Nepal voted for change. Can its rapper-engineer PM deliver?

Nepal’s prime minister-in-waiting came to power on a promise of change. Now he faces the monumental challenge of taking on a system weighed down by corruption and poor governance while meeting the towering expectations of the millions who backed him and his anti-establishment party. Balendra Shah – a rapper, engineer and former mayor of Kathmandu popularly known as Balen – handily defeated former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli in the election on March 5, with his Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) securing a parliamentary majority. It marked a clear break from the Himalayan nation’s revolving door of old-guard leaders. But the incoming administration has no time to rest on its laurels. Its to-do list, which spans reviving a struggling economy to shoring up institutions weakened by years of political instability, is daunting. “Our economy is almost in a slumber,” said Bhojraj Poudel, an economist and founder of the Institute for Future, a Kathmandu-based policy research think tank. “The incoming government has a big list of things to do, from encouraging the private sector to bringing in foreign direct investment. It has the challenge of rebranding Nepal as an economically viable destination.” The World Bank projects economic growth will slow to 2.1 per cent this year, down from 4.6 per cent in 2025, owing to a confluence of instability, structural weakness and dampened investment sentiment following last year’s deadly unrest. More than one in five young people still in the country are unemployed. Many more – around 2,300 per day, according to some estimates – have fled abroad in search of better opportunities. Shah’s RSP wooed voters with its ambitious economic reform agenda and assurances it would serve a full five-year term, something no elected government has yet achieved in Nepal. The party has pledged to create 1.2 million jobs and double per capita income to US$3,000 during its time in office. For a country so heavily reliant on remittances and agriculture – each contributing roughly a quarter of gross domestic product – delivering on a promised 7 per cent annual growth rate demands “a solid foundation”, according to Poudel. The economic fallout from the ongoing war on Iran, including energy price shocks and remittance flow disruptions, will present an early test for the new government. “Achieving that is not impossible,” Poudel said of the growth rate target. But he added that much would depend “on the kind of policies the government brings, the people who will drive those policies forward and the guiding principles it will adopt”. Rooting out graft Corruption is also deeply ingrained. Nepal ranked 109th out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index and it was a backlash against this graft, more than anything, that motivated last year’s youth uprising which toppled Oli’s government. Both the RSP and Shah have pledged to probe government officials’ assets and build a more merit-based bureaucracy. Overhauling the system will not be easy, however. Reforms aimed at purging corruption from finance and procurement, where it has long languished under the protection of political interests, will face staff resistance from those who have long profited from it, according to Sudip Pokharel, a Kathmandu-based independent governance researcher and political economist. He urged Shah’s party to resist the urge to prioritise quick wins at the expense of structural change “like the Maoists [did] in 2008”. A party formed by former Maoist rebels likewise “secured a landslide victory” in that year’s election, Pokharel recalled, but then attempted radical reforms without first creating the conditions for delivery. “But even delivery is difficult, as our governance structure demands a collaborative approach, which Balen’s and RSP’s brand of politics doesn’t seem to offer,” he said. Analysts say managing political expectations and making federalism truly work will pose further tests for Shah’s government, despite his pledge to strengthen provincial and local governments. The federal democratic form of government Nepal adopted under its 2015 constitution has been praised for promoting inclusion and empowering local governance, but slow administrative reforms and persistent corruption have caused mounting frustrations. “Our existing political culture doesn’t want to give up power, resources and patronage,” Pokharel said. “If we are ushering in a new politics now, the culture might not change right away, but this could be a start.” The RSP’s electoral victory was largely driven by young voters, many of whom had taken to the streets in last September’s anti-corruption protests. At least 77 people were killed in police shootings on September 8 and in the violence that followed the next day. Although a commission tasked with investigating the protests has submitted its findings, the interim government has yet to make them public. Activists have condemned the delay, saying it echoes the long-standing practice of governments suppressing reports on earlier political movements. Ishika Panta, founder of Project Abhaya, a youth-led civic organisation, said one of the government’s first priorities should be “to make the commission’s report public and hold people accountable for violence and killings”. Panta also called on the government to take decisive action on gender-based violence by creating safe spaces for women and enforcing zero tolerance – a demand given fresh urgency by a string of rape cases over the past week. She urged the new cabinet to meaningfully include women in senior roles rather than confining them to token appointments under the proportional representation system that guarantees parliamentary seats. Among RSP’s candidates standing for election, rather than nomination, only 9 per cent were women. Other parties had even fewer. “Policies can open doors for women, but the deeper grass-roots work is needed in dismantling patriarchy,” Panta said. “I hope the new government can set an example.” Nepalis have a lot of reason to be cynical from our past experiences Sudip Pokharel, governance researcher For Pokharel, one of the incoming government’s biggest challenges will be restoring public trust in institutions, as diverse and competing demands test the breadth of the RSP’s mandate. “Nepalis have a lot of reason to be cynical from our past experiences,” he said. “One party and one person can capture the public imagination and create a narrative, but it takes time to rebuild that trust – it doesn’t happen just with service deliveries and reforms but comes from investing in communities.” Still, “we have reasons to be hopeful this time”, he concluded.

Nepal voted for change. Can its rapper-engineer PM deliver?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Balendra Shah has promised to transform Nepal, but success hinges on him becoming the first elected leader to finish a full five-year term

Balendra Shah has promised to transform Nepal, but success hinges on him becoming the first elected leader to finish a full five-year term