Kathmandu is on edge not because of “apps,” but because a generation raised on the promise of democracy and mobility has collided with an economy and political order that keep shutting every door.
It is tempting – especially from afar – to narrate this as a clash over digital freedoms. That would be analytically thin. For Gen-Z Nepalis, platforms are not just entertainment; they are job boards, news wires, organizing tools, and social lifelines. Shutting them off – after years of economic drift – felt like collective punishment. But the deeper story is structural: Nepal’s growth has been stabilized by remittances rather than transformed by domestic investment capable of producing dignified work. In FY 2024/25, the Department of Foreign Employment issued 839,266 exit labor permits – staggering out-migration for a country of ~30 million. Remittances hovered around 33% of GDP in 2024, among the highest ratios worldwide. These numbers speak to survival, not social progress; they are a referendum on a model that exports its youth to low-wage contracts while importing basics, and that depends on patronage rather than productivity
Following Nepal’s four-year IMF Extended Credit Facility (ECF) program, the government faced pressure to boost domestic revenue. This led to a new Digital Services Tax and stricter VAT rules for foreign e-service providers, but when major platforms refused to register, the state escalated by blocking them. This move, which began as a tax enforcement effort, quickly became a tool of digital control, and it occurred as the public was already dealing with rising fuel costs and economic hardships driven by the program’s push for fiscal consolidation.
That the crackdown and its political finale unfolded under a CPN (UML) prime minister makes this a strategic calamity for Nepal’s left. Years of factional splits, opportunistic coalitions, and policy drift had already eroded credibility among the young. When a left-branded government narrows civic space instead of widening material opportunity, it cedes the moral terrain to actors who thrive on anti-party cynicism – individual-cult politics and a resurgent monarchist right. The latter has mobilized visibly this year; with Oli’s resignation, it will seek to portray itself as the guarantor of “order,” even as its economic vision remains thin and regressive. This is the danger: the very forces most hostile to egalitarian transformation can capitalize on left misgovernance to expand their footprint.
Opposition statements recognized the larger canvas sooner than the government did. Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) expressed condolences, urged action on anti-corruption demands, and called for removing “sanctions on social networks.” The CPN (Unified Socialist) and CPN (Maoist Center) statements condemned the repression, demanded an impartial investigation, and linked digital curbs to failures on jobs and governance.
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The fact that a society was allowed to become so dependent on a foreign platform that they could not continue functioning without it is a very bad sign. You can't have a country descend into anarchy just because they had their social media turned off. What happens if it's not your own government but a foreign government that controls that social media which decides to turn your access off? It's a huge national security vulnerability as we have just clearly seen. At the very least have an alternative!
And i would argue the same should be true more broadly for the Internet as a whole. If something happened and the entire network went down, you have to have contingencies in place for "business as usual" to keep going, at least in the essential sectors of the economy. Technology is great but we can't become so dependent on technology that we forget how to function without it. Our societies functioned perfectly fine just 100 years ago without any digital technology whatsoever. I fear that nowadays the system is far too fragile.
The solution should be to release your own chat app as an alternative and provide every incentive to get people to move over to that app before blocking the foreign apps. However I'm not sure Nepal has the resources to in house a competitor to WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is run by fewer people than you think. I believe it could be done. Youtube is the bigger problem as video hosting is more expensive.
Yeah just the ban on WhatsApp and messenger might not have been so bad since alternative chatapp like Viber still works but there wasn't a real alternative to YouTube, Reddit and Facebook like platform.
Even tho they aren't directly used for communication, most people are still dependent on them for news, information and entertainment
They could outsource development to India. They are culturally and economically quite close.
Isn't the point to avoid outsourcing it to a foreign power? Idk if India has a competitor to WhatsApp like China does with WeChat.
Doing it all yourself is ideal, but as you pointed out not all countries have the resources and the capability to do it themselves. Going to a neighboring country's software industry and asking them to develop something for you is not the same as using social media that another country outright controls. In this case the end product would still be under your control, you've just paid another country to develop it for you. Yes, there are security risks associated with that too, but not as big as remaining on a US social media ecosystem.
They are not on the level of China but India still has a lot of their own domestically developed apps. So far i don't think they have alternatives to the really big western platforms, but definitely to some of the the smaller, more niche ones. I'm sure they could manage to develop a basic messenger app. You have to remember that India has a very big economy and a big IT industry. The main reason why they haven't developed their own alternatives to the big ones yet is mainly because there is no incentive as long as western platforms dominate. You have to put up protectionist barriers like China's firewall to incentivize domestic development.
What you're describing is really not a viable business proposal. You can't have a telecommunication platform "developed for you". You could have the mobile app developed for you, but thats usually just a custom XMPP client. The servers absolutely cannot and that's the real product. Those need physical infrastructure, and constant maintenance. You're looking at Indian experts overseeing the physical construction of the servers and actively training Nepalise to maintain the system. And if the Nepalise want to develop it further (which they must) the Indians must sign copyright over to Nepal.
Maybe the UAE could swing that sort of contract but I doubt they would bother with it. They'd probably just license the software so they have some local control but a foreign government maintains ownership over it. At that point forcing the private company to make a local branch that is subject to your laws makes more sense and that's what Nepal tried.
Yeah but it's Nepal so you have to consider "is it reasonable to expect them to magic up alternative infrastructure" given that they don't have the manufacturing or tech capability of China
Even if they could you have to understand that you have to force people to switch for it to matter
At the very least countries that cannot make their own platforms should look for ones outside the control of the West as an alternative. Maybe make a deal with India, China, or Russia to develop something for you based on one of the domestically produced alternatives which exist in those countries.
Making the switch is then a matter of enforcement and incentives. You can go the firewall route or you can subsidize businesses who use local alternatives.