Memes to mayhem: Revolutions like Nepal’s don’t just happen because conditions are ripe

This explains why mass protests, let alone revolutions, are relatively rare in history and current affairs. If the existence of poverty, corruption, injustice, misgovernance, young people and smartphones were enough to cause revolutions, many countries around the world would be in constant upheaval. It is important, therefore, to be humble when commenting on what caused a revolution. Any revolution.

Manu Joseph had an insightful commentary on this month’s “Gen Z protests" in Nepal in Mint last week that argued a lot more went into the unrest than merely outraged young people incensed by the government cutting off access to social media. “At the heart of all revolutions," he reminds us, “is the second rung of power, aristocracy, wealth or clergy, attempting to bring down those above them. For this, they recruit a moral reason and the youth and poor."

After the protests, power in Nepal now vests with an upright septuagenarian no-nonsense prime minister, a politically cautious army chief and a number of actors who have entered politics through unconventional routes. There are rap stars, television anchors, humanitarian relief workers and business entrepreneurs vying to capture political power.

The forms of political negotiation are impressive—Discord servers being used for debate and decision-making is a first—but its substance is the same old, even if Gen Z believes it is a new idea to “throw out the old corrupt establishment."

But let us hope that Nepal enters a new phase of political stability, economic growth and social harmony: maybe good governance is also an emergent phenomenon.

Nepal’s upheaval follows those in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh in recent years and in Indonesia last month. The nepotism memes that fuelled resentment in Nepal initially crossed over from Indonesia.

In 2025, it would be naive to believe that memes and trending topics on social media remain organic for too long. A half-decent political operation anywhere in the world opportunistically exploits otherwise ephemeral trends and uses them to its advantage.

This is not to say that all memes and hashtags are manufactured, but that it would be a mistake to underestimate the role of organized efforts to stoke public anger and push things toward the brink. Cui bono, after all?

Canada’s Cascade Institute, a specialist in complexity science, has a simple framework to analyse how crises take place. It involves two types of causal factors: slow boiling ones called ‘stresses’ and fast processes called ‘triggers.’ Sometimes they come together in a hard to predict manner and become crises. Rough calculations show that the probability of protests increases significantly when the proportion of young people in a population exceeds 20% and smartphone penetration and urbanization levels cross 50%.

All countries in the subcontinent and Indonesia fall in this spectrum. By these measures, the countries at even higher risk of revolution are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Turkey, all Central Asian republics, Mongolia and the Philippines. It is impossible to predict trigger events, but one lesson they might take from Nepal is perhaps not to ban social media.

That brings us to the question of the relationship between transnational technology platforms and sovereign states. Much of the media reportage demonizes Nepal’s ousted Oli government for banning social media, as if it were a sudden and arbitrary act of censorship. It was not.

The ban followed a wilful refusal by foreign social media platforms to comply with a lawful directive that was, in turn, a result of a judicial order requiring them to comply with Nepalese law. You can accuse the Oli government of being ham-handed and lacking political sensitivity, but you cannot blame it for acting illegally.

The events in Nepal have emboldened social media platforms, which can now dare democratic governments to try and hold them to account. Again, it is 2025 and no one can claim social media companies are upholding principles such as free speech. They are not neutral actors. They are, at best, acting to promote their commercial interests, and at worst as instruments of information warfare in the hands of their home governments.

Social media has empowered platforms more than it has people. All sovereign states, especially democracies, must be concerned about this.

Revolutions are rare because societies—even authoritarian ones—tend to have lower-risk options for people to make their voices heard. They are also rare because people are not monolithic or even stratified into classes, as many believe.

A century ago, Communists, inspired by their European experience, thought that peasants and workers in India constituted a class that could be provoked to rise against their alleged oppressors. Their hoped-for revolution didn’t happen as the fabric of Indian society was woven differently.

Indeed, such complexity in many societies masks their resilience and ability to effect change without violent upheaval. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on who you are. And, in these times, perhaps on how old you are.

The author is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.