Nepal’s Colour Revolution: Student Protests and the Fight Against Corruption

It began, oddly enough, with a visit most Nepalis barely registered: Victoria Nuland, then U.S. Under Secretary of State, touched down in Kathmandu in 2024 after a swing through Wellington. On paper, it was a routine regional stop — democracy, civil society, and the familiar rhetoric of “partnership.” In hindsight, it reads like reconnaissance.

Within months, dollars flowed more freely into Kathmandu’s NGO ecosystem. Hami Nepal, a group best known for earthquake relief, suddenly expanded its online reach, building Discord servers, Instagram grids, and encrypted communication trees that looked less like charity and more like mobilisation. Grants tagged for “civic capacity-building” and “youth participation” seeded what became a nationwide network.

For Washington’s critics, the answer was obvious: the revolt bore the hallmarks of U.S. NGO-mediated insurgency — sudden digital coherence, civic-NGO funding, embassy blessing. For defenders, it was grassroots rage at corruption, nothing more.

But the geopolitical timing matters. Oli had been drifting east. In late 2024, he signed a Framework for Belt and Road Cooperation with Beijing — a document Nepal had hesitated over for seven years. It unlocked a list of ten Chinese-backed projects:

The price tag of this “pivot” was staggering: billions in concessional loans, feasibility studies already underwritten by Beijing’s banks. For China, it was a corridor of influence carved out of Himalayan rock. For India and the United States, it looked like strategic encirclement.

So when the streets of Kathmandu lit up with Molotovs in September 2025, it was hard not to see the collision: a Nepali establishment wobbling toward Beijing, a U.S. anxious not to lose another link in the Himalayan chain, and an NGO-energised youth revolt that toppled Oli faster than any parliamentary vote could.

Now, eyes are also on the mayor of Kathmandu, Balendra Shah. A former rapper turned politician, he rose to prominence in 2022 with the so-called “Balen effect” on social media. Western-leaning and supportive of the student protests, Shah met with the U.S. ambassador in February 2024. His trajectory, from viral outsider to urban power broker, marks him as a figure Washington might cultivate — a bridge between the restless Gen Z and an anxious establishment.

Sushila Karki now sits in the middle of this tectonic shift — an austere jurist with no party baggage, tasked with forming a cabinet, soothing a generation, and deciding whether Nepal’s future is written in Mandarin contracts or American grants.