There is something quietly startling about reading your old writing and finding it more accurate than expected. More than a decade ago, I wrote two articles arguing that Nepal’s transformation would not come from the top down, but from within—through a shift in collective consciousness. A new generation, I believed, would do what the old one would not. At the time, those arguments felt aspirational, perhaps even naïve.
In “The Hundredth Monkey Effect,” published in MyRepublica on June 30, 2011, I drew on a 1950s Japanese experiment involving a colony of Macaca fuscata monkeys on the island of Koshima. Scientists had dropped sweet potatoes on the island, and eventually a young monkey discovered that washing them in seawater removed the sand and made them edible. The behaviour spread slowly at first, then suddenly, until it appeared on other islands altogether.
The proposition for Nepal was simple: meaningful change would not come gradually through established channels, but would accelerate once a critical mass of citizens—especially youth—began to think and act differently. When enough individuals internalise democratic values and civic responsibility, change ceases to be an aspiration; it becomes contagious.
A decade ago, Nepal appeared far from such a tipping point. Politics was dominated by entrenched elites cycling through the same offices; institutions were weak, and democratic culture often felt performative rather than genuinely lived. Political parties split and restructured around individuals rather than principles. Yet beneath this noise, something quieter was taking shape. Small acts of civic engagement—youth-led campaigns, community clean-up drives, and a growing refusal to accept bandhs as normal—hinted at a slow but determined shift in awareness.
Consider something as mundane as public urination. A decade ago, it was nearly impossible to stop people from relieving themselves by the roadside or against public walls; it was accepted as part of the urban landscape. Today, thanks to social media and a new generation of civic activists—among them recently elected Ashika Tamang—such behaviour carries real social consequences. This is not a trivial shift. It is the “hundredth monkey effect” operating quietly in everyday culture, reshaping norms before laws catch up.
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Nepal today is marked by a far more visible and vocal citizenry. Public dissatisfaction is no longer whispered in private; it is expressed on the streets, on digital platforms, and increasingly through electoral politics. However, a tipping point is not a destination. Without deliberate institutionalisation, it remains a high-water mark that the tide may eventually reclaim.
Published on August 26, 2012, “Be the Change” presented a more structured argument. Nepal’s crisis, I wrote, was not merely the result of incompetent leaders making poor decisions. It was a system designed to resist renewal. Power remained concentrated within a small, ageing circle, sustained not by merit but by networks of dependency and patronage that made generational change nearly impossible.
The youth—despite being central to every major political movement—were systematically excluded from decision-making. Unless political parties underwent fundamental reform to make power fluid and term-limited, I argued, the only viable alternative was for young people to build a new political force—one that did not inherit the flawed architecture of the old.
That diagnosis has aged with uncomfortable precision. Recent years have seen the steady rise of independent candidates, alternative political voices, and a growing public appetite for leadership untethered from traditional party structures. The notion that political power is inherited rather than earned is increasingly being challenged.
Yet the structural barriers identified a decade ago have not disappeared. More troubling today is the growing tendency to idolise figures such as the Rabi–Balen duo. We must remember that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nor should we ignore the warning of the late Prof Dor Bahadur Bista, widely regarded as the father of Nepali anthropology, about the deeply entrenched culture of chakari that continues to shape society in both visible and subtle ways.
Leadership renewal within political parties remains constrained by internal power dynamics. Factionalism persists, and the pace of institutional reform continues to lag far behind public expectations.
The call to “be the change” was once a moral appeal directed at individuals—a plea for personal responsibility in a country where civic culture felt fragile. Today, it has evolved into a collective expectation, almost a social contract. Civic responsibility is no longer an abstract ideal; it is something people increasingly expect of one another and of their leaders.
In this sense, Nepal has crossed an invisible threshold. Yet the “hundredth monkey” moment did not arrive as a dramatic rupture. It emerged gradually—through years of small acts of civic courage, digital organising, community resistance, and a deepening refusal to accept the gap between what Nepal could be and what it had been allowed to become.
Enough people now see the system clearly and want something genuinely different. The question is no longer whether change will come—it already has, in mindset and momentum.
The system has been shaken and fractured in places, but the harder and slower task of rebuilding it lies ahead. The real question is whether this moment will lead to lasting institutional transformation. Will rising public consciousness reshape structures of power, or remain a powerful yet contained undercurrent?
The new government holds an unprecedented mandate—and with it, an equally unprecedented responsibility: not to replicate the patterns that made the old system intolerable.
The author is Executive Secretary of The Dor Foundation and a central member of Rastriya Shakti Nepal.
