Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Now Nepal: Why is South Asian Youth So Angry Today?

Failure of political parties to shift away from dynastic politics will further alienate young voters in coming days.

In the South Asia region, while countries have been democratic, it has been seen that political parties of these countries are largely controlled by families.

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

In the last three years, three South Asian nations—Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and recently, Nepal—witnessed forceful change of political power through street protests. While protests were led by people from all ages in Sri Lanka, the protests that we saw last year in Bangladesh and this year in Nepal were led by students and youths.

The clear pattern is that in all these countries, people were forced to come out to the streets as they felt that the governments, elected through ballots, either became autocratic or aristocratic and saw street protests as the only weapon to remove them from power.

Concentration of Political Power

In the South Asia region, while countries have been democratic, it has been seen that political parties of these countries are largely controlled by families.

In Sri Lanka, the Rajapaksa family-led Sri Lanka Podujana Perumana (SLPP)  controlled top posts, including president and prime minister, at a time when the country was going through an economic crisis. This led to public anger with allegations of resource hoarding against the Rajapaksa family. Previously, the Bandaranaike family had similar influences in the country. 

In Bangladesh, the major parties — Awami League (AL), Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and Jatiya Party (JP) — are run by families. Under Sheikh Hasina, AL turned authoritarian, enabling her 15-year rule until the youth-led protests forced her to flee the country.

In Nepal, one of the main reasons behind the anger of the youth was the lavish lives of the “nepo kids” — a reference to relatives of the major political leaders.

Also, the country’s political situation with frequent coalition shifts among the three major political parties — Sher Bahadur Deuba-led Nepali Congress (NC), KP Oli-led Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) or CPN-UML, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) or CPN(MC) — led to a feeling among the youths that the aristocratic system is going to stay.

A Yearn for New Political Forces

The street protests in the South Asian region indicate that people yearn for new political forces. The election of Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose Janatha Vimukti Perumana (JVP) was earlier a fringe party with a history of organising two failed violent revolutions, as the president of the island nation and months later the victory of his National People Power (NPP) alliance, which also includes JVP, in the Parliament elections signalled that the people are frustrated with the traditional parties and dynastic politics. 

In Bangladesh also, following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, a new political party, National Citizen Party (NCP), was formed by students who played a crucial role in ousting Sheikh Hasina.

In the recent Nepal street protests, the three major parties faced the ire of the youth protests, indicating that there is also a decline of support for the traditional parties in the Himalayan country. 

Signs of a Functioning Democracy

These street protests signal democratic support in the region, but the hard nationalist and religious sentiments that fuelled past conflicts do remain.

In Sri Lanka, Marxist Dissanayake’s NPP has embedded the Sinhala Buddhist nationalism along with its leftist agenda — a political strategy adopted by Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in the past to divide the island nation on ethnic lines.

In Bangladesh, the frustration of the voters with traditional parties has strengthened the Islamist parties like Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Andolan Bangladesh, raising concerns about the country’s democracy in the future.

In Nepal, with traditional parties facing scrutiny, the pro-monarchy party—Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) — is likely to exploit this situation to expand its influence. In the recent months, the party has organised protests at times demanding Hindu state and restoration of monarchy.

While the demand for monarchy in the Himalayan country still lacks strong backing, there has been significant support for the demand of Hindu state.

If the later developments of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are any indication, Hindu nationalism, which has seen a rise in recent times, is likely to play a major role ahead in shaping the Himalayan country’s politics. 

Wake Up Call for India

The recent waves of political protests are definitely going to shape South Asian politics — and India isn’t going to remain immune to this. Unlike Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, India’s quasi-federal system, with an experience of more than seven decades of functioning, has helped to mitigate unrest.

Given the diversity of the country and the long rule of non-BJP parties in some states, protests are less likely to destabilise India compared to its neighbours. 

Having said that, these waves of protest in the region should be a wake up call for the ruling BJP and the Opposition parties, including Congress. The growing unemployment crisis is a ticking bomb that demands urgent attention from the centre and state governments.

Additionally, the failure of India's political parties, barring the BJP and, to a large extent, the Communist parties, to resist relying on dynastic politics is likely to alienate the young voters. 

Though uprisings demanding democracy aren’t new in both Bangladesh and Nepal, the recent upheavals in the region are intensified by the devastating Covid-19 pandemic. This badly hit the economies of these countries.

The situation worsened more due to the failure of the political systems, which didn't address critical issues like lack of democracy and the increasing influence of aristocratic families in politics and societies of these countries.

In South Asia, family-based politics has become the norm among the traditional parties, fostering corruption and weakening internal democracy. The waves of protest by the voters, particularly young, in Nepal and similar movements across the region, clearly reflect a challenge to this status-quo and should prompt the traditional political parties to have a rethink on their leadership structures and governance approaches. Ignoring these signs risks further unrest in the region. 

(Sagarneel Sinha is a political commentator and tweets @SagarneelSinha. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)