South Asia lived with inequality. Then ‘Nepo Babies’ arrived.

SOUTH ASIA’ relative tranquility has always puzzled outsiders.

- By Mihir Sharma

It has grotesque inequality, but few revolutions. Class solidarity is rare, and its politics are seldom oriented around narrowing the gap between the rich and poor. This centuries-old stability might not, it turns out, survive the age of Instagram. In South Asia, the revolution is being streamed.

New Delhi’s political elite will be thinking carefully about events in their small Himalayan neighbor, Nepal, which is closely integrated — culturally and economically — with India. This month, mobs of young people, including college students, occupied the streets of its capital Kathmandu; the prime minister was forced to resign; 13,500 prisoners escaped when their jails were damaged; and the main government complex was set on fire. The spark for this conflagration? Short videos on TikTok and Instagram that edited together the luxurious life of Nepo Baby influencers — many related to senior politicians — with scenes of harrowing poverty.

That wasn’t all that happened: The government made major missteps, including trying to shut down social media, and using live ammunition against demonstrators. When men in uniforms kill students in the streets, protests tend to metastasize — that’s what happened in Bangladesh last year as well. In both countries, overreaction by the security forces had a great deal to do with how things turned out for those who gave them their orders.