Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

The protests in Dhaka in July 2024 did not begin with a revolutionary slogan. They began with a policy dispute—job quotas. But within days, the streets were filled with something far more explosive. Students spoke of fairness, but what they meant was exclusion; they spoke of reform, but what they confronted was a system that no longer seemed capable of offering a future. The official response was swift. Police crackdowns, arrests, campus closures. For a brief moment, the protests appeared to push beyond their immediate demands. And then, just as quickly, they receded. While the grievances remained, the structures held, but the energy dissipated.

In Nepal, in September 2025, anger at corruption carried a heavier historical weight. It is not merely a reaction to failures in governance; rather, it was a response to a revolution that promised transformation but resulted in a stalled transition. The end of the monarchy and the transition to republican politics once appeared to herald genuine change. However, for many young people today, that moment feels unresolved—if not a betrayal. The republican institutions that emerged after the revolution have struggled to provide stability, let alone justice. One can only experience a political system that claims to embody transformation but largely replicates the same limitations.

This experience affects how young people respond to politics today. Disillusionment is not directed only at the state but at the broader horizon of change itself. This perception goes beyond the simple ineffectiveness of institutions. The youth believe that even significant moments of upheaval can be absorbed without fundamentally altering the core structures. The discourse surrounding anti-corruption reveals a deeper truth: a widespread recognition exists that the anticipated promise of transformation has been postponed, possibly indefinitely.

Bangladesh shows something similar, though in a different setting. The institutions of politics are still in place, but they no longer seem able to respond to everyday economic pressures, leading to a sense of disillusionment among the populace regarding their effectiveness in addressing these challenges. While elections take place and governments either change or consolidate, the underlying issues, such as economic exclusion, restricted political space, and the concentration of power, continue to endure. For many young people, politics appears not as a field of possibility but as a closed circuit.

These are not isolated episodes. From Dhaka to Kathmandu, and also around the world, we are witnessing a recurring form of politics: intense, immediate, morally sharp—and structurally fragile. This is the terrain on which Generation Z has entered political life. Gen Z is often described as the “conscience of a fractured world”—morally clear, digitally fluent, and instinctively internationalist. There is some truth to these claims. These movements are quick to recognise injustice but unwilling to normalise it. They cut through the evasions of institutional politics with unusual directness, but they often fail to establish a sustainable framework for their demands and goals, which is crucial for translating their immediate impact into lasting change.

When the Future Collapses

In Bangladesh, the quota protests extended beyond the issue of quotas, representing a broader experience of economic stagnation intertwined with political authoritarianism. For many young people, education no longer guarantees Guarantees Acts that provide a creditor with security in complement to the debtor’s commitment. A distinction is made between real guarantees (lien, pledge, mortgage, prior charge) and personal guarantees (surety, aval, letter of intent, independent guarantee). mobility, employment is precarious, and access to opportunity is tightly controlled. The protest named these issues indirectly. It did not always articulate a systemic critique, but it was driven by one.
In Nepal, anger at corruption played a similar role. It is not simply about inadequate governance but one reflecting a deeper loss of faith in institutions that seem unable to provide even basic stability or accountability. The words may change, but the situation is familiar: a generation facing a system that no longer keeps even its simplest promises.

This is not a regional anomaly. It reflects a wider transformation of capitalism. Gen Z is the first generation to
come of age under conditions where crises are no longer cyclical but permanent—economic instability, ecological breakdowns and precarious work form the baseline of social life. For large sections of this generation, especially in the Global South, stability is not deferred; it is increasingly implausible, as many face ongoing challenges such as unemployment, climate change impacts, and inadequate access to education and healthcare. When the future collapses, politics returns. But it does not return in familiar forms.

Political Limits

One of the defining features of Gen Z movements is their reliance on ethical language. Protesters speak in terms of justice, fairness, dignity, and accountability. This is not simply a stylistic choice. It reflects both urgency and the absence of trusted institutions, which indicates a deep-seated frustration with the current political landscape and a demand for systemic change. Moral clarity emerges as the most readily available political resource when political parties lose credibility and organisations weaken. Such clarity is a source of strength. It allows movements to mobilise quickly and exposes the contradictions of systems that present inequality and exclusion as inevitable. Gen Z movements often have the ability to tap into the moral core of society. However, they often overlook the socio-economic nerve centres.

Moral clarity can delegitimise power, however, it alone does not reorganise power structures. This is where the limits of these movements become visible. Both Bangladesh and Nepal mobilised large numbers rapidly, but sustaining that mobilisation becomes challenging once repression intensifies or attention shifts. There are few organisational structures capable of carrying the struggle forward. This is not simply a problem of leadership or ideological confusion. It reflects a deeper structural condition.

Fragmented Lives, Fragmented Politics

The young people protesting in Dhaka or Kathmandu are not entering stable workplaces where long-term solidarities can develop. They move between education, informal work, unemployment, and, often, migration. Under such conditions, politics tends to appear as a series of eruptions rather than a continuous process. Social media amplifies this dynamic by allowing protests to spread quickly and connect across borders however, it also divides attention and disrupts continuity. As a result, movements emerge with speed, but without the organisational depth they need to endure.

The question of class lies at the core of this fragmentation. Gen Z is deeply shaped by material insecurity—unemployment, precarious work, and housing instability. Yet, class rarely appears as a central organising language. In Bangladesh, economic grievances are framed as fairness. In Nepal, structural inequality is often expressed through anti-corruption discourse, which highlights the perceived injustices in resource distribution and governance that disproportionately affect marginalised communities.

This is not a rejection of class politics so much as a reflection of how class itself has changed. The traditional image of the working class—as stable, concentrated, and organised—has little correspondence with the fragmented working conditions that define Gen Z’s experience. Without shared sites of organisation, it becomes harder to translate shared conditions into collective political identity.

Managed Dissent

These movements do not unfold freely. They are actively contained. In Bangladesh, repression has been direct—policing, arrests, intimidation. In Nepal, it is more often paired with selective concessions that ease immediate pressure without changing much, such as temporary policy adjustments or limited political dialogue that do not address the root causes of dissent. Alongside this runs a quieter process of co-optation where elements of youth dissent are absorbed into institutional channels—NGOs, policy frameworks, and electoral manœuvres—where their disruptive potential is neutralised. The result is a familiar cycle: mobilisation, containment, dissipation.

This is not accidental. It reflects a system that has adapted to crisis. Rather than resolving the conditions that produce unrest, it manages them—allowing protest to surface, then preventing it from consolidating, which indicates a strategy of control rather than genuine reform.

Revolt Without Power

What, then, do these movements reveal? They reveal that the existing order is losing its capacity to secure consent. They show that inequality and precarity can no longer be absorbed quietly into private life. They mark the return of politics in a landscape designed to suppress it, highlighting the growing public demand for accountability and change in response to systemic issues. But they also reveal a harder truth. That revolt, on its own, is not enough. Gen Z movements can ignite political moments. They have the power to revive previously settled questions. But without forms of organisation capable of sustaining struggle, they remain vulnerable to repression, to co-optation, and to exhaustion.

This is not a generational failure. It is a structural impasse. The question is not whether Gen Z is radical enough. It depends on whether new political forms can emerge that are capable of linking fragmented lives into collective power—forms that can endure beyond moments of eruption and confront power where it is actually organised. Until then, the pattern is likely to continue: movements that appear suddenly, burn intensely, and fade without resolution. That they appear at all is significant. That they cannot yet hold is the problem.