Nepal’s progress depends on transforming not just its cities but also its rural areas, ensuring equal access to opportunities for all communities to thrive together – or risk watching its newest revolution dissolve into the familiar rhythm of the old order.
When youth across Kathmandu and Nepal’s major cities poured into the streets this past September against corruption and the silencing of their voices, it felt like a reckoning long in the making. But what does this revolution mean for the millions beyond the ring road, in the hills and plains of rural Nepal?
It is October, festival time in Nepal as I write this from my birthplace and ancestral home in Gulmi, a mountainous district in western Nepali. Outside the terrace where I sit, marigolds bloom. Fireworks and the singing and dancing of traditional deusi-bhailo songs echo across the valley. Tihar ceremonies continue as they always have, resplendent with light, laughter, and ritual. Yet the conversations feel different. Over the past week, I sat down with local leaders, youth, elders, and returnees from abroad, trying to answer a single question: what does this new Nepal mean for the villages?
Conversations in Gulmi
One deputy mayor spoke frankly about how party lines still dominate every local decision. A Gen Z organizer told me that activism echoes loudly in Kathmandu but fades in the hills.The mayor of a major municipality pointed toward a hospital that has been under construction for four years. “We’ve built enough buildings,” he said. “What we need are people.”
His words captured the story of many rural municipalities, where the focus has been on infrastructure, rather than on doctors, nurses, or accountability. At the district hospital, a young medical doctor told me he’s preparing for the United States Medical Licensing Examination or USMLE, to leave Nepal as soon as his required government placement ends. He said, “It’s difficult here. Leaving is the best opportunity for me.”
I met a 38-year-old coffee entrepreneur who returned home after years in Korea and now employs six workers, and a 27-year-old mechanic who still dreams of leaving because “here, loans are hard and encouragement is rare.”
Their energy was infectious, but their doubts were profound: Will the changes reach us or just be talk from Kathmandu?
Several youths who had come for the Tihar festival from Japan, the Gulf, Finland, Australia, and London shared the same frustration: “We would love to live here and build something, but the system is too difficult.”
Behind my relatives’ house in the middle of the village, a small bridge remains demolished, with only about 5% completed since construction began a year ago, leaving no walkway across the river. Each night, we walked barefoot through the cold water to reach the other side. Some villagers said the contractor is waiting because the government has not released the promised funds. Others simply shrugged. “It’s the way things have always been,” they said.
It felt like a metaphor for governance itself: demolition without delivery. I fear this could also become a metaphor for the September protests if we don’t strategically address the revolution’s demands.
The cost of hope
In Gulmi, I found hope mingled with sorrow – hope that change might finally come, and sorrow that it hasn’t yet and may never. For many villagers, politics still means loyalty to the same old political parties – the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) or CPN-UML, and the Maoists. “Change” is a word heard on social media and not yet seen on the ground.
Nepal stands at a crossroads. Any post-September movement that claims to represent Gen Z’s aspirations must do more than issue promises. It must show a plan, not just a slogan, and organize with purpose.
Yet the greater danger lies in seeing the new politics of Nepal repeat the mistakes of the past. From the Panchayat era (1961-1990) to the Maoist revolution (1996-2006), every wave of hope has eventually been swallowed by the same old machinery of corruption, cronyism, and neglect of rural communities. Unless this generation builds structures that resist that decay, Nepal risks watching its newest revolution dissolve into the familiar rhythm of the old order.
The consequence of failure this time will not just be disappointment; it will be collapse. For over three decades, Nepalis have watched governments rise and fall, promises made and broken, while their youth have packed their bags for foreign lands.
On September 8th and 9th, that frustration turned into fury and exploded. The 74 people who lost their lives in those two days remind us that this is a matter of life and death.
This is the knife’s edge on which Nepal now stands. If the new forces repeat the same mistakes – empty rhetoric, internal fragmentation, and short-term power games —this flame will not simply fade; it will turn to ash.
The challenge ahead
The uprising showed that Nepali youth are ready. But readiness alone cannot dismantle decades of inertia. Rural Nepal remains trapped in structural stagnation: patronage politics, weak capacity, and the belief that nothing moves unless you belong to one of the three mainstream parties.
The real test for the “new Nepal” and any party or coalition that claims to represent it is whether they can build trust and organization in the rural heartland. Kathmandu rallies and social media posts will not sustain a revolution unless they are matched by grassroots groundwork: mobilizing youth councils, rural campaign networks, and local accountability mechanisms.
There is a great opportunity before us: the entire Gen Z revolution unfolded online, faster than troops, bullets, or old-style politics. Nepal is one of the most connected developing nations in Southasia, which means the new leadership has a real chance to mobilize and engage rural communities in decision-making and accountability using devices that sit in everyone’s pockets. There is no excuse anymore for staying urban-centric.
A blueprint for change
Invest in groundwork across rural Nepal: Any new or reformed force must first build foundations outside the capital – train young local leaders, strengthen municipalities, and create bridges between returnee migrants, entrepreneurs, and public institutions. Change must begin where the state has long been absent.
Youth leadership and grassroots empowerment: Recognize the Nepalis – coffee farmers, mechanics, returnees, innovators – already working in the villages. They don’t need to be parachuted from Kathmandu; they need resources, recognition, and trust.
Human capacity over concrete monuments: A hospital without doctors or a school without teachers mocks its own purpose. Shift investment from bricks to people –career pathways, mentorship, fair pay — so professionals are proud to remain rural.
Local first, national second: The revolution began in the cities but will only endure if anchored in wards and communities. Build rural youth councils, digital governance platforms, and mechanisms that connect village progress to national policy.
Technology as a tool for transformation: Gen Z has a weapon no generation before it possessed: connectivity. Use it. Link the country through open data, participatory budgeting apps, digital skills training, and transparent monitoring systems. The same tools that organized the protests can organize reform.
Transform patronage into service: In most villages, the question remains: “Which party gives me what?” Replace that with “Which institution serves me best?” The stalled hospital and broken bridge are not just symbols of failure. They are warnings of what happens when systems serve politics instead of people.
Remember the martyrs, heal the wounds, keep the promise: Those who bled in the streets during the revolution are the moral foundation of this movement. Honour them through justice, opportunity, and reform that outlives slogans. Remind those resisting change about the martyrs, their families, and what they died for.
A cautious hope
On my last night in Gulmi, I joined a group of young men and women singing deusi-bhailo beneath the soft glow of oil lamps. Their laughter and rhythm carried through the hills, echoing an old message renewed: light conquers darkness, good triumphs over evil. This movement must become the Tihar of our politics, an illumination after decades of darkness. The youth have already struck the spark. Now it is up to those in power, and those aspiring to it, to nurture the flame with courage, humility, and action.
Let new Nepal rise also from its villages, not just the concrete of Kathmandu.
Dr. Ramu Kharel is an emergency physician and assistant professor at Brown University in USA, who grew up in Gulmi, Nepal. Through his organization HAPSA Nepal, he works to expand community-centric health care in rural Nepal, equip first responders with life-saving skills (and build collaborations that improve rural health systems.
This story first published in Kalam Weekly has been updated from an earlier version to reflect new information and edits.