NEPO CHARGE UPENDING NEPAL NAGS INDIA TOO

A new ADR report shows that one in five Indian legislators is from a political dynasty. The share of crorepati MPs has also soared over a decade and a half

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Things were turned upside down in Nepal a few days back.

A lot of things were stated unambiguously as the reason for the explosion of this anger, especially by those who have slotted themselves as Gen Z. Perhaps this is the first time that any protest anywhere in the world has the age of its protagonists so rigidly defined-those born between 1997 and 2012. The average age of Nepal is about 25 years and this may have to do with such a tight demographic branding of the protests.

True to a generation sunk in smartphones, the final nudge for the protests in our neighbouring nation was said to have come after the government shut down several social media platforms on a lame pretext. For Gen Z, it was as if the nation's mirror had been splintered and a truth-machine wound up. Arguably, it was the first time that social media shutdown had actually propelled a nation into anarchy. In psychological terms, this could well be about withdrawal symptoms.

Not long ago, social media was seen as a 'progressive' tool generating positive democratic pressure around the world-for example, during the Jasmine Revolution in North Africa, Arab Spring in West Asia and anti-corruption activism in Delhi in the early 2010s.

Social media platforms were made out to be friendship societies until fiendish dreams woke up the world.

When people realised the treacherous role of algorithms, the platforms' profit motives, and their role in coalescing fringe movements, social media platforms were quickly dubbed as democracy's weapons of mass destruction. In the case of Nepal, it is too early to judge if social media exerted a healthy democratic pressure or played a nefarious role.