On Election Day on 13 May, I walked to a corner grocery store in my neighbourhood. The shopkeeper was all smiles as he showed me the blue dye on his left thumbnail. He had just voted for the rapper Balen Shah as Kathmandu’s new mayor.
What made him reject all the other big name candidates: the opposition UML’s former mayor Keshab Sthapit, or Srijana Singh, the wife of Nepali Congress leader Prakash Man Singh and the common candidate of the ruling coalition? Was he disillusioned with them?
“Not really,” he replied. “I just like Balen. He talks sense.”
But more than anything else, Balen has won over even earlier skeptics with his passionate, no-nonsense talk, and his refusal to demean his rival candidates. “The others were busy hurling insults at each other, Balen has been above that, he just puts forward his ideas and plans for when he is elected,” the shopkeeper said.
Read more: Local poll, national impact, Nepali Times
Likewise, many voters are enthusiastic about Balen’s clear-cut message that it is possible to make Kathmandu a livable and vibrant city. The independent candidate has taken social media by storm, even as Nepal’s national media has largely ignored him.
It was clear in the days before voting that the ‘Balen Phenomenon’ was not just a social media frenzy. Even people known to have aligned with established parties voted for the rapper and activist.
It is clear that Nepalis are looking ahead to the future where there is a space for new ideas and new faces. But the media and the so-called intellectuals have long ignored this aspiration of citizens, tangling them in blow-by-blow accounts of the power struggles between and within the main parties.
Balen is surging ahead in the vote count, and things could still go in favour of Sthapit or Singh. But his strong showing suggests that not just the people of Kathmandu, but Nepalis in general will vote for alternative candidates given the choice.
Initially, the youth’s inclination towards Balen was seen as a mere aberration to the established party candidates. They dismissed it as a fringe protest vote by young people who did not ‘understand politics’. It turns out young Nepalis do not really want to understand their brand of established politics.
There is a cabal of mainstream politicians and journalists who have pre-defined ideas about who ‘understands politics’ and who does not. These are the very people who are ever ready to bring down any change seeker. Their world revolves around others like them, enclosed in their echo chambers.
Even the new crop of writers and intellectuals have not risen above this mindset. They are complacent just having their mug-shots on the op-ed pages, or their talking heads on the television studios in the world of you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours.
As long as the politics is confined to the understanding of this select few, it is not politics at all. It is a fraud on the Nepali people. Understanding the hypocrisy of leaders alone does not mean one has a good grasp of politics. Knowing and understanding policies that influence the lives of citizens is what counts, and anyone seeking real change has to be for this.
Seasoned commentators on social media, politicians and some in the media do not like this. Political parties are paranoid about new people in leadership roles who challenge the nepotism of party leaders putting up wives, sons, daughters as mayoral candidates, or using ethnicity as a card.
Since the 2006 People’s Movement, a new generation with modern thinking has emerged. Their needs and desires are far beyond the imagination of entrenched commentators who, along with politicians, benefit from perpetuating the status quo. This is why we have a five-time prime minister, and the same old faces in politics from 25 years ago.
But they see the Balen Shah phenomenon as a threat, and are countering it as only they know how: by providing astrological proof that he will not win, or by abusing him on Twitter. This is all they know how to do, ‘leaders’ who have come to power by beheading people and sacrificing the innocent, this is how they define ‘revolution’.
Read also: Every vote counts, as counting begins in Nepal, Shristi Karki
Unfortunately, the ‘VIP’ media is in thrall of these obsolete leaders and their brand of politics. Editors who give space and airtime to them are supposed to be for democracy and the free press and refuse to open their doors to pluralism and diversity.
There is now a wide chasm between what media commentators predict versus what is actually happening on the ground. But that is the beauty of democracy. Citizens see what the media and commentators are not reporting, and know who is not performing. They do not need the mainstream press anymore to form their own opinion, and at election time they respond by backing someone like Balen Shah.
Media commentators are frozen in time, and cannot embrace the hope of tomorrow. Time is running out for Nepal, and there is no time to play the same old tricks on the people.
Many ‘VIP’ commentators did not give Balen’s candidacy much credence at first. We could see that they were propagating their tired old reasonings to support limited politics.
When they did mention Balen, it was to put him down by calling him a ‘singer boy’, ‘the guy in shades’, or criticising him for draping himself in the Nepali flag while campaigning.
They never commended him for the charity work he did in feeding the destitute during the 2020 lockdowns. They airbrushed his engineering background, and activist role in heritage conservation and solid waste management. All of this was much needed and do-able, but his big mistake was not to stoop as low as his opponents to engage in name-calling and dirty politics. So, the VIPs of the media dismissed him, they saw no political future for him.
Balen also exposed ‘youth’ leaders of mainstream parties for behaving just like the generation ahead of them who are responsible for ruining the country. Take Ram Kumari Jhankri of the CPN-US who struts on stage like a diva, does not bother to thank the thousands who have gathered, takes off her jacket and throws it at the audience as if she is some rock star.
The other ‘young turk’ who appears to be too busy riding the media wave and being loyal to his party bosses to care about what the people really want is Gagan Thapa of the Nepali Congress. We do not hear much about the change and reforms demanded by society from him anymore. He is too busy insulting the other side.
Traditional leaders and their youth emulators should have learnt by now that voters are sick of their games. Even the parties that called themselves ‘alternative’ provide no alternative — they have spent the entire campaign running down rivals.
Balen has learnt from everyone else’s mis-steps. He did not even bother to reply to candidates who abused him in the hustings. This convinced voters young and old that he is different, and even those initially skeptical of him seem to have changed their minds.
However, conventional media commentators largely ignored him during the campaigning, or have not been able to quite decide what to make of Citizen Balen. The 32-year-old rapper, structural engineer and activist is difficult to pigeonhole, but there is no denying his charisma and commitment for change.
When they did deign to take notice of the rapper, they dismissed his popularity as an offshoot of the dramatic success of the Bibeksheel and Sajha parties in the 2017 local elections in Kathmandu — comparing the ‘Balen craze’ to the Ranju Darshana phenomenon.
But Balen and Ranju are different. Five years ago, voters in Kathmandu were attracted to a fresh young female candidate because she was such a departure from the established parties. The media could not project her enough — even commenting on the colour of her sari (blue) when she attended an unofficial reception.
This time, the mainstream press largely ignored Balen before the election. But due to his meteoric rise in social media, Balen started shining so brightly, that editors have now been forced to take notice.
Balen is not a media product, this is a spontaneous outburst of outrage against established politicians and their neglect of the people’s needs — especially those who led Kathmandu Metropolitan City for the past five years. Voters liked what they saw in this young bearded candidate in shades who spoke in a dignified tone, with authority based on his own experience and research, and was not afraid to take on the dominant dinosaurs of Nepali politics.
Balen has inspired especially the young with his can-do ambition to make Kathmandu shine again. He has given them hope, when others spread cynicism and negativity. He is a river trying to drain the putrid swamp of Kathmandu’s politics. All the columnists with their scripted sentences now need to prepare themselves to be proven wrong.
The Balen Phenomenon has exposed the gulf between the mainstream media and Nepali society. The press is made up of a handful of people, and a handful of people own it. Balen’s generation has no time for them, and the media they control.
There is a raw new message going out: Nepalis have to forge ahead on their own and no longer rely on the mainstream parties and media that never reflected their hopes and aspirations.
There is a hurricane on the horizon that will soon blow away the dominance of the few men who control politics, society and information.
Read more: Election infowar goes digital, Ramesh Kumar
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