No government in Nepal’s history or elsewhere has ever announced its arrival by declaring it intends to take something away. Every shift of power from the Panchayat era to the republican transitions of the past two decades has presented itself in the language of rescue: stability, development, national pride, and good governance. The pattern is consistent enough to be a rule. Which is why a budget, more than any speech or manifesto, is worth reading carefully. It cannot entirely hide what it is doing.

Nepal’s FY 2083/84 budget deserves this kind of reading, not because it is good or the worst budget in living memory, but because of what it quietly assembles beneath its reasonable surface. Taken as a list of line items, it looks like responsible governance. Taken as a political document, which every budget ultimately is, it raises questions that its authors would prefer not to be asked.

The Middle Class as Political Project

The most striking feature of the 2083/84 budget is not any single provision but the cumulative portrait they paint together. Personal income tax thresholds have been doubled. Upper-bracket tax rates have been softened. Civil servants, teachers, the army, and the police have received notable salary increases. Regulatory and tax concessions have been extended to the business community. Each of these decisions is, in isolation, defensible. Together, they describe a state that has identified its constituency and is rewarding it.

That constituency is the Nepali middle class. And historically, not just in Nepal but across the modern political world, this is precisely the class that ambitious governments court first. It is salaried, educated, organized enough to vote reliably, and anxious enough about its position to be grateful for protection. In the 1920s and 1930s, European political theorists observed with concern that the middle class was the most easily mobilized social force, not by promises of radical change, but by promises of stability and recognition. The class that has something to lose is the class most responsive to a state that promises to protect what it has.

A prosperous middle class is, in the abstract, a democratic good. But when it becomes the exclusive horizon of state concern, when the political economy reorganizes itself around its comfort, the outcome is not a stronger democracy. It is a narrower one. The feminist economists Diane Elson and Isabella Bakker spent decades making a deceptively simple argument: budgets are not neutral instruments. They always make choices about whose economic reproduction the state considers worth supporting. The question this budget invites is who, exactly, is being left to manage on their own.

Consider the arithmetic. When salary increases push up purchasing power in Kathmandu, rents rise, food prices creep upward, and the cost of services follows. The salaried worker absorbs this because their income went up. The woman selling produce in Asan market, the construction worker earning six hundred rupees a day with no contract and no union, the domestic worker in Lalitpur whose labour never appears in any economic accounting—their incomes did not go up. The distributional effects of fiscal decisions ripple in directions that budget speeches rarely follow.

The Land No One Speaks Of

Of all the silences in this budget, none is louder than its silence on land. There are provisions for farmers’ subsidies, irrigation allocations, and rural road budgets. What there is almost nothing for is the landless: the hundreds of thousands of families, disproportionately Dalit, indigenous, and women-headed, who farm land they do not own, live in settlements the state classifies as informal, and have in recent years faced forced evictions as urban expansion and infrastructure projects claimed territory they had occupied for decades.

The scholar Bina Agarwal spent years documenting what happens when women lack secure land rights across South Asia, and her conclusions remain uncomfortable reading for any government that considers itself progressive. Land is not simply about farming. It is collateral for credit, security in old age, and the single most important determinant of a woman’s ability to negotiate-  in her household, in her community, and in her dealings with the state. Remove land security, and every other policy intervention becomes structurally weaker. Agricultural subsidies do not reach those who cannot prove they own what they are farming. A microcredit program cannot build durable assets without land as collateral. Social protection schemes require an address.

The budget’s silence on this is not a neutral omission. It coincides with a period in which evictions of exactly these communities have continued without a serious policy response. A state that allocates nothing to land security while simultaneously approving projects that displace the landless is not simply failing to address a problem. It is choosing a side.

Nationalism as Economic Theology

Read the budget speech carefully, and a particular vocabulary emerges: motherland, renaissance, self-reliance, sovereignty, strategic vision. These words appear so often that they begin to feel atmospheric rather than argumentative. That is precisely their function.

When economic policy is wrapped in the language of national destiny, it acquires a kind of immunity from ordinary scrutiny. A road becomes a symbol of national pride rather than a fiscal allocation with an opportunity cost. A project framed as part of Nepal’s great renaissance cannot simply be evaluated on its returns; to question it risks appearing to question the renaissance itself. This is not a Nepali invention. It is one of the oldest techniques in the political economy of nationalism, from Mussolini’s infrastructure projects to the “national development” rhetoric that has accompanied authoritarian consolidation across Asia in the past thirty years. The content differs. The technique is consistent.

The feminist theorist V. Spike Peterson has written extensively on what nationalist economic projects typically do to women: they cast women as the reproducers of the national future, mothers, culture-bearers, symbols of virtue, while deferring their economic claims indefinitely. National development always comes first; equality can wait until the country is stronger. Nepal’s budget does not explicitly invoke this logic. But its treatment of unpaid care work, which Nepal’s own Time Use Survey shows falls overwhelmingly on women and constitutes a substantial portion of all economic activity in the country, is instructive. It does not appear in the budget’s analysis, it does not inform its allocations, and it receives no structural recognition. The work that keeps every other sector functioning is, in official economic terms, invisible.

The Architecture of Efficiency

Running alongside the budget is a program of administrative reorganization: ministries consolidated, departments merged, decision-making streamlined. The government presents this as modernization, and there is genuine merit in reducing bureaucratic redundancy. Nepal’s administrative structures accumulated layers over decades of political transition, and not all of those layers serve useful purposes.

But there is a version of efficiency that functions primarily as concentration. When oversight bodies are merged, the number of institutions a citizen can approach to contest a decision quietly shrinks. When decision-making is centralized, the distance between policy and accountability grows. Democratic theory has long recognized that the apparent inefficiency of institutional pluralism, the overlapping jurisdictions, the redundant checks, and the slow deliberative processes, is not a design flaw. It is the architecture of accountability. It is how systems prevent capture.

The Gradual Arithmetic of Erosion

There is a temptation, when observing these patterns, to reach for the most alarming available framework. It is a temptation worth resisting. The 2083/84 budget is not a fascist document. To call it one would be not only inaccurate but counterproductive, a claim so large it forecloses the more precise conversation that the budget actually demands.

What is worth naming is something more incremental and therefore more difficult to see. The conditions that produce authoritarian capture rarely arrive as sudden ruptures. They accumulate through a series of individually reasonable steps: a tax cut explained by economic theory, a salary increase justified by years of compression, an administrative merger sold on efficiency grounds, a nationalist flourish that seems merely rhetorical in isolation. Hannah Arendt, tracing the origins of twentieth-century totalitarianism, was most disturbed not by the dramatic moments but by the ordinary ones: the normal-seeming decisions that, in retrospect, had been quietly preparing the ground for what followed.

Nepal is not at the end of any such process. But the structural question the 2083/84 budget invites is this: is the Nepali state, through its fiscal choices, becoming more responsive to its most vulnerable citizens, or more responsive to those already positioned to benefit from its resources? A salary increase for a civil servant is not a neutral event in a country where rural women perform the majority of economic labour without pay, without security, and without recognition in any official accounting.

Dozens of governments across the world have adopted gender-responsive budgeting as a formal methodology, including Nepal, in their own planning documents. The approach asks not merely how much is spent but where it goes: across gender, caste, geography, and class; which communities benefit from which line items; and whose unpaid labour subsidizes the sectors that appear most productive on paper. Measured against Nepal’s own stated commitments to this framework, the 2083/84 budget is notably quiet about the questions the framework would require it to answer.

A Global Trend Nepal Should Read Carefully

The combination this budget assembles, middle-class reward, nationalist vocabulary, administrative centralization, and the structural invisibility of its most marginalized citizens, is not unique to Nepal. It is a recognizable pattern in the contemporary global politics of populism.

From India to Hungary, from Turkey to the Philippines, governments across the political spectrum have discovered the electoral effectiveness of the same basic formula: make the aspirational class feel seen and protected, use nationalist sentiment to define the legitimate citizen and the national interest, and manage the remainder through a combination of rhetoric and selective enforcement. The pattern does not require malice. It often requires only the ordinary logic of political incentives: reward those who can reward you; the invisible cannot organize in return.

What history suggests, consistently, is that this formula is stable only until the people it excludes can no longer sustain the exclusion quietly. When the landless family that found nothing in the budget loses its home to a development project and protests outside the municipal office, it will not be met with a budget allocation. It will be met with a different kind of state response entirely. This is not a prediction about Nepal’s future. It is a description of what has happened, in variations, everywhere this pattern has run its course.

The Real Question

Nepal’s 2083/84 budget will almost certainly be remembered as a competent one. Growth projections will be cited. Salary increases will be appreciated. The professional class will feel, not unreasonably, that the government has paid attention to them.

The question worth asking—the question this piece has been circling, is what democracy looks like when it learns to satisfy those with the loudest voice while the rest wait. Not because waiting is always wrong. But because in Nepal, as in most places, the waiting has been very long already, and the people doing it are almost always the same people.

The domestic worker whose labour subsidises the professional household that just received a tax cut. The Dalit family in Siraha farming land they cannot legally own. The indigenous community in the hills watching a road arrive where their forest used to be, inaugurated with a ribbon-cutting and a speech about the nation’s bright future.

Freedom does not usually end with an announcement. It ends, where it ends, through a series of budgets. Through the slow arithmetic of who is seen and who is not. Through the quiet accumulation of decisions that each seemed reasonable at the time.

Nepal is not there. The question is whether we are watching carefully enough to notice the direction of travel.

Anupma Pokharel

Ecological Justice & Women’s Leadership _ Theme Coordinator

The women and communities we work with are not passive victims of climate change but active agents of resilience and transformation. They hold knowledge, skills, and visions essential for creating sustainable futures. Climate justice requires amplifying these voices, redistributing power and resources, and building movements capable of creating the systemic changes our world desperately needs.

As we face an uncertain future in a changing climate characterized by shifting seasons, glacial outbursts, droughts, and climate-induced migration, we must choose between paths that perpetuate injustice and those that lead toward more equitable and sustainable ways of living. WOREC stands committed to the latter path, working alongside movements worldwide to build climate justice from the ground up. The time for incremental change has passed; the transformation our planet needs demands collective action with urgency and vision.

“Pairavi”; the quarterly advocacy newsletter includes, the advocacy practices carried out by WOREC and demonstrates a clear shift in the women’s rights movement from program-based interventions toward structural justice, political accountability, and a community-based feminist movement ecosystem.

Activities implemented in working districts of WOREC have integrated issues such as GBV, human rights violations, harmful social practices, mental health, SRHR, digital violence, and political participation into a unified movement agenda.

Quarter (January-March) analysis demonstrates that gender-based violence (GBV) is not merely a social issue but a deeply political phenomenon rooted in entrenched patriarchal power structures. At the same time, it highlights the increasing emergence of women and marginalized communities as political actors and rights-holders, alongside the evolution of programmatic interventions into a broader feminist movement ecosystem. Despite persistent structural challenges including entrenched patriarchy, a weak justice system, rising digital violence, child marriage, and unstable resource allocation collective efforts across districts have contributed to a strengthening trajectory of transformative change. Together, these actions signal a shift from isolated service delivery toward a sustained struggle for structural transformation, accountability, and gender justice.

Organized by WOREC Nepal:

 Facilitated by Sunita Mainali; Executive Director of WOREC

   13 April 2026 (30 Chaitra 2082BS)

Executive Summary

This report documents the proceedings of a virtual panel discussion organized by the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC) Nepal, focused on the intersection of digital platforms, democracy, and gender-based violence. The discussion brought together a researcher and feminist activist, a journalist, an artist-activist, and a legal practitioner, each offering a distinct vantage point on an increasingly urgent concern: the systematic use of online spaces to silence, shame, and surveil women and marginalized communities in Nepal.

The discussion surfaced a pattern that extends well beyond individual incidents of online harassment. Panelists documented how the same power structures that constrain women’s participation in public life politically, socially, and culturally are now finding potent expression in digital spaces. The mechanisms differ; the intent does not. Whether through coordinated trolling of women politicians, the circulation of manipulated videos, or the routine dismissal of women’s intellectual contributions as fodder for body-based commentary, these acts share a common logic: to establish the terms on which women may, or may not, speak.

The panelists called for digital violence to be treated as a state emergency, and for a feminist movement that is as active and organized in digital spaces as it is in physical ones.

Background

Nepal’s socio-political history has been shaped by continuous movements and transitions, with youth playing a frontline role in major democratic milestones including the 1951 democratic movement, the 1990 People’s Movement, the 2006 People’s Movement, and the 2015 Constitution. Youth contributed significantly to political change through activism, awareness-raising, and promotion of democratic values. Young women participation—nearly 40% during the decade-long armed conflict—followed by the peoples movement including Madhesh movement led to constitutional guarantees of 33% women’s representation under the 2015 Constitution, which envisions a federal democratic republic governing system with inclusive and proportional governance.

Despite these commitments, meaningful youth participation in decision-making remains limited. While youth are active within political parties, their representation in leadership positions is low.

When feminist activists took to the streets demanding state and political party accountability, an end to impunity, and stronger democracy, Gen-Z youth across the country also mobilized in September 2025, calling for good governance, transparency, and freedom of expression. These movements contributed to an important political shift. As preparations begin for the House of Representatives election scheduled for 5 March 2026, youth across provinces express strong hopes for transformative change, a strengthened democracy, and inclusive leadership.

WOREC is a feminist organization working for democracy and social justice. Grounded in past and ongoing struggles, WOREC believes that without a strong and inclusive democracy, the rights of women and other marginalized communities cannot be protected. At a time when democratic values are being challenged in many ways, WOREC along with other likeminded organizations organized Provincial Youth Forums in four provinces to strengthen democratic practices and uplift diverse youth voices. These forums created inclusive spaces for more than 500 young people—especially women and marginalized groups—to reflect, speak out, and engage in discussions on leadership, democratic values, policymaking, and political participation. Through panel discussions, group work, and keynote reflections, the forums demonstrated collective learning and ended with Declaration Papers that were publicly shared through press conferences, reaffirming youth commitment to and demand for democracy and social justice.

Key Provincial Insights

Koshi (Biratnagar)

On 9 November 2025, a provincial-level youth gathering was held in Biratnagar, jointly organized by Tarangini Foundation and WOREC, with the participation of around 56 young people. Discussions during the gathering concluded that democracy can only be strengthened when the foundations of a democratic republic—such as the rule of law, good governance, transparency, inclusiveness, political freedom, and free and fair elections—are firmly upheld.

Youths from Koshi joint appeal , ““We, the youth, are responsible for strengthening democracy. The state must create an environment where questions can be raised, and it must be accountable. We are committed to building an educated and responsible society by fostering political awareness.”

Sudurpaschim (Dhangadhi):

The event was organized on 26 January 2026 with the participation of more than 100 youths of diversity. Youth are hopeful about the upcoming election. While their issues vary, they share a common demand for good governance. Youth expressed interest in political engagement but rejected lifelong career politics, calling for open and accessible political spaces.

“We want to practice politics as a service, not a profession. Politics should be an open space for youth where they can to enter and exit politics easily.” – Padam Saud, Dadeldhura

Lumbini (Butwal):

The event was organized jointly by WOREC and WOFOWON on 2^nd February 2026 with the participation of more than 120 youths of diversity. Youth participants openly discussed political candidates and emphasized the responsible exercise of voting rights. Strong demands were raised to ensure meaningful representation of Dalits, Terai Dalits, and sexual and gender minorities. Participants also highlighted the importance of disability-friendly political structures to ensure inclusive and meaningful access. The diversity of the population calls for diverse leadership. Youth stressed that voters should make rational choices based on candidates’ agendas and commitments, rather than their public image or face value. The event was jointly organized by WOREC and WOFOWON.

Women are not even able to vote as per their choices, their vote is decided by the family head, always a man. –Sunita Harijan, Rupandehi

“We want candidates rooted in communities, who knows the issues with way forward not just visible on Google.” – Muna BK, Dang

“Political parties must recognize the capacity of youth with disabilities and create space for leadership.” – Laxmi Pandey, Gulmi

Madhesh (Janakpur):

In collaboration with 13 youth/women led organizations and networks, more than hundred youths from all the districts of Madhesh Province came together through the Provincial Youth Forum in Dhanusa. Participants challenged the male-centric definition of “youth” and highlighted the exclusion of women and sexual and gender minorities. The intersecting marginalization of Dalit, Indigenous, Muslim, and trans women was emphasized. Their demands include meaningful participation beyond tokenism, the unconditional right to vote, preservation of constitutional values, youth-friendly and gender-responsive policies, and freedom from all forms of structural discrimination and harmful practices. Participants also raised concerns that Madhesh issues remain underrepresented in policy and demanded youth engagement in modern agriculture.

“Youth want meaningful inclusion—from gender-responsive budgeting to implementation.” – Lalit Mahato, Mahottari

“in my community women need to marry for her citizenship yet, we want that political structure which made women’s right to citizenship easy and accessible to all women from Madhesh province also.” – Atiya Khatun, Janakpur

Key Issues Raised

• Limited youth representation in political leadership.
• Lack of governance and transparency in the political parties along with oligarchy
• Lack of opening political spaces for youth participation without lifelong political entrapment
• Lack of inclusive leadership reflecting the sense of the constitution – diversity from the ground with the state and political party’s structures (Dalits, Terai Dalits, women, sexual & gender minorities, persons with disabilities, Muslim communities, economically challenged community)
• Lack of accountable governance and corruption
• Gender Based Violence, Statelessness, denial of voting rights, knowledge capture and other forms of inequality based on caste, gender, race, identity, religion and disability
• Rising anti-democratic and anti-rights movement, misinformation and disinformation
• Shrinking democratic spaces, impunity and lack of state accountability

Major common demands from the youths:

1. Accessible and quality education, expanded technical and vocational training, and decent employment opportunities, including public investment in modern and climate-resilient agriculture, with targeted programs for women, Dalits, Indigenous peoples, and sexual and gender minorities.
2. Democratic reform within political parties to ensure transparency, accountability, leadership renewal, and participatory decision-making, and to end elite capture and dynastic control of politics.
3. Institutionalization of inclusive leadershipacross state institutions and political parties, guaranteeing proportional representation of Dalits (including Terai Dalits), women, sexual and gender minorities, persons with disabilities, Muslim communities, and economically marginalized groups from local to national levels.
4. Meaningful participation of women and youthin all climate-induced disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and response mechanisms at community, provincial, and national levels.
5. Political parties to adopt inclusive and democratic structures, ensure meaningful leadership roles for youth and women, institutionalize leadership succession, and provide inclusive political education and training.
6. Accountability and zero tolerance for corruption, including transparent governance systems that ensure public resources are used to advance people’s rights, dignity, and equitable development.
7. Protection of democratic spaces and state accountabilityby safeguarding freedoms of expression, assembly, and association, ending impunity, and upholding democratic values, human rights, and the rule of law.

Conclusion

Democracy must be lived, not just claimed. It requires dismantling all forms of structural discrimination and ensuring inclusive, meaningful participation—especially for youth, women, and marginalized groups. Gender-based violence, impunity, and tokenism weaken democratic values, making democracy hollow. Youth demand real participation, rights, and accountable political practice, not empty rhetoric. Through feminist and youth-led organizing and active, informed participation in elections, youths commit to strengthening democracy while remaining alert to the dangers of miscommunication and popularity.

Sustainability of the movement

This forum is starting point of a campaign. It will be driven through the ANKUR youth network, an initiative led by WOREC. ANKUR will enable youth to bypass traditional political gatekeepers and create an independent, inclusive space for political engagement.

As a continuous campaign platform, ANKUR will provide youth with a sustained space for dialogue, advocacy, and collective action beyond the conference. The network will be responsible for creating the discourse on youth and maintaining a unified provincial youth front to advance shared political demands and accountability.

The message from the youths is clear:  We no longer content to be labeled as “future leaders.” We are current political actors whose intellect, agency and participation are the indispensable requirements for just, stable and democratic future.

प्रतिनिधि सभा निर्वाचन नजिकिँदै गर्दा मुलुकको राजनीतिक तथा सामाजिक अवस्था संवेदनशील बन्दै गएको सन्दर्भमा ओरेकको आयोजनामा सातै प्रदेशका ६५ भन्दा बढी मानव अधिकार रक्षकहरूको सहभागितामा भर्चुअल वेवीनार सम्पन्न भयो। कार्यक्रममा निर्वाचन अवधिमा महिला, दलित, आदिवासी जनजाति, अपाङ्गता भएका व्यक्ति, लैङ्गिक तथा यौनिक अल्पसंख्यक समुदायका उम्मेदवार तथा मतदातामाथि हुन सक्ने धम्की, हेट स्पिच, गलत सूचना, दबाब तथा हिंसाको जोखिमबारे गहन छलफल गरिएको थियो। साथै, सुरक्षित र प्रमाणमा आधारित अभिलेखीकरण, जोखिमयुक्त क्षेत्रका लागि विशेष सुरक्षा योजना, पहुँचयोग्य र अनुकूल मतदान केन्द्र, डिजिटल हेट स्पिच अनुगमन प्रणाली तथा मानव अधिकार रक्षकहरूको सुरक्षा र कानुनी संरक्षण सुनिश्चित गर्नुपर्ने विषयमा मुख्य सिफारिसहरू प्रस्तुत गरिएका छन्। लोकतान्त्रिक मूल्य, समान सहभागिता र भय रहित मतदान वातावरण सुनिश्चित गर्न सबै सरोकारवालाबीच समन्वय र सहकार्य आवश्यक रहेकोमा जोड दिइएको छ।.