In media, often, one talks about ‘5W-1H’ formula to get the right ingredients in an article or a news report. For the laypersons, ‘5W-1H’ stands for Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Often, report of any event – good or bad – has common ingredients. However, sometimes, more than ‘What’, the two ingredients that really add a great value to understanding of an event are ‘Why’ and ‘How’. This is applicable in the case of the so-called ‘GEN-Z revolt’ in Nepal. For everyone in Bharat, having an understanding of this becomes necessary given the nation’s rise on the global stage.
As has been widely reported in media, there is a suspicion that the US has been behind the violent overthrow of the governments in Bharat’s neighbourhood, particularly in Bangladesh and Nepal. The overthrow of the government in Sri Lanka has been attributed to the infamous debt trap of the Communist China. Pakistan has been an eternally client state, nursed carefully by both – the US and the Communist China. In Myanmar, the military junta is said to be leaning more towards China. All these developments over the recent years have destabilised peace in a rising Bharat’s neighbourhood. Given the historic bitter reality, world’s top two hegemonic powers namely the US and the Communist China both are trying their best to create difficulties in the path of Bharat towards becoming the third largest economy of the world in the next few years.
Despite this being the case, a campaign is being run to absolve the US and the Communist China of these disturbances, and the ‘revolts’ in Bangladesh and Nepal are being touted as ‘organic’ or ‘leaderless’ or ‘Gen-Z revolts’. Though what has happened in Nepal is a result of the rivalry between the US and the Communist China, their common objective behind having control over Nepal is to create a pressure point against Bharat. Now that ‘Why’ part is clear, let’s look at the ‘How’ part with particular reference to what has happened in Nepal.
The US hand-in-revolt
For those falling prey to US-based propagandist social media posts, there should be no confusion about the US hand in the so-called ‘spontaneous’ expression of anger by the ‘Gen-Z’. Already, some names of the ‘Gen-Z’ leaders have been found to have been associated with the US-funded initiatives in Nepal. ‘The Sunday Guardian’, had, in fact, claimed in one of its reports published in March 2025 that attempts were being made to effect regime change in Nepal.
Certain damning details are out there to be found in this regard. As per these details, Nepal reportedly got more than $900 Million from the US since 2020. Most of this money came from Consortium CEPPS, National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI) and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). In May 2022, now-troubled USAID had signed a Development Objective Agreement with Nepal’s Finance Ministry, and the amount involved here was $402.7 Million, of which $158 Million was released till February 2025. Some suspect that the already sanctioned remaining $244.7 Million is waiting to be ‘utilised’. Apart from this, an additional $500 Million came from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant, under various heads including $37 Million for ‘civil society and media’, $35 Million for adolescent and reproductive health programme ‘to create awareness’ among youth, $8 Million for strengthening ‘democratic processes’.
Interestingly, what has skipped the attention of people in the violent protests is the fact that the above-mentioned NDI, IRI, IFES had released various reports on ‘federal structure’, ‘rights of the marginalised’, ‘climate change’, and ‘role of youth’. Several small (which generally evade attention of the agencies) programmes were organised in which youth were ‘trained’ (motivated or instigated) in a structured manner. In several programmes, youth were appealed to leverage the ‘social media platforms’ to ‘transform’ their lives and their country. They were asked to be ‘changemakers’ and ‘future leaders’ by pointing out ‘contradictions in existing society’. IRI is said to have brought out a report on national survey that mapped the ‘public mood’ in favour of ‘new parties’ and highlighting ‘discontent over unemployment’. And, when everything was ‘cooked’, it happened.
Attempt to normalise violent overthrow of government
Change in Nepal could have been democratic, not violent. But, it was designed to happen in a violent manner. An important problem that the international and regional media has given birth to is the normalisation of the violent overthrow of government in Nepal as ‘Gen-Z revolt’. The term has been used so frequently that it has caught up among youngsters. As is the case with social psyche today, anything that goes ‘viral’ becomes a trend and those who do not participate in it develop the ‘fear of missing out’ or FOMO. Now, no one can trace as to who first used the term ‘Gen-Z revolt’ for the violent protests in Nepal. Given the latest happenings in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and now Nepal, a subtle propaganda is being unleashed to normalise ‘Gen-Z protests’ that may go violent and lead to overthrow the democratically elected government. Obviously, those behind this orchestration have Bharat as their next target, with the youth controlled through social media as the potent weapon. The normalisation of ‘Gen-Z protests’ directly aims at weaponisation of youth, who constitute the demographic dividend of Bharat. The youth of Bharat needs to understand this and foil the sinister design of ‘invisible forces’ or the ‘Deep State’.
CIA: The ‘Self-contained State’
Speaking of the ‘Deep State’, reference to the notorious Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US is inevitable. In fact, one of the documents declassified by the CIA is titled ‘A Short History of CIA Intervention in Sixteen Foreign Countries’. It appears to be an article, but it makes an interesting observation, “With unprecedented authority, with unlimited access to money, with liberty to act without regard to scrutiny or review by either civilian or governmental organisations, the CIA has become a self-contained state. One observer ranks the CIA as the fourth world power after the US, Russia, and China.” The same document lists Bolivia, British Guiana, Brazil, Chile, Congo, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Laos, Portuguese Angola and Mozambique, Uruguay and Vietnam as some countries where CIA effectively carried out regime change operations.
Another declassified document, which appears to be a ‘study’ of leadership or regime changes in various countries, sheds more light. This report titled ‘Patterns of Regime and Leadership Change in the Third World’, interestingly, is prepared by the ‘Political Instability Branch, Office of Global Issues’ at the CIA. This document, declassified in March 2011, details regime or leadership change in the Third World countries including those in the Indian sub-continent and Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America etc. between 1955 and 1985. As per the said document, in these three decades, 109 regime changes took place in Sub-Saharan Africa, 90 in Latin America, 63 in Near-East South Asia (including Indian sub-continent) and 46 in East Asia.
Quoting one observation from this report will be good enough to enlighten present-day Bharatiya people on developing some clarity about what is happening in Bharat at present. The said declassified CIA report states, “Leadership changes are coded by the cause of change (such as coup, assassination, and loss of parliamentary support) and the mechanism by which the new leader is ‘selected’ (election, succession, imposition by the military and so forth). ‘Elections are termed fraudulent’ if the ‘sources’ are in ‘general agreement’ that the outcome was ‘manipulated’ by such actions as ballot box stuffing, selling votes, misrepresenting the vote count, or preventing eligible voters from casting ballots.” (Some words have been highlighted in single quote-marks by the author for emphasis). Now, compare the content of this particular paragraph from CIA’s declassified document on regime change, with the political opposition in Bharat and some foreign publications and certain funded civil society organisations questioning the robust electoral process in Bharat at present. What is the intention and who is the target? Well, the readers must have got the answer.
What should Bharat do?
This is not the first time that some world powers are conspiring against Bharat. However, this time, the threat is more pronounced because of the robustness with which Bharat is marching ahead on global stage. The neighbourhood is disturbed, global supply chains have been disrupted due to Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have triggered a new wave of global anxiety and Bharat being the world’s most populous country has multiple challenges to face. Under the able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharat has responded stably and innovatively to these challenges.
Given the hybrid nature of challenges, the first and foremost task before Bharat should be to step up intelligence apparatus. For this goal to be achieved effectively, intelligence agencies need to think out of the box, that is, look beyond gathering politically important inputs. Because, a lot of sub-surface changes in society are happening in the domains of social, economic, cultural and media segments. Mapping these changes requires keen eye on what is being utilised or misused or abused by forces inimical to Bharat. Besides, efforts are needed to check and counter the spread of misinformation, mal-information and disinformation. Towards this end, creation of well-intentioned and well-guided content through conventional media like newspapers, magazines, television, radio and books is required. And, considering deeper penetration of inimical forces, such efforts need to be expanded to smaller urban centres. Merely taking metro centric approach is not going to produce ground-level impact. Further, all this and more should be treated as part of Bharat-centric positive influence operation in the domain of intelligence. This needs to be funded and those doing good work in national security interest need to be identified and incentivised. This will create a new wave of public intellectuals, influencers, public speakers, writers and content creators.
Also, given the hydra-headed threat of geopolitical rivalry and crumbling old world order, merely practicing multilateralism may not be enough. Rather, practice of multilateralism may become difficult as the global conflict map widens, because one has to take a stand. To aid strengths in other areas, now Bharat needs to think innovatively and start ‘assessing’ the so-called world powers. Just as the CIA has the Office of Leadership Analysis, Bharat must start its own set-up that ‘assesses’ performance of world’s countries on various counts ranging from human rights, economy, political stability, democracy ranking, electoral robustness, inclusivity, diversity, gender parity, religious freedom, demographic dividend, universalisation of technology etc. Every time, this need not be done under the Government umbrella. Rather, time has come for Bharat and its corporates also to pool in resources to fund a network of policy think-tanks spread across various regions of the country. Such think-tanks need to come up in Tier-II and Tier-III cities to achieve real decentralisation and deeper penetration to gain insights on Bharatiya mindset and perspectives about happenings in the neighbourhood and across the globe. Through this network, understanding of ‘5W-1H’ of geopolitics can be developed among the Bharatiyas and more and more new ideas may come up to look at the world.
If this thought is brought to reality at the earliest, Bharat can more effectively counter the ‘String of Thorns’ that its detractors are trying to plant around.
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