The <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DQtSOT6ilFC/?img_index=1">post on Instagram </a>has an image of Sudan Gurung. Over the top is the message: ‘We wont let this year’s election happen if Gen Z’s demands are Ignored’. The account’s bio is ‘Uniting Nepalese Through Independent Investigative Research.’ Post like these have become a template for the information ecosystem in the aftermath of the GenZ revolt in September. Social media feeds are saturated with content that uses multimodality of captions, video, audio, to convey alarm and warnings about how GenZ aspirations are being subverted. Research by MIT showed that on X false news reaches 1,500 people six times faster than the truth. Fake news goes ‘farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth’, researchers concluded. Narratives compete on platforms, and users gravitate to the shock-value of the news and not to factual precision or nuance.&nbsp; “On social media misinformation easily mutates into disinformation,” says media literacy trainer Deepak Adhikari. “The news we see on social media are often out of context, with little information that misinforms more than inform.”  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251203121236_6daaeaf8ed255fda4a431d0419d9ae1a0908259af14529835034ce48653064a9.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251203121236_6daaeaf8ed255fda4a431d0419d9ae1a0908259af14529835034ce48653064a9" data-rendition-name="original" width="1501" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Doomscrolling democracy NT"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251203121232_8a7a41b8bd1892137d1dd97fd1c1408d2879ff96fa69a4d6d5acff7239869d4b.png" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251203121232_8a7a41b8bd1892137d1dd97fd1c1408d2879ff96fa69a4d6d5acff7239869d4b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1601" height="340" loading="lazy" alt="GenZ instagram"> </figure>  Indeed, today’s ‘Post-Truth Society’ is characterised by a media environment where users give more credibility to their pre-existing beliefs and emotion rather than objective facts or subjective nuance. Post-Truth does not refer to what comes after the truth, but rather a cultural or information environment where pre-held personal beliefs shape public opinion, not facts.&nbsp; Rumour, bias and propaganda have always been a part of the informationsphere, but what makes it different today is the velocity at which falsehood spreads. The news cycle is short, and before content can be verified the damage is already done.&nbsp; Adhikari says that pre- and post-publication fact checking can be a potential antidote. However, when a video with misleading content goes viral, and even after fact-checkers catch up to correct it, the fear-mongering, anger or hate has already spread.&nbsp; In Nepal’s social media, apparently everyone is tarred as guilty, or funded by a foreign government. Calls to dismantle federalism, restore the monarchy, or teach political leaders a lesson by supporting authoritarian alternatives are no longer fringe ideas discussed in private. They circulate routinely in the algorithmic streams legitimised not by evidence but sentiment. When misinformation becomes the default, nostalgia for a mythical prosperous past begins to look like a rational response. While these positions are not new, their algorithmic amplification gives them perceived legitimacy that makes it hard to estimate, or far exceed, their actual political support. “We have not highlighted the achievements of our multiparty democratic system, and the new generation has not experienced authoritarianism,” Adhikari explains. “Therefore statements like federalism is expensive and the monarchy was better have taken up space, because the evidence of the counter narrative is underreported.” There is a positive side to social media. The GenZ movement took on momentum, and the protestors organised and supported each other through the very platforms that are now full of content that can potentially derail the democracy they wanted to strengthen. Just like it was trendy to be revolutionary during the protests, it is now trendy to be skeptical and to distrust the very people who were installed in the interim government through online voting. Such is the architecture of social media: it rewards immediate reaction over reflection, and due to its interface design, it not only shows what could be relevant ‘for you’ but also tells you what others are thinking about that. The role of the mainstream press as the traditional gatekeeper of information has been superseded by the digital sphere — both in access and sharing. This poses new challenges because social media content may not be news, and just because a page claims to be a news site that does not mean it is journalism. Social media feeds are not chronological newspapers but an algorithmic marketplace. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube all rely on recommender systems, now powered by AI to keep users on their platforms for as long as possible. The feeds then collapse the distinction between credible news, speculation, parody, and deliberate disinformation, especially in a politically volatile environment.&nbsp; Everything appears in the same vertical stream, formatted with similar fonts, voiceovers, and music, making a platter of content that they know you are most likely to consume. For Nepali users, this has created personalised and parallel political realities. Two people living in the same household may open TikTok and encounter completely different idea of the problems and solutions of Nepal. One is fed content in favour of elections in March, while another pushes conspiracy theories about anti-GenZ activities aided and abetted by foreign powers. None of these feeds reflect the whole picture. Each reflects what the algorithm has learnt will capture user attention. Academics have long found that social media sites do thousands of A B testing to silently optimise which colors, captions, or video formats users respond to most intensely.&nbsp; Tests help design the most addictive feeds. Interface interference allows platforms to limit discoverability of certain features such as the ‘Logout’ and ‘Privacy’ settings so the system remembers users preference for the next time they are scrolling the platform. When faced with such infocalypse, we have the option to withdraw and not engage with our feeds or our phones. But billions of dollars have been spent by Big Tech to keep us hooked. We need more structural revisions that integrate the need of a safer online environment. Media and digital literacy must be woven into both formal education and public institutions. It cannot be an optional topic or a workshop for a select few.&nbsp; Students must learn how algorithms work, how misinformation spreads, and how to verify information before sharing it. Adults need community-level programs that help them navigate the online world that now shapes politics.&nbsp; Content creators also must be held accountable. Profiles posing as news sites must also be brought under the same scrutiny as the mainstream press. Directives for social media journalism, a section in the Press Council’s Journalism Code of Conduct can be introduced as provisions that foster transparency and ethical journalism practices on social media. Creators should pledge to verify facts, cite sources, and clearly label opinion or commentary. While this will not entirely curb disinformation, it can be the first step towards a digital public sphere that can host democratic dialogue with nuance and facts.&nbsp; Says Adhikari: “Journalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and our knowledge space, academia, think tanks, research centres, archives, are scaffolding to support journalism, and we must make them stronger. The role of journalism can be to humanise the news and journalists can be storytellers, but the responsibility of the information ecosystem does not rely on journalists alone.” Ayusha Chalise is a communication and development scholar specialising in how politics is experienced in the digital space.

Ayusha Chalise

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Doomscrolling democracy

&nbsp;Nepal has finally become famous the world over for something else besides Mt Everest — the GenZ Movement. The 8 September protests in Kathmandu may have been triggered by what happened in Jakarta a week previously, but it inspired street uprisings all over the world. This week, Mexico’s GenZ are clashing with riot police. Last month, the president of Madagascar fled to Dubai. <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-genzs-inspired-filipinos" target="_blank">Philippines</a>, Morocco, Peru, Timor Leste all have seen similar anti-government protests against corruption, nepotism and poor governance. A Himalayan republic, a Latin American federation, a Southeast Asian archipelago, or a North African kingdom may have little in common, their histories, religions, languages, and political systems are worlds apart. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/gen-z-revolutions-protests-louvre-heist-gaza.html" target="_blank">the common thread</a> running through these demonstrations were the simulacra and symbols spread on social media platforms.&nbsp; The young crowds marching through the streets of these countries were holding up the same icons. They painted the same images on cardboard, waved the same flags, stitched the same badges on their backpacks. They chanted &nbsp;the same references from the same corners of the internet.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_2ff7cf4ce7a9590359ed18753f4977648a6db83e95dd62d602a3f81e9eec42c4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251122031128_2ff7cf4ce7a9590359ed18753f4977648a6db83e95dd62d602a3f81e9eec42c4" data-rendition-name="original" width="1250" height="1047" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> <figcaption> One Piece reference meme on Instagram, 115K likes(Photo: Shristi Karki)</figcaption> </figure>  To anyone who did not grow up online, this looks random. To anyone who did, it feels like the most obvious thing in the world. A new kind of global identity has formed — one that cuts across nationalities and cultures. In Nepal older relatives mock the ‘जेन्जी’. My neighbour asked me if ‘GenZ’ was a new political party.&nbsp; Around the world, when youth-led protests appear, reporters and politicians ask the same question: ‘Who is the leader?’ The answer is the same: there is no leader.&nbsp; Some names come up more prominently, as people did during <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-historic-youth-dissensus?fbclid=IwY2xjawNPQnZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHk5Nazeqz3K9aNddXa-dQfCbwtId0nLclQwHzIYhTfg8tzGWXZMBJ5pjm5Qx_aem_a5JoyT1FRqzCVtnnPM7zUw" target="_blank">the Nepali protests</a>: Sudan Gurung. Miraj Dhungana, Rakshya Bam and other organisers who appeared in livestreams and interviews. But look closely and the leader is hiding in plain sight. The leader is not a person. The leader is the internet meme.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_b2319eb8d7abec7ed5e12baf1a53e0a27cfd7a49ee15c058c47cdf2603a7fa8a.png" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="20251122031128_b2319eb8d7abec7ed5e12baf1a53e0a27cfd7a49ee15c058c47cdf2603a7fa8a" data-rendition-name="original" width="662" height="1038" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> <figcaption>Aurafarming, 233K likes(Photo: Shristi Karki)</figcaption> </figure>  <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-meme-revolution" target="_blank">Memes today</a> are doing the quiet organising work that pamphlets and party cells once did. They offer identity, coordinate action, level power differences, and they do it without any central command. This is not because memes cause revolts. It is because memes are the connective tissue of a generation that grew up on the same visual language, the same jokes, the same references, and the same sense of shared digital childhood. Older generations did not share cultural symbols in the same way. Whether they read a certain comic book or watched the same cartoon depended on class, religion, caste, the country, or neighbourhood they grew up in. These divisions created stratified cultural memories.&nbsp; Today, an entire global cohort has been raised on the same visual media. The same YouTube creators. The same TikTok jokes. The same anime storylines. It is truly what McLuhan predicted the Global Village would be.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_136d009a48d8f8daee82ada1b220e0b0c8ec482b52dcd44e0942e2185a70421b.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20251122031128_136d009a48d8f8daee82ada1b220e0b0c8ec482b52dcd44e0942e2185a70421b" data-rendition-name="original" width="738" height="1012" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> <figcaption>Masked K P Oli, 63K likes(Photo: Shristi Karki)</figcaption> </figure>  This has also created the perfect environment for <a href="https://observer.co.uk/news/international/article/revolution-20-frances-political-future-could-be-won-or-lost-by-bots-and-memes" target="_blank">memes to become political tools</a>. They are instantly recognisable, emotionally charged, and open for remixing. They allow young people to signal their values without stating them. They compress identity, anger, humour, and belonging into something that the rest of the world dismisses as unserious. The perfect example of a GenZ meme is the famous skull and crossbones in protest flags from Kathmandu to Manila to Mexico City. The Strawhat Pirates from the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20251006-one-piece-manga-revolt-morocco-indonesia-nepal-madagascar" target="_blank">anime One Piece</a>, is a show with over 1,000 episodes and a global fanbase that spans continents. One Piece follows Luffy, a justice driven pirate who travels across a world ruled by corrupt older elites who hoard power and suppress dissent.&nbsp; It is not hard to see why that story resonates with young people who feel locked out of political systems built by generations before them. I even printed stacks of my own flyer that explained memetic warfare using Minecraft visuals and handed them out in the crowd. Each one linked to a Telegram group with the Strawhat Pirates logo called MemePack HQ.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031144_1b12e920be6e312e1dc8768d318c1d1332e32694293b48984089867e7e525a27.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20251122031144_1b12e920be6e312e1dc8768d318c1d1332e32694293b48984089867e7e525a27" data-rendition-name="original" width="1100" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Meme Movements"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_08b720667a9ff36537e58992c8a8030b090900847de5eecd479bbb3fc727349d.png" data-media-id="editor_10" data-image-id="20251122031128_08b720667a9ff36537e58992c8a8030b090900847de5eecd479bbb3fc727349d" data-rendition-name="original" width="696" height="1004" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> <figcaption>Indonesia-Nepal comparison, 17.7K likes(Photo: Shristi Karki)</figcaption> </figure>  CULTURE EXPOSURE The Strawhat logo is not the only symbol making people protest. That would be like saying video games cause real world violence. Instead, the logo works like a modern version of mythology. It packs meaning for those who understand it. It represents loyalty, rebellion, chosen family, and resistance against unfair structures. It works as a rallying flag because it is already a shared story. And unlike older myths, it is accessible regardless of religion, caste, language, or national identity. Across Nepal, the Strawhat symbol has shown up on posters, badges, and protest outfits. But it is only one piece of a larger ecosystem of youth symbols. From Nepali meme pages remixing political speeches into ironic audios, to posts that place politicians into familiar pop culture formats, to clips that exaggerate the absurdity of daily life under slow moving governance, these are not just jokes. These are narrative units. Each post is a tiny story with its own punchline and its own political edge. Each TikTok video or meme functions like a religious shlok, a short piece of narrative that carries layers of meaning depending on who consumes it. Someone who has spent years studying a religion, in this case, inside GenZ online culture will recognise the symbols instantly. Someone outside this world will only see noise. This creates a literacy divide that is not about formal education but cultural exposure.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_2d09f075663678fe92d4e4dcc631ee6ad1aa8a99996f4c4a3649e4bf4d85132f.png" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20251122031128_2d09f075663678fe92d4e4dcc631ee6ad1aa8a99996f4c4a3649e4bf4d85132f" data-rendition-name="original" width="810" height="1208" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> </figure>   <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_d591c4dc857864cc833ffc6baece3f4c2798bbaf70b557f965463fc8f802900e.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20251122031128_d591c4dc857864cc833ffc6baece3f4c2798bbaf70b557f965463fc8f802900e" data-rendition-name="original" width="568" height="1124" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> </figure>  Protesting youth spent countless hours scrolling, interpreting, remixing, and responding to content. They built a shared symbolic universe across borders without planning to. This is why their political movements feel leaderless. They are not following individuals. They are following stories that define what justice looks like. Stories that define who the villain is. Stories that define how to respond when power is abused. In Nepal, memes about broken roads, delayed passports, political inheritance networks, and bureaucratic absurdity circulated for months before they became slogans or chants. By the time people took to the streets, the narrative groundwork had already been completed by thousands of posts liked and shared in private. The protests did not emerge from nowhere. They emerge from years of digital storytelling. Which is why the government’s ban on 26 digital platforms on 5 September became such a rallying force. The platforms that distribute these memes are not neutral, they are actually designed to maximise engagement because engagement translates to ad revenue. Right now, there is an engineer in Silicon Valley getting paid an enormous salary to find the perfect colour shade for a singular pixel on your screen so that you linger for fractions of a second longer.&nbsp; Algorithms reward content that trigger emotion. Sometimes the emotion is delight. Sometimes it is envy. Often it is anger. When rage becomes a business model, movements built inside these systems can feel powerful but unstable. The platforms democratise attention but centralise emotion. They allow anyone to broadcast, yet they shape the emotional tone of what becomes viral.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251122031128_f22baab05910305ea435045824b25b796d5630715e2e17c3f3c0991e8371843c.png" data-media-id="editor_13" data-image-id="20251122031128_f22baab05910305ea435045824b25b796d5630715e2e17c3f3c0991e8371843c" data-rendition-name="original" width="974" height="1156" loading="lazy" alt="Meme movements"> </figure>  GenZ sits inside this tension. Empowered by the ability to speak without gatekeepers. Trapped inside systems that monetise their attention and amplify their frustration. This is why these leaderless online movements feel both organic and volatile. The algorithm filters which stories rise and which fade. It becomes an unintentional political actor. Not elected. Not accountable. Yet influencing millions. When the state is no longer the primary distributor of information, and when the algorithm becomes the new filter of reality, the public is left with a new responsibility. We have to learn to read memes the way past generations learned to read pamphlets or manifestos. A 15 second video can carry more political weight than a two hour speech. A symbol on cardboard might represent a decade of digital storytelling. Older generations often dismiss these images as childish. They are actually literacy markers of a new political class, one that does not wait for leaders. A political class fluent in remixing power, raised on global stories that feel more honest than the institutions they inherited. The youth did not create these platforms. They inherited them. But through memes they found a new language, one that lets them organise without permission. One that lets them build solidarity without needing meetings or manifestos. One that allows them to resist systems that feel too old to reform. It is time to take that seriously. Nobel Rimal is a researcher of digital culture and political communication who studied and participated in the meme driven mobilisations during the Nepal protests&nbsp;

Meme movements

In 2025, we stand at a crossroads in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/surveying-nepal-s-digital-landscape">the digital era</a>. Our platforms have become the new public squares, but rather than fostering democracy and dignity, many are optimised for manipulation, division, and profit. The Council on Technology and Social Cohesion's <a href="https://toda.org/assets/files/research/blueprint-on-prosocial-tech-design-governance.pdf">Blueprint on Prosocial Tech Design Governance</a> offers a systems-level response to this crisis. Digital harms are not accidental. They stem from deliberate choices embedded in how platforms are built and monetised. Infinite scroll, addictive recommendation systems, and deceptive patterns are not technical inevitabilities—they are design policies that reward engagement over truth, attention over well-being, and outrage over dialogue.&nbsp; These <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/avoiding-the-quicksand-of-social-media">antisocial designs</a> have proven devastating: eroding mental health, fuelling polarisation, spreading disinformation, and concentrating power in a handful of corporate actors. Tech companies blame users for<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/ghiblification-is-more-than-cute-pixels"> harmful content online</a>, avoiding their own responsibility in how they design platforms. The Blueprint shifts the focus from downstream content moderation to upstream focus on platform design. No technology has a neutral design. Companies chose what their platform will allow you to do, prevent you from doing, and what the design will persuade, incentivise, amplify, highlight, or manipulate people to do or not do online. Like building codes in architecture, the report proposes a tiered certification system for prosocial tech, outlining five levels of increasing ambition—from minimum safety standards to fully participatory, socially cohesive platforms. This is not window-dressing. It is a structural intervention to address the root causes of harmful tech designs. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/tech-and-transition-in-nepal">Tech and transition in Nepal</a>, Ashutosh Mani Dixit Tier 1 begins with establishing baseline protections: Safety by Design, Privacy by Design, and User Agency by Design. These are not abstract ideals but concrete practices that give users control over what they see, how they are tracked, and whether manipulative features are opt-in rather than default. Tier 2 scales up with low-barrier user experience tools like empathy-oriented reaction buttons, friction to slow down impulsive posting, and prompts to reflect before sharing. In Tier 3, prosocial algorithms that highlight areas of common ground and diverse ideas replace engagement-maximising recommender systems that offer news feeds skewed toward polarising topics. Tier 4 introduces civic tech and deliberative platforms explicitly built for democratic engagement, and Tier 5 pushes for middleware solutions that restore data sovereignty and interoperability. The report highlights the need for research to understand how platform design impacts society and open data standards for measuring social trust and cohesion. It calls for mandated platform audits, researcher safe harbours, and public infrastructure to enable independent scrutiny of algorithmic systems and user experiences. Without these safeguards, crucial insight into systemic harms—such as <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/inoculation-against-misinformation">manipulation, bias, and disinformation</a>—remains inaccessible. The paper offers a set of prosocial metrics on three areas of social cohesion. This includes individual agency and well-being, or the ability of users to make informed choices and participate meaningfully, social trust and intergroup pluralism referring to the quality of interaction across diverse social, cultural, and political groups, and public trust or the strength of relationship between users and public institutions. Meanwhile, market forces drive antisocial and deceptive tech design. Venture capital (VC) funding is the main source of financing for many major <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/improving-internet-governance-in-nepal?fbclid=IwAR1_tBjAAj53rRCQrGx_vI2P4hts45NzXMo_702l3DmbVLzqCRUhBk68NJk_aem_ASUp6z3b9O_dvca3JUWg_kmf-Si29rn0_X_piNB9GqRu6q28Sjr3GOwfppZg8y2qeQw">tech platforms</a>, especially in their early and growth stages. It significantly entrenches antisocial tech design, expecting rapid scaling, high returns, and market dominance—often at the expense of ethical development. Market concentration inhibits innovation and confines users within systems that prioritise profit over well-being. Numerous large technology companies function as monopolies, employing opaque strategies and dominating value chains.&nbsp; Such technology monopolies pose significant challenges for smaller, prosocial platforms seeking growth. When a limited number of tech giants control infrastructure, data, and user attention, smaller platforms with ethical, inclusive, or democratic designs encounter difficulties in achieving visibility and viability. The report recommends shifting market forces by codifying liability for platform-induced harms, enforcing antitrust to level the playing field for ethical alternatives, and identifying a range of options for funding and monetising prosocial tech startups.&nbsp; Too often piecemeal tech regulation has failed to show the flood of toxicity online. Using a system’s approach, the report offers a comprehensive plan to make prosocial tech not only possible, but competitive and sustainable. Just as we expect bridges to be safe and banks to be audited, the Blueprint insists we treat <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/makeshift/addressing-nepals-digital-divide">digital infrastructure</a> with the same seriousness. Platforms should not be allowed to profit from harm while hiding behind the myth of neutrality. At its core, the Blueprint argues that platform design is social engineering. Platforms that currently amplify outrage could, with the right design and incentives, foster empathy, cooperation, and truth. Now the question is political will. Will regulators adopt tiered certifications that reward responsibility? Will investors fund platforms that prioritise well-being over profit? Will designers centre the needs of marginalised communities in their user experience decisions? The Blueprint gives us the tools. The next step is collective action for governments, technologists, and civil society alike.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025070914078_7cf29b08f9f355820f578caa88b07ef9bdf244eb9e55daf658a9861cb575e5e0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_8" data-image-id="2025070914078_7cf29b08f9f355820f578caa88b07ef9bdf244eb9e55daf658a9861cb575e5e0" data-rendition-name="original" width="651" height="845" loading="lazy" alt="Rethinking Digital Platform Design"> </figure>  This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from <a href="https://toda.org/global-outlook/2025/rethinking-digital-platform-design-a-systems-approach.html">the original</a> with their permission. Lisa Schirch is Research Fellow with the Toda Peace Institute and is on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in the Keough School of Global Affairs. Schirch is the author of eleven books, including <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Social-Media-Impacts-on-Conflict-and-Democracy-The-Techtonic-Shift/Schirch/p/book/9780367541057">Social Media Impacts on Conflict and Democracy: The Tech-tonic Shift</a>.

Rethinking Digital Platform Design

<img width="1360" height="680" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114091156/6372037e9c7e80680e0b2811jpeg.jpg" alt=""/>Ours is the Age of Angst. It is an era of anger, apprehension, fear, confusion, division, polarization, and an increasing distrust in and disdain for institutions. Thanks to the proliferation of digital technologies, we are both spectators and gladiators. We can switch roles in the blink of an eye, whizzing back and forth between the audience seats and the dry, dusty arena. Social media platforms have become the Colosseum of the twenty-first century. In these digital arenas – small and large, local and international – <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/the-social-media-contagion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a new fight is staged almost every day</a>, and though the contenders tend to change often, the language of loathing and mistrust remains constant. But whereas the ancient Romans were entertained by their brutal and bloody spectacles, we moderns are only made angrier by ours.The etymology of the word is important. Anger comes from the Old Norse angr, which connotes distress, affliction, sorrow, agony, hurt. Anger is directly related to pain of a kind that so many of us, East and West, now feel, though we might not express it in those terms. Underlying the shouting matches and pervasive silences, driving them, is the simple truth that we are hurting.Not that long ago, the world felt like a different place. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, optimism abounded. But it was an optimism that verged dangerously on complacency. History, many commentators maintained, could move in only one direction: linear, forward. Its arc would inevitably bend toward justice. Back then, we easily used expressions such as ‘being on the right side of history’. The underlying assumption was that tomorrow would be more democratic, inclusive, egalitarian, and interconnected than yesterday.The biggest optimists of those days were the techno-visionaries. Their buoyancy knew no bounds. Whenever they left Silicon Valley and took part in international conferences or cultural and literary festivals, they confidently assured us that information had become pure gold. It was all we needed to build a better future. With more information, and then even more, people would surely make the right political choices. The speedy spread of information would topple dictatorships and bring about much-needed social change.Sound and furyThe <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-e-conomy-rapidly-goes-digital/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">growth of digital platforms</a> would carry democratic ideals to the farthest corners of the world. Even those countries that were lagging behind in democratisation would sooner or later have to join ‘the civilised world’. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, this mood was so prevalent that many took it for granted that Facebook was having a positive impact on the world. Pundits and experts <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/evaluating-irans-twitter-revolution/58337/">hailed</a> the post-election uprising in Iran in 2009 as the ‘Twitter Revolution’.Around the same time, a young Egyptian couple <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Egypt_Christiane_Amanpour/egyptian-names-baby-facebook-sites-role-revolution/story?id=12964978">named</a> their newborn daughter ‘Facebook’. A few months later, a family in Israel <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13417930">named</a> their third child ‘Like’. I often think about those kids, Facebook in Egypt and Like in Israel. What kind of a world have we given them?The spread of information of course neither guaranteed nor generated democracy. Today, there is far too much information (let alone random misinformation and malicious, systemic disinformation), but very little knowledge and even less wisdom. They are completely different things, and in focusing solely on information, we have neglected knowledge and abandoned wisdom.Information is about speed, discrete snippets of data, numbers. Between ‘numbers’ and ‘numbness’ there is more than rhythm and rhyme. When we are bombarded with so much information, we do not process what we read or what we hear. A constant overload of information gives us the illusion that we have knowledge about anything and almost everything.Little by little, we have forgotten how to say, ‘I don’t know.’ If we are unfamiliar with an issue, we can easily Google it, and in the next five to ten minutes we will be able to come up with something to say about it. And if we take a few more minutes, we can even convince ourselves that we are experts – even though those snippets of information do not amount to knowledge.How can we decrease the amount of information we deal with on a daily basis, but increase our knowledge and ultimately our wisdom? For knowledge, we need to slow down and beware of dogmas, not least our own. We need to get up and leave the audience seats and the dry, dusty arenas. Knowledge requires books, reading across disciplines, slow journalism, in-depth analyses, nuanced conversations, avoiding hasty judgment. And wisdom requires us to unite the mind and the heart. For wisdom, we need not only purely rational analysis but also emotional intelligence, empathy, a sense of humility, and compassion.We need to hear each other’s stories and pay attention to the silences.The Roots of WisdomAt the beginning of the pandemic, when Londoners were allowed to go out for walks in public parks, I started noticing signs placed here and there. ‘When all this is over, how do you want the world to be different?’ they asked. Beneath the question, passersby had scribbled their own answers, using their own pens. Someone had written, ‘When all this is over, I want to live in a world where I can be heard.’It is a sad irony that in an age when we were all supposed to have a voice thanks to digital platforms and the inevitable, unstoppable spread of liberal democracy, almost the opposite has happened. Millions of people around the world feel voiceless. Amid the deafening cacophony, they know that they are not being heard.Our daily lives are replete with negative emotions that we do not know how to process or where to channel. But we do not like to talk about it, certainly not in the United Kingdom, my adopted land, where expressing emotion is considered a sign of weakness. And certainly not in my homeland, Turkey, where many absurdly presuppose that women are emotional beings whereas men are more rational.Human beings of all ages and genders are emotional creatures. When we connect with each other, we do so through stories and emotions. What we believe in or fight for depends on stories and emotions. And what we remember and take with us even when we are uprooted and deracinated, we remember through stories and emotions.I have always regarded every emotion as a source of raw energy, like a mineral that can be processed into various forms, a metal that can be sculpted into different shapes. Rather than trying to suppress our emotions, it seems healthier, and perhaps a little wiser, to recognize their existence, talk about them openly, and create inclusive spaces where we can understand and explore how our mental health is strained.It is okay not to be okay in an age such as ours. It is okay to feel worried or displeased in the face of all that is happening. The crucial question is not whether we are angry or distressed, fearful or frustrated, but what we will do with these feelings. Can we turn raw emotions into something positive and constructive, both for ourselves as individuals and for our communities and societies?Liquid TimesAt the end of the day, if there is one thing that is far more destructive than any emotion, it is the lack of all emotion: Numbness. Indifference. Lethargy of the spirit. The moment we become so desensitized to the deluge of information that we barely register what is happening in another part of the world, or just next door, is the moment we are completely severed and disconnected from each other. And that is a far more dangerous threshold. We are at a crossroads. The decisions that we make today will have long-lasting consequences for the planet, for our societies, and for our individual and collective mental health. This might be the Age of Angst, but from here to the Age of Apathy is but a short and fateful step. We need to make sure we do not take it.Many years ago, when I lived and wrote my novels in Istanbul, I was interviewed by an American scholar who was in the city researching ‘Women Writers in the Middle East’. We had a nice conversation, and in passing, with a soft, amiable smile, she told me that it was understandable for me to be a feminist: I was Turkish, and I was in Turkey. The way she spoke made it clear that she saw no reason why she should be a feminist: she was from America, a country where women’s rights had already been achieved, and where democracy was solid, stable, and safe.Yet ever since 2016, this dualistic view of the world has become incoherent. After Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the rise of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/the-message-is-the-medium/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">populist nationalism </a> across Europe and beyond, the erosion of liberal democracy, and the emergence of ‘illiberal democracies’ flirting with authoritarianism, this deep-rooted duality has lost its purchase in the minds of even its staunchest advocates.Now we know that there is no such thing as ‘solid’ countries. We are all living through liquid times, to use a term <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Liquid+Modernity-p-9780745624099">coined</a> by the late sociologist and political thinker Zygmunt Bauman. History does not necessarily advance in a linear way. If these are liquid times, it feels like the current has accelerated with the pandemic, the climate crisis, and the widening and deepening of inequalities – social, digital, racial, gender, class-based.This is a moment when we need global sisterhood, global solidarity. We need feminism everywhere, just as we need to care about human rights and freedom of speech and minority rights everywhere. Whether we are dentists, students, engineers, or poets, whatever we do and wherever we live, we do not have the luxury of apathy. From the possibility of another pandemic to <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">environmental catastrophe</a>,  from cyber-terrorism to refugee crises, we have massive global challenges ahead, none of which can be solved with the rhetoric of nationalism, isolationism, tribalism, or group narcissism.We must connect with nature and understand our responsibility to our planet. We must connect with each other and strive to become engaged, involved, knowledgeable, and wise citizens. Connecting is our only way forward.While stories bring us together, untold stories and entrenched silences keep us apart. Our voices might not be heard by those in power. But we are not powerless, and we are not voiceless. We are capable of changing the world. © Project SyndicateElif Shafak is one of Turkey’s bestselling writers. Her books include <a href="http://www.elifsafak.com.tr/books/23">The Bastard of Istanbul</a> (Viking, 2006), <a href="http://www.elifsafak.com.tr/books/31">Three Daughters of Eve</a> (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), and, most recently, <a href="https://www.elifsafak.com.tr/book/the-island-of-missing-trees">The Island of Missing Trees</a> (Viking, 2021).

The Alchemy of Angst

When Winston Churchill addressed the Canadian Parliament in December 1941, he recalled that generals of Nazi-occupied France had said that England would “have her neck wrung like a chicken”. Churchill went on to quip: “Some chicken.” As the laughter and applause subsided, he added: “Some neck.” (Even longer laughter and applause) We do not know who first started calling the narrow corridor that joins India to its northeastern states a 'Chicken’s Neck', but there also was the hint of a Churcillian connotation. Akhilesh Upadhayay in his new book In the Margins of the Empires: A History of the Chicken’s Neck, uses this strip as an entry point to explore a region adjoining Nepal, Bhutan, China, Sikkim, Darjeeling, India’s northeast and the tectonics that shaped its geo-strategic terrain.&nbsp; Upadhyay’s Chicken Neck is an organic whole, connected through centuries by transboundary traders, travellers, monks, spies, missionaries, mountaineers, and more. And as infrastructure and connectivity improves, smaller countries like Nepal and Bhutan (and earlier Sikkim) are caught up in the region’s rivalries. The tri-junction of the Chicken’s Neck is a potential flashpoint that has obsessed India’s military strategists ever since Partition in 1947 and the formation of East Pakistan, and the Chinese annexation of Tibet. India found itself squeezed between Chumbi Valley in China to the north and Pakistan to the south. So, when Sikkim started acting too independent for its own good 50 years ago, India engineered its annexation and turned it into its 22nd state. The 1962 Sino-Indian war elevated its strategic importance even more. Alarm bells ring in New Delhi each time there is trouble around the Chicken’s Neck: the Naxalite uprising had to be swiftly crushed, the Indian military moved in to liberate Bangladesh, Gorkhaland and ULFA activities were dangerously nearby, Bhutan had to be appeased. Every once in a while things would flare up between India and China, as in the 2017 Doklam standoff.&nbsp; And last year’s regime change in Bangladesh has rattled New Delhi enough to deploy its Rafael fighters and BrahMos cruise missiles in the Chicken’s Neck. It is now the most densely militarised strip of real estate in this part of the world. &nbsp; As a journalist and former editor of Kathmandu Post, Upadhyay also peers at the Chicken’s Neck through Nepal’s perspective. After all, Jhapa (where the author is originally from) sits right there astride India’s strategic lifeline.&nbsp; Geopolitics is at the front and centre of the book that takes readers back to the time Nepal was a closed Himalayan kingdom.&nbsp; Nepal may be a yam between two boulders, but it may just as well be a thicker Chicken’s Neck as far as New Delhi and Beijing are concerned. Nepal’s rulers have always had to walk the tightrope between China and India. Khampa guerrillas, covertly helped by American and Indian intelligence, raided Chinese military convoys from bases in Nepal, and King Mahendra had to do some intricate diplomatic footwork. India is often described as Nepal’s closest friend, but our relations with China go back as long in terms of the Lhasa trade, Bhrikuti and Arniko, religious exchanges and people-to-people relations. While Nepali researchers are wary of touching on Chinese, Indian or American sensitivities, Upadhyay’s journalistic background means he has no qualms about tackling the subject head-on, and objectively. He spent more than a year researching the book, sniffing around Siliguri, Bagdogra, Naxalbari, Darjeeling and the villages on the Jhapa side. Then he travelled to Olangchung Gola to listen to ordinary people of the Himalayan rimlands. Despite the perception about rigid frontiers between nation states, the book hints at how absurd the notion is. The Chicken’s Neck is also a wild elephant migration corridor, disturbed by the India-Bangladesh border fence, new expressway embankments, airport runways, and expanding cities. Similarly, the people on the Nepal-tibet border used to cross over to graze yaks — this expanded the gene pools of not just the yaks but also the nomadic humans who moved with the herds.&nbsp; Despite the hard borders, trade flourishes. Upadhyay marvels that a shop in Phungling in Taplejung has embroidered saris from Siliguri and fluffy jackets from China. he finds that residents in the northeastern and southeastern tips of Nepal have more in common with kin across the border in Tibet or India than with someone from Kathmandu. Nepal was once one of the biggest trade hubs in ancient times, and our products were treated as equals in Indian border cities. People too, could move freely, especially if they were and are from bordering Tarai cities.&nbsp; Nepal’s rich history and culture was shaped by the proximity to neighbours, and despite borders it is still cemented by marriages and trade — especially in the Nepali-speaking lands to the east. Its geographical positioning makes Nepal not landlocked but land-linked, adjacent to the largest emerging economies of the world. Nepal needs to deploy its soft power with effective diplomacy to take advantage of these two empires, and not be choked by their rivalry. The book was going to press when the GenZ protests ignited in September, but Upadhyay nevertheless managed to insert the current political transition into the pages with deft editing. &nbsp;The final section of the book examines at least three possible scenarios that may unfold as South Asia continues to be shaped by great power rivalries and imperial contests that have weakened the unilateral influence of the west.&nbsp; Akhilesh Upadhyay extrapolates from the Chicken’s Neck, zooming out for a wider perspective on the Subcontinent. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025121912124_0ae772e7736a65f53a99599b5724ca133a64fdea0e61c7170ea81f9dd95c7af0.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025121912124_0ae772e7736a65f53a99599b5724ca133a64fdea0e61c7170ea81f9dd95c7af0" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="In the Margins of Empires: A History of the Chicken’s Neck NT"> </figure>

Some chicken, some neck

‘Get out of my house.’ ‘All my sickness is because of you.’ ‘You’re a millstone around my neck.’ Arundhati Roy heard these admonitions from her mother over and over throughout her life.&nbsp; This must be a singular, yet universal experience. There must be very few daughters who make it through life unscathed by their mothers. And vice-versa.&nbsp; How many of our mothers look at us and see in us the potential of all of the lives they could have lived? How many resent us for it, or want us to live those lives in their stead? And how many of us look back at our mothers and imagine what they would have achieved had they not been expected and assigned to play the role of wife, daughter-in-law, mother — had we never existed in their lives? How many mothers project their experiences onto their own daughters and continue the cycle? No daughter seems to escape it — no matter how well-behaved, docile, unruly, or rebellious. Certainly not the child who would go on to become a Booker prize-winning author. Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me chronicles her complex relationship with her mother Mary, or Mrs Roy, as her educator mother had her two children refer to her. In December, Arundhati Roy was in Kathmandu to sign books and briefly interact with readers at two bookshops in the city. She describes a childhood overshadowed by her mother’s volatility towards her and her brother. Mary herself was raised by an abusive father to escape whom she married the first man who proposed — Arundhati’s father who in her mother’s words turned out to be an alcoholic ‘Nothing Man’.&nbsp; Mary left her husband in Assam and eventually wound up with her two children in her town of Aymanam in Kerala, encountering other family members along the way who did not treat her, or her children with respect. The trauma and cruelty her mother endured could not be contained in her body, and spilled out onto her two children, towards whom she was physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive.&nbsp; While she treated her children with disregard, she would build a school in the nearby town of Kottayam from the ground up, educate thousands of children, take up a legal fight that led to the Supreme Court granting Syrian Christian women in India equal inheritance rights, and uplift many orphaned children and women in Kerala.&nbsp; Arundhati lived with both her mother’s brutality and brilliance. And like her daughter, readers must reconcile the indefensible parts of Mary Roy’s personality — the cruelty of calling her nine-year-old daughter a bitch, or shooting the family dog that mated with a stray — with her unyielding drive to educate thousands, fight for equal rights, and challenge the way her world viewed women.&nbsp; Mrs Roy had little kindness for her own children, but plenty for the students, children, and women whose lives she shaped, and made better. And her kindness was not rooted in empathy, but in anger at the hand she had been dealt in life. Eventually, Arundhati decided to temporarily cut all contact with Mrs Roy — not because she did not love her, she writes, but so that she could continue to love her. Her desire to get away from her abusive mother, and her fascination with the ideas inspired by the architect who built her mother’s school, would lead her to the Delhi School of Architecture at age 16. In Delhi, Arundhati became roommates with Hisila Yami before she and her Maoist ideologue husband Baburam Bhattarai went underground to lead Nepal’s decade-long armed struggle. &nbsp; But architecture was not her calling. In Delhi, the heart of India’s statecraft, Arundhati came into young adulthood against a backdrop of the country’s changing socio-politics, which began to take a turn for the hyper-nationalist, Hindu supremacist community that it has now largely become. The winds of those changes have now blown into Nepal. In the city, far from her mother, Arundhati met the man who would become her partner of many years, collaborating with him on several films and screenplays before finding the language (‘I needed to hunt [language] down like prey,’ she writes) she needed to become the writer she is now.&nbsp; She went on to write her Booker prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, but the wealth and status the book brought her did not sit comfortably. So she smashed her newly-built gilded cage, as she describes it, and became more political. Contrary to norm, she published several works of non-fiction, and would only publish her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in 2017, 20 years after The God of Small Things. &nbsp;&nbsp; Her fierce opposition to India’s nuclear policies, to a dam that would displace millions of indigenous people and ecologically damage the Narmada Valley, her championing of Kashmiri self-determination, and her time spent with Maoist rebels in the forests of Chhattisgarh as they took up arms to defend their land and resources against corporate interests made her an enemy of the state.&nbsp; Meanwhile, being raised by a single mother had never sat well within her Syrian Christian community. ‘I wasn't Christian enough. I wasn't Hindu enough. I wasn't communist enough. I wasn't enough,’ Roy writes in her memoir. For all her love for India, the nation did not seem to reciprocate. The circumstances might be different, but it might strike a chord with readers in Nepal, many of whom marched on the streets in September hoping for a better tomorrow, but were gunned down by the very institutions meant to protect them. It might resonate with those who are not seen as citizens of this nation simply because they might not fit into an imagined idea of Nepali nationhood.&nbsp; Arundhati’s relationship with her mother, who was simultaneously proud and disdainful of her daughter’s accomplishments, continued to be tumultuous until the end of Mary Roy’s life.&nbsp; One of Mrs Roy’s last messages to her daughter before she passed was: ‘There is no one in the world whom I have loved more than you.’ Arundhati muses that her lifelong refusal to stop loving her mother must have finally breached her barriers. One wonders if that final declaration of love was solace enough, apology enough, for all the pain caused.&nbsp; But for Arundhati Roy, her love for her mother and her motherland outweighs the cruelty both have shown her. This, too, must be a singular, yet universal experience.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025122208128_32b171acb09df2184495367b74efd91fe2896b0f5ba75b276e1533276268761c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025122208128_32b171acb09df2184495367b74efd91fe2896b0f5ba75b276e1533276268761c" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Mother Mary Comes to Me review"> </figure>

The sins of our mothers

This is the first instalment of our new series Nepal Made, where we profile world-class Nepali products and the people behind them. The Himalaya is the home to Ayurveda, the preventive and curative medicinal practice that relies on the tremendous diversity of plant life. This is where Hanuman is said to have come to find a specific rare herb when Ram was wounded in battle. When he could not find it, he tore off a whole mountain and hauled it down to Lanka. Since then, herbal medicines and care products have been steadily modernised in India and Nepal. Now, one Kathmandu-based company, Herveda, is going global with an all-natural skincare brand that blends traditional knowledge of medicinal plants with modern technology. Originally a Sanskrit word, Ayurveda literally means ‘the science of life’ and promotes physical and mental wellbeing through a holistic knowledge system that is 4,000 years old. Ayurvedic products have gotten more popular as global demand rises for all-natural, chemical-free cosmetic and wellness products, instead of wasteful fast fashion and beauty trends. Herveda was founded by Prativa Pandey, a scientist-entrepreneur and mother of two. She did her PhD in nanotechnology chemistry from Northwestern University in the United States and returned to Nepal in 2015 after the earthquake, staying back to explore the market and launch her brand.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251218141216_b699e74ee82333951b99b22648705dc916deb8eef3d425c77c1e2f3b1058a64d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20251218141216_b699e74ee82333951b99b22648705dc916deb8eef3d425c77c1e2f3b1058a64d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1000" height="1500" loading="lazy" alt="Looking good by doing good NT"></figure>  “I wanted to do something in Nepal, but didn’t want to be a doctor or engineer,” says Pandey at the elegant Herveda showroom in Jhamsikhel. “Whatever knowledge that I had gathered, I wanted to spread it in my own country.” Nepal is rich in traditional medicinal herbs and Ayurvedic plants, but proper utilisation and mobilisation has always been lagging. Most of the benefits are reaped by large companies and not local farmers. Pandey wanted to change that. To ensure that it gives back to the community, Herveda collaborates with farmers and local traders for fair trade. “I have always been fascinated by the medicinal herbs found in Nepal, and wanted to create high value products with them. It was a way to combine valuable indigenous knowledge with my academic research background,” adds Pandey. “I did not require a huge investment, just a proper marketing strategy.”  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251218141216_350f6eb1511523ea54a8aba468f20a7dffcb5def3fade4dcced30324417f83bc.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20251218141216_350f6eb1511523ea54a8aba468f20a7dffcb5def3fade4dcced30324417f83bc" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Looking good by doing good NT"></figure>  According to the Trade and Promotion Center under the Ministry of Industry, Nepal’s import of cosmetic products is increasing every year, driven by demand from a younger population. These younger customers are also more conscious about the products they use. For brands like Herveda, it is important that customers engage in wellness and skincare in an ethical and sustainable manner. Apart from being all natural, Herveda’s flagship store in Jhamsikhel has a reuse box where consumers can drop used bottles, which are then recycled. The store also displays products from 35 local businesses. Pandey believes that Nepali brands should cross-promote and complement each other: “Rather than competing, I believe we should support each other. 1+1 can be 11, and not two.” Effectiveness and functionality hold great importance for Herveda. which employs 25 scientists to develop and lab test its products at its research institute. Currently, there are products ranging from Rs400-2,000, which include lip balms, serums, and essential oils. A signature product is the Berry Boost Radiance Mask, which contains Spikenard (Jatamansi), Ashwagandha, Orange Peel, and Rhododendron.  <figure><img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20251218141216_7ec1104e0dd63db2fbbfe666034b468fe5b7e6876fde8b5446cb9d9fe27566cf.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20251218141216_7ec1104e0dd63db2fbbfe666034b468fe5b7e6876fde8b5446cb9d9fe27566cf" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="Looking good by doing good NT"></figure>  Herveda exports to the United States and plans to expand to China and Europe. The products get a 50-100% markup in the international market. The company recently received a grant from UKAid to expand the market as well as build capacity to scale up. It has partnered with Agriplayer software to help to develop QR codes on its products, which consumers will be able to scan to track the product sources and evaluate pricing. Nepal lags behind in rules and regulations, and the lack of monitoring has allowed low quality cosmetic products to penetrate into the market. Herveda has got an international certification from USFTA, which is important for its foray into the export market. “For the cosmetic industry to scale up, there should be a central testing facility that is well equipped and meets international standards. Additionally, export should be made easy,” adds Pandey. “If there are too many barriers to entry, no one will be willing to invest.”

Looking good by doing good

Samrat Upadhyay’s newest novel <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/books/review/darkmotherland-samrat-upadhyay.html" target="_blank">Darkmotherland</a> imagines a Kathmandu in political turmoil after a large earthquake. In the aftermath, Home Minister Giridharilal Bhagirath Kumar stages a ‘koo’, and has convinced people that he is the answer to the crisis.&nbsp; He is now known as ‘PM Papa’, and picks up classic dictatorial ways — propaganda, statue-making, history-revising, and a gang of Shiva-worshipping ‘Fundys’.&nbsp; We are introduced to two complicated protagonists. The first is Kranti, a fetching young woman and ‘Madam Mao’, her Communist professor mother. The chef father loved classic rock and died by gas cylinder suicide. Kranti hates her mother, and the Communist group which congregates at her home to plot against PM Papa, although they seem to take forever to get anything done.&nbsp; Kranti has a complicated relationship with the handsome Bhaskar, the middle son of the Ghimirey family oligarchy that is aligned with the dictator. She loves him, but as Bhaskar gets more and more involved with her mother and the Communist group, finds herself heading out to the ‘Bhurey’ (Bhu-kampa Rey-fugee) tents, to spend time with poet Kabiraj.&nbsp; Kranti is also given to delusions, paranoia, and psychosis, convinced that Bhaskar’s family is spying on her, and that one in the Communist group has supernatural powers of suggestion that led to her father’s suicide. Despite mental issues, she marries Bhaskar and into the Ghimirey clan, and the complex nexus between business and politics.&nbsp; The second is Rozy, initially the genderqueer lover of PM Papa who he discovered in the streets, and is described as a ‘gorgeous homosexual’. She turns heads due to her sexuality and beauty, and gets more and more politically powerful as the story moves along.&nbsp; Upadhyay tells us Nepali writers writing in English often feel a pressure to create an “all-embracing world” (interview), but that is what he seems to be getting at with the monumental plot of his novel. Unlike the realism in his previous novels, this one drifts off into magical realism. His narrative blends the ever-present risk of a big earthquake and the actuality of political tremors. The speed of political upheaval seems a little unrealistic for anyone who lived through the 2015 earthquake, although the GenZ protests showed just how quickly a regime can be reduced to a heap of rubble. The age-old question: oppression can be overcome, but what comes after? The PM Papa character is a Gyanendra-Oli-Deuba-Prachanda-Modi-Trump-Papa Doc composite who is good friends with the not even thinly veiled President Corn Hair.&nbsp; Through the character of Kranti, Upadhyay conveys the dynamic between a parent and a child who is now a full adult, on relationships in Kathmandu as marriage looms, on pervasive corruption which one might denounce but have to take advantage of to get things done.&nbsp; Through Rozy, Upadhyay brings attention to the non-binary identity, one that has existed forever in Nepal, and although is discussed a lot in the West lately but not so much here. Upadhyay explores the origins, the present, and the various advantages and disadvantages of the queer.&nbsp; Storytelling in the early parts of the book oscillates between the real and absurd fantasy amidst the physical and political backdrop that does not have to be Nepal -- it could be Modi's India or Trump's America.&nbsp; The reader sees the world through Kranti’s psychosis, or PM Papa’s displays of power, such as when a ‘Sweej’ wrestler is beaten to death with a mace in a wrestling spectacle.&nbsp; These elements <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96329-samrat-upadhyay-wants-you-to-expect-the-unexpected.html" target="_blank">coagulate in the novel</a>, and Upadhyay has all the pages at his disposal to prod and push them against one another to see what happens. The novel is still at its best and most engaging when describing vulnerable scenes, of Kranti and her mister, or of Rozy’s messed-up childhood.&nbsp; Any Nepali reading his weighty novel can recognise the allusions and nudges such as the Tourist Area: Thamel, Open Stage: Khula Manch, Tri-Moon: Tri-Chandra etc. But anyone not from these parts may have a tough time keeping track. Keeping a notebook handy may be useful.&nbsp; Ultimately, the novel does work, it provokes and entertains. For best results, serialise the reading over 30 days, not 3 like this reviewer.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025122005124_88d92d9a2c5718436354d9c1ce6a2576931ef3242a37f6b90d84da15fe96dd8d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2025122005124_88d92d9a2c5718436354d9c1ce6a2576931ef3242a37f6b90d84da15fe96dd8d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Darkmotherland NT"> </figure>  <h2>More things change, more they remain the same</h2> First US-published Nepali Samrat Upadhyay is the award-winning author of novels and short story collections like Arresting God in Kathmandu, The City Son, Mad Country, and Buddha’s Orphans. Upadhyay is also the Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University, where he teaches Creative Writing.&nbsp; Recently in Kathmandu, he talked to the Nepali Times over coffee in Boudha about his writing, his teaching, and his newest novel, DARKMOTHERLAND.&nbsp; Nepali Times: Darkmotherland is 732 pages long. What was it like writing a much longer book? Samrat Upadhyay: Torturous Ha ha ha. Around 2014 I started a story. I knew it was going to be a novel. It was about this woman who is accused of being a Mangalik. Then the big earthquake happened in 2015. I was in the US but my parents were still here, they were living in tents. Then I started thinking, what would happen if a dictator came to power. That’s how PM Papa was born. I think mostly because of his character the novel exploded. I had never written a character like him before. I don’t do any plot outlines when I write. Let’s see where it goes. I like the process of writing to lead to discoveries. If I knew everything then I’d get bored. Not knowing where the storyline might go is very exciting. All these different threads started coming in, the character of Kranti started taking on a big role. Her mother, a Communist-leaning professor, started taking shape. Kranti also had a love-interest from an oligarchical family. The novel just took off and I just continued writing. A novel is as long as it needs to be. The initial draft was 1,700 pages. I was writing pretty fast. I don’t pause to see if the sentences are pretty. I whittled it down, and by the time I sent it to my agent it was 1,100 pages. He was able to sell it to Soho Press. I worked with an editor who suggested some further cuts and expansions. The editing part was even harder than the initial writing, because by that time I was tired of looking at the novel. There was a bit of a delay because of Covid, then we got back on track. What’s your daily process of getting the words on paper? I am a morning writer. I get up in the morning and start writing. You can have all kinds of theories but there is this saying, Shut Up and Write. The writing is where the meat is. You encounter difficulties in writing that you may not encounter when thinking about it. I see this in my students. I knew this was a big project so I knew that if I wanted to get it out I would need to write a lot per day. I got a couple fellowships in the university that gave me a few semesters off teaching. I would write for about 4 or 5 hours. Sometimes I would give myself a 1,000 word deadline, but I’m flexible with it if I don’t get there. You have to be kind and patient. What is your inspiration behind the gender-queer character, Rozy? I’ve always been a strong supporter of LGBT. I would say that at this point half of my students are non-binary or on the gender spectrum. Some of them are going through transitions. In some ways Nepal has become more accepting, but in other ways not. I did a workshop with Blue Diamond Society, and heard pretty harrowing stories. I didn’t intend to create a gender-queer character, but it seemed like the novel was demanding that. Especially in terms of the tyrannical stronghold that PM Papa has over the entire country, it made sense that there would be a counterpart, I wanted to put these things in motion and see how they interact. As I was writing Rozy, her character became very formidable. How much do you draw from Nepali politics? Do you form characters off people you know? Not in a very concrete sense, but I’m always drawing from them. I grew up in the Panchayat System, and lived in Lainchaur. The palace was there. The monarchy was such an institution. But then I was in the US, so I wasn’t here when the pro-democracy movement happened. In some ways it felt like things had changed, but were the same in other ways. I feel the same way now. I do draw upon people. I think my father makes an appearance in my work in various forms, I disguise him, of course. You’ve taught creative writing for a while now, how is literature changing?&nbsp; My students are also writing non-binary characters, because they want to be reflected in the stories. This is something new that we didn’t have. White authors, characters were the default. People of Color on the margins. African American and then Hispanic, South Asian authors were always pushing back on this status quo. When I was growing up in the classroom we were reading a lot of white male authors, but in my own life I was reading Salman Rushdie, African, South African friends and writers. My students have a lot more interest in fantasy, many are writing dystopian. One student is writing a novel where the characters start playing a game, and then they enter the game, and an entire new world opens up. On the one hand there are complaints that students aren’t reading enough, which is true, but my students are producing smarter work. Writing that is a lot more insightful. The calibre of discussion in my graduate-level novel writing classes is mind-boggling to me, and makes me want to keep on teaching. Do Nepali writers who write in English feel a certain pressure, from the market or self-imposed, to make their stories more Nepali? My experience for a long time was that there was a pressure, I felt it true in my case, I was supposed to be the representative of every Nepali. But Nepali writers writing in Nepali are not asked, how are you representing Nepal. At that time there was a lot of pressure to write a novel that is all-embracing, that is supposed to speak on all aspects of the country. Politics felt like an integral part of it, that these novels had to make big political statements. I always felt like this was wrong. I mean, people have to write what they want to write. &nbsp;You write what you want to write, and if it resonates with readers, that’s great. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too. Art isn’t going to speak to everyone. We do a competition every couple of years called Writing Nepal. We make a call for stories, and we decide the best ones. I find it refreshing now that the writing isn’t all about Nepal. The best stories are quite varied. What are Nepalis writing about?&nbsp; Several of the stories are about the role of women in our society, done with a lot of nuance, about the sort of multitasking they have to do. Some of it was deeply historical, some dystopian, the coming of AI. Some of them have an old-timey type of feel, and some of them are very modern, contemporary. The general level of art in movies, TV shows, and novels seems to have regressed compared to say the 90s.&nbsp; I don’t think that’s entirely true. Publishing has been harder, for sure, but there are a lot of novels being published every year. My writing workshop had always been a good vehicle for short stories, but a lot of my students now—even undergraduates—are working on novels. I haven’t formulated my thoughts on AI, it is so new and has hit us so hard. Many of my students are using AI, especially when writing response papers to works of literature or peers, which I find appalling. That’s going to be a struggle. I tell my students, who are you fooling? If you feel that you want to be an artist, or a writer, then what’s the point of using AI? AI-generated stories are also just not that good. They’re almost too perfect, too well put-together, making moves that are easy to detect. There is something about human-written stories that are messy and exciting. But there are also plenty of students who want to do original work and don’t want anything to do with AI.

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