India, Sept. 10 -- After Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, it is the turn of Nepal. Just 36 hours after mass mobilisations choked Kathmandu and an alarmed State responded with violence, leading to the death of at least 19 persons, Prime Minister (PM) KP Sharma Oli resigned. On Tuesday, the homes of politicians were attacked and the parliament building was set on fire. Though a government ban on multiple social media apps provided a trigger for "Gen Z" to hit the streets, the widespread support it received suggests a deeper anger against the system that cuts across age and class divides. Nepal seems to be experiencing a moment that Bangladesh saw last July when protests forced the then PM Sheikh Hasina to flee Dhaka, or going back to 2022 when the Aragalaya movement pulled down the Rajapaksa government in Colombo. A restive public, utterly disillusioned with the political class deemed corrupt, venal, and self-serving, forced regime change in all three countries. Anti-graft sentiment has always headlined street protests in South Asia. But the Nepal situation is peculiar in its own way. One, no government has ever completed its term in the country since 1990, when it abandoned monarchy for democracy. Even after the country moved to a path of reconciliation in 2005 after a decade of civil war spearheaded by the Maoists, government-making in Kathmandu has been about permutations and combinations involving the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN)-UML, various factions of the CPN-Maoist, and the many smaller outfits. Ideological contradictions are subsumed by coalitions of convenience, which have given a new life to even the monarchists. A handful of leaders have taken turns to lead these governments that failed to address the economic aspirations of the people. Two, the Gen Z of Nepal accesses the world through social media - according to DataReportal, Nepal has 14.3 million social media user identities in January 2025, which is about 48.1% of the total population; in comparison, only 33.7% of the Indian population are active social media users. Not surprisingly, Nepal's Gen Z seems to have perceived the crackdown on social media as censorship by an ineffective government. India has understandably been cautious in its response: Sections in Kathmandu are known to spin conspiracies and spot a foreign hand whenever the public turns against the ruling elite. Instability in Nepal is also a cause of worry for India, particularly when it is trying to rebuild relations with China. Chaos in Nepal offers an opening for Beijing to influence public affairs in that country. The coming days will be crucial, and hopefully, Nepal will follow Sri Lanka's trajectory rather than Bangladesh's decline into sectarianism....