's groups, forestry committees and vaccination volunteers. They have done more for the country than the political hoodlums who believe only in bandas and vandalism on behalf of their fossilised masters.
What the virtual rallies on Kathmandu streets are doing is they are bringing out the previously-apathetic, educated,
future-oriented youth, students, professionals to say in one voice: "We care about our future because we are also Nepali."
Read also:
United they stand, PAAVAN MATHEMA
