KATHMANDU: It was the excess on show on the social media accounts of politicians’ children that provided the kindling for Nepal’s Gen Z uprising last year.
The lavish presents - all clearly marked with designer labels - piled up and decorated like a Christmas tree, the expensive trips to five-star resorts around the world, the extravagant wedding parties that closed roads to traffic.
For many, the disparity between the haves and have-nots right there, on your phone, was too much to be ignored, in a country where youth unemployment stands at 20.6 per cent and with three million working overseas.
“The kids of big politicians celebrate special occasions in places like Thailand and Switzerland,” Satish Kumar Yadav, a 25-year-old lab technician, tells the BBC. “But, the children of the general public are forced to go to Gulf countries to find jobs.”
A proposed ban on the very social media where young Nepalis were voicing their anger at the so-called “nepo kids” was the spark that would send thousands into the street on 8 September. Within two days, 77 people - many of them protesters shot by police - would be dead, and the prime minister would have stepped down.
As the country heads to the polls next week, it appears politicians have taken note of their anger, and have promised a raft of changes to appease it.
Meanwhile, many of the social media accounts which so carefully curated privileged lives have gone quiet.
Shrinkhala Khatiwada, a former Miss Nepal and daughter of a former health minister - who was reported to have more than a million followers at one point - appears to have shut her Instagram account down entirely. Her last post on YouTube is a 34-minute video explaining why she did not deserve the “nepo kids” label, uploaded months ago.
