From Rapper to Prime Minister: Nepal’s Gen Z Favorite Nears Top Post
Balendra Shah, a Gen Z-backed rapper and former Kathmandu mayor, leads the Rastriya Swatantra Party to a landslide victory with 275 seats—the largest mandate in Nepal’s modern history—putting him on track to become the country’s youngest prime minister. His streetwise populism and social‑media reach propelled him beyond the political establishment, but he faces the challenge of governing with a party in the lower house but without seats in the upper house, requiring negotiation and bureaucratic navigation.