2024 was marked by Nepal’s politicians attempting to silence journalists and institutions that were critical of them.&nbsp;
Despite being elected, they seem to be learning the tricks about gagging the media from authoritarians in the neighbourhood. But the lesson there is that such suppression is counterproductive.&nbsp;
First it was Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane who, as Home Minister in the previous coalition, jailed the publisher of Kantipur which had exposed his alleged involvement in defrauding cooperatives
Lamichhane lost his job when the coalition collapsed after the Nepali Congress switched to the UML side in June. He has now been charged, and lost his MP seat and party chairmanship as well.&nbsp;
Lamichhane and other political leaders who catapulted to national politics after the 2022 local and federal elections copied the proven method of fanning populism through social media. Once in power, like elected authoritarians elsewhere, they have tried to emasculate the mainstream press.
Earlier this month, Dharan Mayor Harka Sampang openly threatened journalist Gopal Dahal and the Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal for their <a href="https://www.himalkhabar.com/news/143356" target="_blank">exposé</a> of governance and fundraising irregularities. Sampang said he would ‘end the career’ of Dahal and former Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) Sunsari chair Janak Rishi Rai who had shared the story on social media.
Sampang’s supporters have since been sending Dahal death threats, using slurs, and praising the mayor for ‘teaching the media a lesson’.&nbsp;
The mayor’s actions have drawn widespread condemnation, with FNJ and Freedom Forum calling for the safety and protection of journalists. Dharan journalists <a href="https://www.himalkhabar.com/news/143445" target="_blank">staged rallies</a> in outside the mayor’s office denouncing his threats.&nbsp;
“There is no environment for freedom of expression in Dharan, where the mayor has long been intimidating the press," CIJ-N editor Kiran Nepal says. “All the while, the central government is silent in the complaints against Sampang.”
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement: ‘CPJ calls for a swift and thorough investigation into the death threats against journalist Gopal Dahal. Authorities must hold all perpetrators accountable while ensuring the journalists’ safety … the media must be allowed to report without fear of harassment or violence.’
Lamichhane, Sampang and Kathmandu mayor Balen Shah campaigned in 2022 on anti-incumbent platforms riding the save of public disenchantment against established parties.&nbsp;
They have continued to rile up their base by magnifying the message on social media, scathingly trolling and threatening anyone daring to criticise them — including those in the mainstream press.
“What Sampang, Shah and Lamichhane have in common is that they think they are above media scrutiny, and prefer to mobilise their troll armies," says CIJ-N's Kiran Nepal. "Nepal's media has problems, too, but this new crop of politicians thinks there is no role at all for a free press."
The new leaders all have their sights on the 2027 elections, and have benefited from the silence from the political establishment against their methods. Mainstream political leaders seem wary of engaging with these younger leaders and their supporter base.
Nepal’s established parties which fought long and hard for democracy also appear to have developed a thin skin — especially to social media content that lampoons them.&nbsp;
For mainstream leaders, intolerance of criticism is not just limited to the media, but also to dissenting voices from within their own parties, as evidenced by the expulsion of Bhim Rawal and suspension of leaders Binda Pandey and Usha Kiran Timilsina.
The coalition government is pushing ahead a new media bill aimed at regulating social media networks and online media.&nbsp;
Communication Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung has said the bill is aimed at “countering the chaos created by social media”. The bill has been approved by the Cabinet, but it is unclear whether it will now go to Parliament, and Gurung is urging Prime Minister K P Oli to pass the bill through ordinance.&nbsp;
The bill will require international social media networks like Facebook and TikTok to obtain registration, establish an office, and pay taxes in Nepal. Social media and online users can be fined or jailed if found to violate norms in the bill.&nbsp;
Last year, the Maoist-NC coalition used similar rhetoric of ‘maintaining social harmony’ to ban TikTok. Mainstream parties were spooked by rising popularity of religious radicals and pro-Monarchy groups on the platform.&nbsp;
Establishment leaders are nervous that independently elected mayors including Sampang and Shah, will use social media to join national politics like the RSP’s Rabi Lamichhane.
While populist leaders demonstrate intolerance towards criticism in the mainstream press, they and their supporters use their social media handles to threaten and troll even a hint of criticism of their actions on those platforms.
This puts media organisations and free speech activists in a dilemma: while hate speech, intimidation and trolling corrode democracy, censoring the internet is a slippery slope.
They say the bill undermines freedom of speech, and that while monitoring social media to maintain socio-cultural harmony is important, putting controls over social media is the wrong way to go about it.&nbsp;
Tellingly, the political establishment has stayed silent throughout Sampang’s threats against Dahal and CIJ-N, Lamichhane ridiculing the ‘dirty dozen’ media owners and the Balen Shah overstepping his remit in Kathmandu. &nbsp;Authorities in Dharan have also been willing to start legal proceedings against Ssampang even after complaints
Nepal is currently one of the most open societies in Asia in terms of freedom of expression. Any restrictions on media freedom through the bill, or government inaction against threats to journalists will set a bad precedent in the region.&nbsp;
However, even as politicians try to mute the media and despite the online support for populist leaders who attack the press, Sharecast Initiative’s annual survey shows that Nepalis still have a lot of trust in mainstream press.
Even though the audience of legacy and linear media continues to decline every year, there is still a considerable critical mass that appreciates the role free media plays in making democracy function as it should.
Says Nepal: “Putting regulations over social media is a double-edged sword, it will curtail freedom of expression-- democracy cannot function under this kind of control mechanism.”&nbsp;

Shristi Karki

original

674x448

610x380

500x500

400x266

400x240

400x203

301x200

1250x600

1084x550

thumbnail

viewImage

Media matters

Samsung Nepal has opened pre-orders for the Galaxy A57 5G and A37 5G. Both phones run Samsung’s One UI 8.5, featuring AI capabilities like voice transcription, Circle to Search, and photo editing. They feature a 50MP triple-camera system, a Super AMOLED display, and six years of OS and security updates.

Galaxy A series

The war in West Asia has exposed the fragility of the economic architecture Nepal has built on over two generations. If the conflict continues, growth across developing Asia will slow and prices will rise. For Nepal, this will be felt through higher living costs, weaker economic activity, and growing uncertainty for the millions of families who depend on remittances.&nbsp; Nepal now needs to structurally transform from exporting labour to investing in domestic job creation. &nbsp; The country's current path toward a knowledge economy has a blind spot. A <a href="https://iids.org.np/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/unleashing.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> by the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS) in Kathmandu shows that IT export companies alone generated 7,228 jobs and income for 66,509 freelancers.&nbsp; We are building digital labour export, not an economy that accumulates institutional knowledge. The Nepali Upwork developer and a migrant construction worker in the Gulf are engaged in the same economic activity, but with different tools. Nepal’s reliance on a <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?locations=NP" target="_blank">remittance-driven economy,</a> means the country has failed to create enough <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nepal/publication/unlocking-nepal-s-growth-potential" target="_blank">quality jobs</a> at home. For millions of young people, leaving the country is not a choice but a necessity to survive and support families back home. <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nepal/publication/unlocking-nepal-s-growth-potential" target="_blank">Remittances</a> have no doubt helped reduce poverty. Thirty years ago, 55% of Nepal’s population lived on less than $2.15 a day, now it is 20% after the absolute poverty line was revised upwards. This progress has come at a cost — &nbsp;an economy that depends more on exporting workers than creating opportunities at home. This development reflects a deeper political failure to create meaningful jobs within the country. Since the democratic transition in 1991, Nepal’s leadership has largely recycled the same faces, with limited progress on job creation or industrial growth.&nbsp; Nepal cannot build a <a href="https://nipore.org/accelerating-nepals-startups/" target="_blank">knowledge economy</a> while its most ambitious people are outbound to Doha and Tokyo. We are also not just losing ‘labour’. We are losing the entrepreneurial risk tolerance of our youth.&nbsp; If the most ambitious 25-year-olds are abroad, who is left to support innovation and entrepreneurship? The same people who are working tirelessly abroad, are our biggest asset for development. Their work ethic and the know-how inurban renewal could well fit into the new RSP government’s mandate of 7% annual growth.&nbsp; The <a href="https://english.biznessnews.com/posts/-nepal%E2%80%99s-it-exports-cross-1-billion-" target="_blank">$1B milestone</a> of IT exports is a celebratory moment for Nepal. However, that cannot lead to a pathway to a $100 billion economy without innovation ecosystems that go beyond individual labour export. Companies like SecurityPal and industry associations such as NASIT have made significant efforts in building such an environment, recently championed by private sector leaders as a &nbsp;<a href="https://www.securitypalhq.com/blog/silicon-peaks" target="_blank">Silicon Peaks</a> model that emphasises a home growth tech cluster. The need to accelerate this transition is even more urgent with the escalating conflict in West Asia. &nbsp;The recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) <a href="https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/Nepal%20LDC%20Graduation%20Employment%20Impacts%20Report.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> shows that LDC graduation is expected to adversely impact manufacturing with losses of $1 billion by 2030.&nbsp; If manufacturing takes such a large hit from losing trade preferences, then Nepal’s services and IT sectors need to structurally transform and shift from exporting individual talent to building firms. &nbsp; A generation’s frustration has finally forced a shift in Nepal’s political structure, handing the new government a clear mandate to fix failures. But the question still persists: what prevents Nepal from achieving sustained, productivity-driven growth? &nbsp;&nbsp; RSP is in the right place at the right time to put Nepal's economy on a firm footing. At the heart of Nepal’s economic underperformance lies a major development binding constraint: low returns to investment on projects.&nbsp; The government invests like a high-growth economy, with gross capital formation at around <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.GDI.FTOT.ZS?locations=NP" target="_blank">25–30 percent of GDP</a>. Yet economic growth remains modest. The problem is not how much the country invests, but how little it gets in return. One way to see this is by looking at how much investment is required to generate growth.&nbsp; Nepal needs large amounts of capital to produce relatively small gains in output (graph, below). For instance, in 2024, the ICOR was 8.29, this suggests that Nepal had to invest more than 8 units of capital to produce a one unit of additional economic output.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260406040412_605dc527641d2ff2dc5723ed8bbec946898331d5538a55b9941e32a0725bf811.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20260406040412_605dc527641d2ff2dc5723ed8bbec946898331d5538a55b9941e32a0725bf811" data-rendition-name="original" width="1827" height="925" loading="lazy" alt="Economy graph"> <figcaption>Source: Author's calculation based on a Growth Diagnostic simulation</figcaption> </figure>  This reflects a deeper issue in how investment is allocated and executed. Capital is often locked in low-productivity sectors or diluted by delays, inefficiencies, and policy uncertainty.&nbsp; As a result, even high levels of investment fail to translate into sustained growth. Until investment shifts toward productive, firm-building activities, higher spending alone will not deliver results. &nbsp; To reverse this, the government must focus on raising the returns to investment by enabling firms to grow and compete. This requires a shift from managing scarcity to creating an environment where capital can generate consistent and predictable returns. A central priority should be given to attracting and retaining both domestic and foreign private investment. Investors do not just respond to direct incentives, but also to policy stability in the country. Nepal’s economy cannot sustain high growth if its human capital continues to leave the country.&nbsp; The goal should not simply be to create jobs, but to build companies that scale, innovate, and compete beyond Nepal. This requires supporting sectors with strong productivity potential and ensuring that firms can expand without being constrained by infrastructure gaps or regulatory friction. Finally, the state must improve the quality of its own investment. Public spending should focus on lowering the cost of doing business through reliable electricity, efficient logistics, and digital infrastructure.&nbsp; The GenZ movement took two days to bring change. The economic transformation of Nepal might take a generation. The RSP can accelerate this transition, but only if it focuses on building a better investment climate for business and not just feeding the global labour pool. Kailash Raj Pandey is an MPA/ID and MBA candidate at Harvard Kennedy School and MIT Sloan School of Management and a fellow at MIT Kuo Sharper Center for Innovation and Prosperity.&nbsp; Siddhartha Raymajhí is a policy researcher based in Kathmandu.

Creating a firm future for Nepal

Know your Ministers

Prime Minister Balendra Shah on Wednesday broke tradition and met with 17 foreign envoys collectively, a move that was a notable departure from how his predecessors operated.&nbsp;
Shah had already set himself apart by talking less, listening more, and delegating to trusted friends. But by meeting all ambassadors at one go in the presence of the Foreign Ministry, he signalled a paradigm shift in how he wants Nepal to be seen: no longer just balancing India and China, but as a country confident about its <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/guest-editorial/tripolar-contestation-over-nepal">strategic importance and place in the world</a>.
In just two weeks, the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/rsp-dos-and-don-ts">RSP has sprung into action </a>on multiple fronts to implement its ambitious 100-point, 100-days action plan. It has taken short-term measures to mitigate the impact of the Gulf war, as well as medium- and long- term measures to streamline the bureaucracy. A few high-profile figures have been made examples of to drive the message home.
Earlier this week, the government recalled six politically appointed ambassadors, the most notable being long-serving Shankar Sharma from New Delhi. The Kathmandu District Court issued arrest warrants against former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his former foreign minister wife Arzu Rana on charges of money laundering and corruption.
Each ministry has been trying to clean up the accumulated rot from the past three decades: regulatory overhaul of microfinance, education, health and service delivery.&nbsp;
These actions widely disseminated campaign-style on YouTube and TikTok have made most Nepalis hopeful that the party they installed in power means business.
<div class="embed-block"><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Freel%2F1279862820757799%2F&show_text=false&width=560&t=0" width="560" height="314" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe></div>
BACKLASH
But such attempts to overhaul a long-entrenched political culture were bound to face backlash. In their impatience and enthusiasm to get things done, some of Prime Minister Shah’s ministers have over-reached.
It was common knowledge that government-paid advertising in the mainstream press was kickback-driven, but the PMO’s directive that official notices be published or broadcast only on state-run media has been denounced — especially as the media industry struggles to stay afloat.
More serious are some recent appointments by ministers of relatives and figures closely associated with the RSP to key positions. This has rankled because this party built its political plank on ending nepotism and graft.&nbsp;
News that Home Minister Sudan Gurung allegedly had not paid rent on leased land, which illegally encroached on the lake in Pokhara did not help. &nbsp;
Prime Minister Shah himself has come under scrutiny for appointing a kitchen cabinet full of male buddies from his time as Kathmandu mayor. To douse criticism he brought in as adviser investigative journalist Deepa Dahal, who has exposed corruption in high places of the previous coalitions.&nbsp;
Shah’s appointment of another political adviser Asim Shah to the head Constitution Amendment Task Force, is also seen as problematic. He is a filmmaker and former lawmaker, but does not have a background in constitutional law.&nbsp;
Even more controversial is the Cabinet’s decision to appoint RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane’s legal counsel, Narayan Kandel, as Attorney General. Kandel used to be a UK permanent resident, and does not have as much experience practicing law in Nepal.&nbsp;
Kandel’s appointment drew flak and raised eyebrows, and with the pending legal cases against Lamichhane this appointment represents a flagrant conflict of interest.
Health Minister Nisha Mehta was also accused of favouritism after reappointing Junu Shrestha, wife of Labour Minister Dipak Kumar Shah, as member of the Health Insurance Board which had earlier suspended her. The Labour Minister’s rambling rant at the Board’s meeting on Tuesday has not helped the RSP’s image.&nbsp;
(UPDATE: On Thursday, Prime Minister Shah sacked the Labour Minister after the RSP found him in breach of the party's code of conduct and discipline. He served 14 days in the Cabinet, one of the shortest tenures for a minister in Nepal )
It is hard to know what <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/ball-in-balen-s-court">Balendra Shah is thinking</a>, and how Rabi Lamichhane is going to justify some of these moves. After all, making politics, governance, and bureaucracy a meritocracy has been the core tenet of the RSP, and it risks alienating its mainly youth base if these missteps persist.
But at least for now, most RSP supporters seem to be giving the party the benefit of doubt.

nepal-media-bill

Media matters

Galaxy A series

Creating a firm future for Nepal

Know your Ministers

Nepal’s new government springs into action