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Nepal has successfully conducted another mid-term parliamentary election in a peaceful environment. This election has provided a grand victory for an emerging political force, particularly the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP).  RSP appears to be gaining a historic win with a clear majority in parliament. This outcome reflects years of frustration among the Nepali people that stemmed from entrenched corruption, political instability, and high unemployment. The election result suggests Nepali people’s eagerness for change. However, there are many challenges and unanswered questions ahead of this political transition. How does this political shift bring economic prosperity and overnight changes that the Nepali people voted for? How do new political dynamics benefit Nepal’s overall development?

As the world has been experiencing a populist political movement to gain political power, Nepal is no exception. New social media trends and the globalization of information sharing made this more complicated. Fewer than 30 percent of Nepali adults have completed high school, indicating low educational attainment in Nepal. The lack of higher education can make people more vulnerable to misunderstanding misinformation and disinformation circulating on social media and global trends. Keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean that people without formal education lack intelligence. 

Thus, education helps to navigate today’s critical digital environments, where false and misleading content spreads quickly. Experiencing an unemployment crisis, Nepali youths have been upset with the government and political leaders. Additionally, topics of infrastructure development, good governance, social equality, and citizens’ everyday issues have been exaggerated by politicians and civil society leaders. A lack of understanding of Nepal’s overall development and past mistakes has made Nepali politics even more fragile.

RSP presented one of the top agenda items as investigating corruption and providing good governance to the Nepali people, even though its president faces charges of financial and civic misconduct. Corruption allegations are one of the easiest allegations in the political arena. It helps political parties to energize their voters; they have no responsibilities to prove it. According to Transparency International, Nepal falls under the score of 34, along with other countries, including Algeria, Brazil, Malawi, Niger, Thailand, and Turkey, in the corruption perceptions index. Many economically well-functioning countries also score under 45, including China and India.

It is important to note that corruption is not just a single cause for Nepal’s lack of economic prosperity. Nepal indeed faces a higher level of corruption, and its bureaucracy has misused and poorly managed public funds. Hence, the political challenges that Nepal faced throughout its history weakened its institutions or failed to strengthen them. In the absence of policy and bureaucratic transformation, Nepal continuously focused on political changes; recent youth protests and elections are examples of this pattern.

The RSP promises to investigate corruption allegations against political leaders and punish those responsible. However, it has not consistently explained its good governance agenda or how it plans to implement it. As many scholars point out, corruption is not only financial misconduct; it also reflects an ethical crisis, policy failures, and weak institutional integrity. Moreover, Nepali people have repeatedly seen politicians use state power as tools for revenge and political gain. If the RSP focuses mainly on persecution while failing to advance policy reforms and ethical standards, Nepali society may not make meaningful progress in good governance and anti-corruption efforts.

The RSP, as a neo-populist political force, promises rapid economic, social, and industrial changes in Nepal. Without presenting a clear political and economic ideology, the RSP has suggested a simple path to the country’s well-being. They blamed others for the country’s problems and promoted a divisive “us versus them” narrative. This approach may be risky for the party in the future, but it also risks the hopes and expectations of the Nepali people. We all know that overnight changes are not possible. Changes and prosperity require time, collaborative effort, vision, and long-term determination. However, the RSP has already manipulated current issues and rejected the achievements of the past. The party’s inability to fulfill people’s hopes can frustrate the people.

Unemployment is one of the major problems facing Nepali youth, as many unskilled workers depend on foreign labor markets for employment. Creating jobs requires a stable political environment, but history shows that Nepal has been one of the most politically unstable countries. Nepal’s political and policy-level of instability make it a less attractive place for investment. The recent destruction of public property, businesses, and private property by youth protesters has not only discouraged foreign investors but also deeply disappointed Nepali business leaders. The government’s failure to ensure safety and security is a key reason why Nepal is still not seen as a viable destination for large-scale investment. 

Failure to attract investment in the industrial sector of Nepal means Nepali youth have no choice but to rely on the foreign labor market. On the other hand, the unstable Middle East and international conflict make the foreign labor market riskier and more uncertain. The RSP government will face significant challenges in attracting internal and external investment in small and large industrial businesses. Since the party leaders have not presented a clear plan to address the unemployment crisis, the future remains uncertain.

The Nepali people are excited about the RSP’s landslide election victory because of the party’s populist agenda. Many people believe that change is possible, but the party may have raised expectations on uncertain premises. The RSP’s political rhetoric around unemployment, economic problems, corruption, and social inequality does not have quick fixes. The party has also portrayed traditional political forces, the media, business leaders, and existing institutions as its opponents, thereby creating a divisive political environment. It may discourage other parties from working collaboratively with the RSP government. The lack of trust between the government and the private sector impedes the resolution of people’s problems.

Nepal’s limited resources for economic development prevent a rapid response to current problems and make it difficult to meet people’s expectations. This may lead the RSP and its government to divert public attention toward political agendas such as constitutional amendments or changes in governing structures.

Many analysts argue that populist politics can lean toward authoritarian tendencies. Populist leaders prize praise and loyalty over accountability. Such governments may be less appreciative of political discourse, analytical criticism, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and logical debate—all essential for a healthy democracy.

The Nepali people voted for political stability, good governance, and economic opportunities. Whether those aspirations translate into meaningful progress depends on the quality of RSP leadership and the depth of its long-term vision.

The author is a PhD student in Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech

Naturally, Nepal is beautiful, geographically Nepal is landlocked and politically Nepal is always unstable. But after the March 5 election, the term unstable will be stable—that’s our hope—with a new political party set to form the government.  Nepal has just seen a political earthquake. In the recent election, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), led by Balendra (Balen) Shah, has secured a historic majority in the federal parliament, with around 182 seats out of 275. The so‑called big parties of yesterday have been pushed far behind. Many of their senior leaders have lost. Only former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has managed to return to parliament from Rukum East, while other familiar famous faces have disappeared from the front line. This result is not a small change; it is a clear message from the people that they were tired of the old way of politics and new one to be corrected in present and future with the hope not to be repeated from this wave too.

Nepal has long struggled with hung parliaments, unstable governance, and never-ending positional negotiations. The people’s lives remained unchanged despite the government’s repeated changes in leadership. Rather than being influenced by the general welfare, policy decisions were frequently influenced by personal interests, political agreements, and corruption. Like in the past, basic government services remained cumbersome, slow, and rude. People believed that even basic tasks required bribes or political ties. Due to their inability to obtain good services, health care, or education at home, young people from villages and small towns continued to migrate to cities and other nations. A ‘tsunami of votes’ was made possible by this lingering discontent.

Why did this tsunami of votes come for RSP and Balen Shah? There are several reasons. First, young people, especially the GenZ generation, had already shown their anger through protests and social media campaigns against corruption, nepotism, and the lifestyle of the political elite. They were tired of seeing leaders’ children enjoying luxury while ordinary youth stood in queues for passports and labor permits. Second, Balen presented itself as a clean, new force with a strong anti‑corruption message and a modern style of communication. Balen Shah’s own image as an engineer, rapper, and independent thinker who had already shaken the old parties in Kathmandu’s mayoral politics gave people hope that a different kind of leadership is possible.

Third, voters punished the old parties because they failed to provide stable and honest governance after the federal republic was established. Leaders kept making coalitions only to save their chairs, not to serve the people. They talked about socialism and equality, but the gap between their words and their actions became too big. In this election, people decided to clean the field. This is not just a victory for one party; it is a warning that any party can be thrown out if it betrays public trust.

Now, with a clear majority, the biggest hope is political stability. For the first time in many years, one party has enough seats to form a government without being hostage to small coalition partners. This creates an opportunity and a big responsibility. The question is: what should this new government do first, so that people feel their vote was not wasted?

The first duty of the new government is to restore ‘trust’. Trust will not come from speeches; it will come from concrete actions that people can see and feel in daily life. The government’s first decisions should focus on cleaning the system and improving basic services. A strong first move could be to announce a national “Good Governance and Service Reform Plan” with clear, time‑bound targets. For example, the government can declare that key services such as citizenship, social security, passports, driving licenses, land registration and business registration must be delivered within a fixed number of days, through a simple process, with transparent fees. There should not be rules office and employee wise.

To make this real, there should be a public “Revised Service Charter” in every office, and a system for citizens to complain easily if offices delay work or demands. Complaints should go to an independent mechanism that can take action quickly on responsible officials. If people see that the government seriously protects them against harassment in offices, their hope will grow.

The second urgent duty is to fight against growing corruption at all levels in political leadership, civil service, and the private sector. Corruption has become like cancer in Nepal. To control it, the new government can follow some guiding steps:

• Establish the mechanism of investigating assets of public holding 

• Give real independence, resources, and technology to anti‑corruption bodies so they can investigate big cases without political pressure 

• Protect whistle‑blowers who expose corruption in government offices, public enterprises, or private companies doing public work 

• Introduce e‑procurement and open data for all major contracts, so that the public and media can see who is getting which contract, at what price, and with what results

• Revise government office and employee numbers and provide plenty of tasks to the employee

• Enforce strict punishment for proven corruption, even if the person belongs to the ruling party

Importantly, the new government must apply the same standard to its own members. If RSP protects corrupt people inside its own ranks, the moral authority of this “change” will collapse. People voted for RSP to break the old culture, not to repeat it with new faces.

The third big responsibility is to make the state work for the whole country, not just for the center and own area. People in rural hills, Madhes plains, and remote areas have suffered from poor infrastructure of schools, poor health posts, bad roads, and lack of safe drinking water. Many of them feel that the state only remembers them during elections. The new government must show that it respects every citizen equally. Early budgets should prioritise basic services in the poorest and most neglected areas. Local governments should receive predictable funding and technical support, with clear rules and monitoring, so that funds are not misused on the way.

The government must also speak clearly about inclusion. Nepal is home to diverse communities—Dalit, indigenous, Madhesi, Muslim, Tharu, and others—who still face discrimination and barriers. For them, good governance means being able to enter an office without humiliation, getting justice from police and courts, and seeing people like themselves represented in state institutions. The new leadership should enforce laws against caste and gender discrimination, improve representation in public service, and design targeted programmes for those at the bottom.

Another major challenge is to give young people a reason to stay here. Before this election, unemployment, low wages, and frustration with the system pushed thousands of youths to go abroad every day. If nothing changes, the country will lose its energy and future. The new government must make youth employment a top priority. This can include transparent and fair public service exams, support for small and medium enterprises, skills training linked with technology and green jobs, and encouragement for innovation and start‑ups. At the same time, the government must clean up existing recruitment processes where cheating and favoritism have damaged trust.

To move toward a “Good Governance Country”, the change must be both structural and cultural. Structurally, laws, rules, and institutions have to be improved. Culturally, habits of power, ego, and misuse must be challenged. Political leaders should set an example by living simply, avoiding unnecessary luxury at public cost, and being reachable to citizens. Parliamentary committees should actually question ministers and review policies, not just act as rubber stamps. The media and civil society should be free to criticize without fear.

The first-ever decisions of this new government will be remembered. If they touch the everyday pain of citizens’ corruption, delay, disrespect, unemployment, reducing cost for representatives and government officials, poor service people will feel that a new era has truly begun. If those first decisions are only about positions, protocol, and party interests, people will quickly feel cheated again. The “tsunami of votes” that lifted RSP and Balen to power can, in future, sweep it away too.

Nepal now stands at a crossroads. The old parties have been taught a hard lesson by the people. The party has been given a historic chance. Stability will come not just from numbers in parliament, but from honesty in action. If this government can be brave, humble, and consistent, Nepal can slowly move from a culture of corruption and chaos to a culture of service and dignity. The people have done their part. Now it is the government’s turn to show this time, change is real. And we will feel we are rich in every aspect, where we were always poor. We are ready to wait for some time, understanding that deep reform cannot happen in one single day. But we are also watching carefully. The early days and the first decisions will be remembered for many years, either as the moment when Nepal finally started to respect its citizens or as one more missed opportunity.

Naturally, Nepal is beautiful, geographically Nepal is landlocked and politically Nepal is always unstable. But after the March 5 election, the term unstable will be stable—that’s our hope—with a new political party set to form the government.  Nepal has just seen a political earthquake. In the recent election, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), led by Balendra (Balen) Shah, has secured a historic majority in the federal parliament, with around 182 seats out of 275. The so‑called big parties of yesterday have been pushed far behind. Many of their senior leaders have lost. Only former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has managed to return to parliament from Rukum East, while other familiar famous faces have disappeared from the front line. This result is not a small change; it is a clear message from the people that they were tired of the old way of politics and new one to be corrected in present and future with the hope not to be repeated from this wave too.

Nepal has long struggled with hung parliaments, unstable governance, and never-ending positional negotiations. The people’s lives remained unchanged despite the government’s repeated changes in leadership. Rather than being influenced by the general welfare, policy decisions were frequently influenced by personal interests, political agreements, and corruption. Like in the past, basic government services remained cumbersome, slow, and rude. People believed that even basic tasks required bribes or political ties. Due to their inability to obtain good services, health care, or education at home, young people from villages and small towns continued to migrate to cities and other nations. A ‘tsunami of votes’ was made possible by this lingering discontent.

Why did this tsunami of votes come for RSP and Balen Shah? There are several reasons. First, young people, especially the GenZ generation, had already shown their anger through protests and social media campaigns against corruption, nepotism, and the lifestyle of the political elite. They were tired of seeing leaders’ children enjoying luxury while ordinary youth stood in queues for passports and labor permits. Second, Balen presented itself as a clean, new force with a strong anti‑corruption message and a modern style of communication. Balen Shah’s own image as an engineer, rapper, and independent thinker who had already shaken the old parties in Kathmandu’s mayoral politics gave people hope that a different kind of leadership is possible.

Third, voters punished the old parties because they failed to provide stable and honest governance after the federal republic was established. Leaders kept making coalitions only to save their chairs, not to serve the people. They talked about socialism and equality, but the gap between their words and their actions became too big. In this election, people decided to clean the field. This is not just a victory for one party; it is a warning that any party can be thrown out if it betrays public trust.

Now, with a clear majority, the biggest hope is political stability. For the first time in many years, one party has enough seats to form a government without being hostage to small coalition partners. This creates an opportunity and a big responsibility. The question is: what should this new government do first, so that people feel their vote was not wasted?

The first duty of the new government is to restore ‘trust’. Trust will not come from speeches; it will come from concrete actions that people can see and feel in daily life. The government’s first decisions should focus on cleaning the system and improving basic services. A strong first move could be to announce a national “Good Governance and Service Reform Plan” with clear, time‑bound targets. For example, the government can declare that key services such as citizenship, social security, passports, driving licenses, land registration and business registration must be delivered within a fixed number of days, through a simple process, with transparent fees. There should not be rules office and employee wise.

To make this real, there should be a public “Revised Service Charter” in every office, and a system for citizens to complain easily if offices delay work or demands. Complaints should go to an independent mechanism that can take action quickly on responsible officials. If people see that the government seriously protects them against harassment in offices, their hope will grow.

The second urgent duty is to fight against growing corruption at all levels in political leadership, civil service, and the private sector. Corruption has become like cancer in Nepal. To control it, the new government can follow some guiding steps:

• Establish the mechanism of investigating assets of public holding 
• Give real independence, resources, and technology to anti‑corruption bodies so they can investigate big cases without political pressure 
• Protect whistle‑blowers who expose corruption in government offices, public enterprises, or private companies doing public work 
• Introduce e‑procurement and open data for all major contracts, so that the public and media can see who is getting which contract, at what price, and with what results
• Revise government office and employee numbers and provide plenty of tasks to the employee
• Enforce strict punishment for proven corruption, even if the person belongs to the ruling party

Importantly, the new government must apply the same standard to its own members. If RSP protects corrupt people inside its own ranks, the moral authority of this “change” will collapse. People voted for RSP to break the old culture, not to repeat it with new faces.

The third big responsibility is to make the state work for the whole country, not just for the center and own area. People in rural hills, Madhes plains, and remote areas have suffered from poor infrastructure of schools, poor health posts, bad roads, and lack of safe drinking water. Many of them feel that the state only remembers them during elections. The new government must show that it respects every citizen equally. Early budgets should prioritise basic services in the poorest and most neglected areas. Local governments should receive predictable funding and technical support, with clear rules and monitoring, so that funds are not misused on the way.

The government must also speak clearly about inclusion. Nepal is home to diverse communities—Dalit, indigenous, Madhesi, Muslim, Tharu, and others—who still face discrimination and barriers. For them, good governance means being able to enter an office without humiliation, getting justice from police and courts, and seeing people like themselves represented in state institutions. The new leadership should enforce laws against caste and gender discrimination, improve representation in public service, and design targeted programmes for those at the bottom.

Another major challenge is to give young people a reason to stay here. Before this election, unemployment, low wages, and frustration with the system pushed thousands of youths to go abroad every day. If nothing changes, the country will lose its energy and future. The new government must make youth employment a top priority. This can include transparent and fair public service exams, support for small and medium enterprises, skills training linked with technology and green jobs, and encouragement for innovation and start‑ups. At the same time, the government must clean up existing recruitment processes where cheating and favoritism have damaged trust.

To move toward a “Good Governance Country”, the change must be both structural and cultural. Structurally, laws, rules, and institutions have to be improved. Culturally, habits of power, ego, and misuse must be challenged. Political leaders should set an example by living simply, avoiding unnecessary luxury at public cost, and being reachable to citizens. Parliamentary committees should actually question ministers and review policies, not just act as rubber stamps. The media and civil society should be free to criticize without fear.

The first-ever decisions of this new government will be remembered. If they touch the everyday pain of citizens’ corruption, delay, disrespect, unemployment, reducing cost for representatives and government officials, poor service people will feel that a new era has truly begun. If those first decisions are only about positions, protocol, and party interests, people will quickly feel cheated again. The “tsunami of votes” that lifted RSP and Balen to power can, in future, sweep it away too.

Nepal now stands at a crossroads. The old parties have been taught a hard lesson by the people. The party has been given a historic chance. Stability will come not just from numbers in parliament, but from honesty in action. If this government can be brave, humble, and consistent, Nepal can slowly move from a culture of corruption and chaos to a culture of service and dignity. The people have done their part. Now it is the government’s turn to show this time, change is real. And we will feel we are rich in every aspect, where we were always poor. We are ready to wait for some time, understanding that deep reform cannot happen in one single day. But we are also watching carefully. The early days and the first decisions will be remembered for many years, either as the moment when Nepal finally started to respect its citizens or as one more missed opportunity.

Nepal has been captivated by cautious optimism following the electoral victory of Balendra Shah and the RSP, instilling a renewed sense of possibility in governance and the broader polity. However, this moment is a critical juncture: ensuring that this new era of alternative politics doesn’t make the same mistakes as the past—as governance is ultimately guided by the policies this upcoming government chooses to pursue.

RSP’s political campaign concentrated heavily on governance—drawing on citizen experiences with administrative staff, lapses in policy implementation, or overall vacuous policymaking. In the past, policy debates have centered around observable relationships—for example, how expedited transportation networks will lead to rapid economic growth. It’s understandable how this is appealing, we’re hardwired to identifying developed cities with clean and wide roads. However, places with pre-existing growth trends consistently attract better infrastructure, and as a result—better developed road networks. This ambiguity in causality is rarely acknowledged as we’ve stopped at observational correlation to apply a temporary band-aid—disregarding underlying issues. 

This isn’t restricted to just road networks—policy debates have consistently centered around visible relationships—patterns that appear obvious but aren’t structurally understood. In most cases, cause and effect move both ways—we can’t isolate road networks from economic activity, nor the other way around. This ambiguity is further complicated by other underlying factors—affecting both transportation and economic networks. This form of misidentified causality ultimately fails to address policy targets and might even cause unintended negative externalities. This misidentification is not strictly an individual or political problem at the core—it’s simply about adjusting our approach to policymaking. We need to be able to establish clear causality in complex systems where observable relationships are not accounting for endogenous dynamics underneath. This can be done if policymaking is guided by thorough analysis: comparing regions with or without the policy, testing policies through randomized controlled trials (RCTs) before implementing broad scale reform and quantitatively tracking variance across implementation contexts. This will require recalibrating usual policymaking but will provide much higher returns on government effort and expenditure—resulting in effective outcomes and avoiding unintended harms.

This recalibrated policymaking can come into effect with our concerns over low exports—generally attributed to weak governance institutions or an unstable oversight mechanism. However, this relationship could very well run in the opposite direction—successful exporting industries or business communities could have instead led to the development of strong institutions and increased oversight to guarantee quality. Policymakers are challenged to distinguish between these explanations. Here is where government policies need to avoid blanket approaches and check for sectoral variation, difference-in-differences with policies already in place, and natural quasi-experimental variation with untreated regions. The results will allow policymakers to understand what actually drives exports, avoid allocating resources to unfocused reforms, and focus on interventions that actually improve export performance. 

This strategy needs to expand well beyond export policy—observable outcomes in society are a result of broader equilibria shaped by interacting forces, and bad policy has often reinforced these underlying equilibria. We have consistently chased after symptoms instead of addressing root causes—what we observe are outcomes, not explanations. This political moment provides us with an opportunity to change this approach—a critical juncture as to how we decide to move forward.

The RSP has made efficient governance and expert policymaking a core electoral tenet—raising both opportunity and expectations from these new political actors. Our policies have largely been concentrated around observable relationships and unclear causality—an issue that isn’t fixed just by better policy design, but rather by a better understanding of what drives outcomes. The success of this electoral shift will depend not just on new policies, but rather on how carefully the outcomes of these new policies are understood.