Across South Asia, a new wave of Gen Z political activism has reshaped national politics in recent years, but two neighboring countries have seen starkly different outcomes for youth movements that both ousted sitting governments through mass public protest. Last month, as Nepal swore in former rapper Balendra Shah as prime minister — with dozens of Gen Z lawmakers filling seats in the newly elected parliament for the four-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) — Bangladeshi youth activist Umama Fatema watched from afar with a heavy heart.
Fatema was one of thousands of Gen Z protesters who led 2024 mass demonstrations that brought down Bangladesh’s long-ruling authoritarian Awami League government, matching the grassroots energy that upended Nepal’s political establishment. But nearly two years after Bangladesh’s revolution, the nation’s youth movement has yet to claim meaningful formal political power. In the country’s first post-protest national election held in February, the long-established opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secured a historic parliamentary majority, while the youth-led National Citizens’ Party (NCP) — which grew directly out of the student protest movement — suffered a dismal defeat, winning only six of the 30 seats it contested.
This outcome stands in sharp contrast to Nepal’s historic election results, delivered just one month after Bangladesh’s vote. The RSP, a youth-focused upstart party, won a landslide victory, earned dozens of Gen Z seats in parliament, and paved the way for Shah’s ascension to the prime ministership via an electoral alliance. Nepal’s win marks a rare breakthrough for youth political movements across Asia, where dozens of Gen Z-led protest movements have erupted in recent years, but none have managed to convert street protest into formal governing power the way Nepal’s young activists have.
“Personally, I felt disheartened. When I saw how effectively [the Nepalese youth] were able to organise themselves, I could not help but feel disappointed about the situation in our own country,” Fatema explained. “Bangladesh has not been able to deliver such a change… it is naturally disheartening to realise that we have not been able to organise and rebuild our country in the same way.”
Political analysts and youth leaders on both sides have dissected the stark divergence in outcomes, pointing to a combination of structural political context, strategic decision-making, and timing that separated the two movements.
For Nepal, RSP leaders frame their victory as a product of deep resonance with widespread public frustration. “The Gen Z protests tapped into a deep, long-standing frustration with the way things have been run,” explained KP Khanal, an RSP candidate who won a parliamentary seat in Kailali district. “At the same time, the sacrifices and voices of Gen Z stayed with the public — they haven’t been forgotten. Consistency was also a key factor. We kept raising our voices around accountability and justice, over and over, and gradually that message reached far and wide. It stopped being just a reaction to the status quo and started to feel like a genuine, credible movement that people believed in and wanted to be part of.”
Analysts add that Nepal’s unique political landscape created a unique opening for an upstart youth party. For years, the nation’s electoral system has encouraged coalition governance, and no single party has held a parliamentary majority. Over 17 years, Nepal cycled through 14 separate governments, with a small group of established parties rotating power in a pattern critics called political musical chairs. Widespread public anger over systemic corruption left all major established parties discredited, clearing the way for the RSP’s outsider brand to win over voters.
“In Nepal’s case, since all three established parties, none dominant, were discredited, the main beneficiary has been the youthful RSP and its leader,” noted Nitasha Kaul, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster.
Another strategic decision that cemented the RSP’s success was its electoral alliance with Shah, a charismatic former protest leader who lacked a formal party structure of his own. The alliance benefited both sides: the RSP provided Shah with access to its existing national organizational network and campaign resources, while Shah helped the RSP overcome a damaging embezzlement scandal surrounding party leader Rabi Lamichhane, giving voters a unifying, trusted figure to rally around.
Nepalese political analyst Amish Mulmi explained that in South Asian politics, robust party organization is non-negotiable for electoral success, especially for first-time contenders. That lesson was not lost on 27-year-old youth activist Purushottam Suprabhat Yadav, who turned down an invitation from friends to launch a new independent youth party after Nepal’s Gen Z protests. “Winning an election is not a joke. Organising a movement and emerging victorious in an election are two different things,” Yadav told reporters. “A political party cannot be formed out of nowhere… you require a very big machinery. There were also problems of finance and organisation-building, which was not easily available to us at that time.”
Yadav instead joined the RSP in December, drawn to the party’s existing national organizational network and slate of new, young candidates. The decision paid off: last week, Yadav was sworn into parliament as an RSP lawmaker via the party’s proportional representation list. Echoing the movement’s core promises, Yadav emphasized that the transition from street protest to parliamentary office has not changed the movement’s core goals. “We are now entering parliament from the streets — our place in society has changed, but not our agenda. Anti-corruption and an end to appointments on the basis of political affiliation and nepotism are our key demands. If we have to fight against our own party regarding this, we will do so.”
Kaul noted that converting street protest power to electoral power requires long-term, intentional organizing work that many passion-driven youth movements lack. “A movement that is driven primarily by passion, frustration, anger, or the politics of purity may be better at challenging the status quo — but not necessarily at winning elections,” she said. Nepal’s success, she added, stemmed from minimal internal division, ideological flexibility without open hostility, and a lack of dominant established parties capable of co-opting the movement’s momentum — all factors that were missing in Bangladesh’s case.
In Bangladesh, the long-ruling Awami League had suppressed all opposition for decades before it was ousted, leaving only established opposition parties well positioned to capitalize on anti-government anger after the revolution. “This meant that the second and third parties were seen as ‘victims’,” Kaul explained, noting that the BNP and Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami ended up reaping the benefits of widespread anti-establishment sentiment in the election. These established parties framed themselves as reform-minded, aligned closely with the youth movement, and ultimately were better able to absorb and channel protest energy than the new, under-resourced youth-led NCP, according to Imran Ahmed, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.
The NCP’s fatal strategic misstep was its decision to enter a coalition led by the conservative, controversial Jamaat-e-Islami, which alienated its core base of young progressive supporters, particularly women. “By aligning with a regressive force in Bangladesh, the NCP became more about political power than about the Gen Z cause, squandering their golden chance to appeal to more voters,” said Rishi Gupta, assistant director of the Asia Society Policy Institute in Delhi.
Timing also worked against Bangladesh’s youth movement. Gupta points out that a year and a half passed between the 2024 protests and the 2026 election, allowing the movement’s grassroots momentum to fade. Nepal, by contrast, held its election just six months after its mass protests, capitalizing on sustained public anger at the old establishment.
While Bangladesh’s youth failed to win formal power, their movement did succeed in shifting the national conversation around reform. The protests forced a constitutional referendum held alongside February’s election, where a majority of voters backed sweeping changes to the constitution, parliament, and national legal system. The new BNP-led government has also released a 31-point plan for structural reform, but many young activists remain skeptical.
“In many ways, they have followed the same conventional pattern of programmes that the Awami League used to undertake,” Fatema said, adding that the new government has failed to prioritize expanded economic and job opportunities for Bangladesh’s large youth population. A growing sense of disillusionment has spread among young Bangladeshis, she added, with more and more young people seeking work opportunities abroad and turning away from domestic politics entirely.
“The tendency among young people to look abroad has grown to an alarming level… even those who once intended to remain in the country are no longer thinking that way,” Fatema said. “With young people no longer seeing their future within this country, how will they find a place for themselves within the political landscape? It has become a major problem.”
Still, some young Bangladeshi activists hold out hope for the future. The NCP, which now holds a small foothold in parliament, will contest upcoming local city elections independently, without any coalition alliances. Local NCP leader and Gen Z protester Rahat Hossain argues that running alone will help the party rebuild trust with its core base. “I think the people will accept the party more than they did in the national elections,” Hossain said. “If the NCP continues to stand with the people on the streets, fighting alongside them and upholding its promises, then it can achieve better outcomes in the future.”
For youth activists across both nations, the fight for systemic reform remains ongoing. Nepal’s new Gen Z lawmakers have pledged to hold their own government accountable to the high expectations of a public hungry for change, while Bangladeshi youth warn they will return to the streets if the new government fails to deliver on the promised constitutional reforms. Fatema says even if current activists remain sidelined, the next generation will carry the movement forward. “Those who are 10 years younger than us will eventually organise movements of their own,” she said. “The next phase of protests in Bangladesh will likely be led by Generation Alpha.”
