HOW KATHMANDU AND COLOMBO REDEFINED POLITICS

Violence in the Buddha's land of birth

- By KKS PERERA

The uprisings in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka reveal a generational impatience with deep-rooted elites who treat the state as personal property.

Across South Asia, young people digitally savvy, economically pressured, and politically aware have found common cause in demanding accountability from leaders they view as corrupt and unresponsive. The Nepal protests described above, which began with a social-media ban and ended in the resignation of Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli, echo the same themes that animated Sri Lanka's 2022 Aragalaya: economic collapse, elite impunity, and a yearning for dignity and participation.

While each country's trajectory is unique, these movements share three core drivers: Economic disillusionment unemployment, inflation, and loss of opportunity.Governance failurescorruption, nepotism, and opaque decision-making. We have here a digitally networked youth capable of transforming online anger into mass street action.

Sri Lanka's 2022 Aragalaya

The Aragalaya emerged amid the island's worst economic crisis since independence. Years of mismanagement, debt-fuelled infrastructure projects, tax cuts, and the sudden ban on chemical fertilisers had already weakened the economy. By early 2022, foreign reserves were nearly exhausted; fuel, food, and medicine were scarce; and inflation soared. Young protesters students, professionals, and working-class citizens coalesced at the now-famous "GotaGoGama" encampment in Colombo's Galle Face Green. Their demand was simple but seismic: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family-dominated administration had to resign. What began as peaceful sit-ins soon became a nationwide mobilisation drawing trade unions, religious leaders, and middle-class families.