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Kathmandu, Nepal – Going through 1000’s of raucous supporters, 35-year-old Balendra Shah lifted his signature black rectangular sun shades, requested his viewers to look him within the eye, and stated: “I really like you.”

It’s a sentiment that hundreds of thousands of younger Nepalis seem to reciprocate.

Balen – as he’s popularly identified – was a no one till 2013, when he nearly in a single day grew to become a rap sensation. Almost a decade later, in Might 2022, he surprised Nepal’s deeply entrenched mainstream political events by profitable the put up of mayor of Kathmandu, the nation’s capital, whereas contesting as an impartial.

When the Himalayan nation of 30 million individuals erupted in well-liked protests in opposition to the federal government of then-Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in September 2025, Balen emerged as a high-profile backer of the protesters. He was the primary selection of many Gen Z activists to take over as interim chief after Oli was compelled to resign. However he as a substitute supported former Supreme Court docket Chief Justice Sushila Karki for the put up. It’s now that this was a tactical transfer.

As Nepal heads to its first election for the reason that protests final yr, and Karki’s temporary time period ends, Balen is positioning himself as the longer term prime minister the nation wants. And true to model, he’s doing it with a bang: He’s contesting the parliamentary elections from Jhapa-5, a seat about 300km (186 miles) southeast of Kathmandu, in opposition to Oli, the person protesters deposed simply 5 months in the past.

On the floor, the percentages seem stacked in opposition to him. The area is a stronghold of Oli and the Communist Get together of Nepal – Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), which the previous prime minister heads. Balen is contesting as a candidate of the Rastriya Swatantra Get together (RSP), a centrist occasion fashioned lower than 4 years in the past, which gained 10 % of the nationwide vote within the final elections in 2022.

Balen’s unstable public communication – he has abused mainstream events, India, China and the US, and threatened to burn down symbols of energy in Nepal – has sparked criticism and questions over whether or not he’s prepared for top workplace.

However Balen defied the pundits when he gained the Kathmandu mayoralty. And observers and analysts say that for a lot of Nepalis, he represents a breath of recent air in a rustic the place greater than 40 % of the inhabitants is below the age of 35, however the place the management of all main events is in its 70s.

“Younger Nepalis see him as a decisive actor, who is just not beholden to conventional political or enterprise pursuits,” Pranaya Rana, a journalist who writes for the Kalam Weekly e-newsletter, advised Al Jazeera. “Many admire his macho public persona and his willingness to tackle entrenched political patronage networks.”

The craze

If younger Nepal burned with anger in September, when protesters clashed with safety forces and attacked senior politicians after a crackdown by authorities below Oli, Balen was nonetheless seething with rage two months later.

In a midnight put up on Fb in November, he lashed out: “F*** America, F*** India, F*** China, F*** UML, F*** Congress, F*** RSP, F*** RPP, F*** Maobaadi. You Guys all Mixed can do nothing”, venting in opposition to the favored political events and even nations which have shut ties to Nepal. Being the Kathmandu mayor on the time, he deleted the put up lower than half an hour later.

Then in January, he give up as mayor and joined the RSP, one of many events he cursed within the Fb put up. Extra just lately, after Oli referred to as on Fb for a public debate amongst prime ministerial candidates of main events, Balen rejected the suggestion and requested the ex-prime minister to take duty for the handfuls of civilians killed in the course of the Gen Z protests in September. He requested Oli to acknowledge that he was a “terrorist”.

Excessive? To not many Nepalis.

The rapper-turned-politician’s confrontational model and rhetoric seem to have solely endeared him to massive sections of the youth. His beard and dandy, all-black clothes model – he sometimes wears the standard Newari gown of the ethnic inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley – coupled together with his trademark darkish glasses, have change into trend symbols.

Kathmandu outlets as soon as ran out of the sort of black rectangular glasses he wears. Many on-line shops, together with Daraz, the most well-liked vendor in Nepal, nonetheless carry a number of selections of those shades, calling them “Balen Shah glasses”.

In contrast to conventional politicians, Balen primarily stays away from mainstream media. As an alternative, he communicates with the broader public by way of podcasts, tv exhibits the place he’s a decide, or by way of his favorite platform: social media. His 3.5 million followers on Fb, 1 million on Instagram, 400,000 on X and practically 1 million on YouTube give him an internet viewers unmatched in Nepal.

That is worthwhile capital with a era consistently on their telephones.

But Balen first made waves not as a politician, however as an upstart musician who shook Nepal.

Huge vehicles, larger songs

The youngest of 4 siblings, Balen was born in 1990 in Kathmandu. Balen’s father, Ram Narayan Shah – who handed away in December – was a authorities practitioner of ayurveda, the traditional Hindu therapeutic system.

In an interview with Al Jazeera in September – three months earlier than his dying – Shah recalled Balen as a “vivid and easy” baby. The daddy’s work took him away from dwelling often, however one clear reminiscence from Balen’s childhood caught out for Shah: “He wrote poems. I do not forget that, as a result of I additionally wrote poems.”

Balen graduated with a civil engineering diploma from Himalayan Whitehouse Worldwide Faculty in Kathmandu and acquired a postgraduate diploma in structural engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological College (VTU) in Karnataka, India.

Then, in 2013, he engineered his first main profession transition. The setting was a well-liked rap battle in Nepal, referred to as Uncooked Barz, wherein two contestants face-off stay in opposition to one another. One of many organisers of the competitors, who requested anonymity, advised Al Jazeera that Yama Buddha, a well-liked rapper who has since handed away, really useful Balen to him.

Balen gained the rap battle, gaining on the spot recognition. “Greater than a rapper, he was a poet. He was excellent lyrically, and talked about suppressed [people],” the competition organiser recalled.

In 2021, Shah introduced his candidature for the mayoral election and revealed that he had been plotting the run for at the least two years. He swept the election, profitable 61,767 votes, defeating candidates from the key political events, the Nepali Congress and Communist Get together of Nepal (UML), who acquired 38,341 and 38,117 votes, respectively.

As mayor, in keeping with his aide and press coordinator, Surendra Bajgain, Shah would arrive at his workplace on the Kathmandu Metropolitan Metropolis (KMC) at about 10am. He would first meet all of the division heads, undergo information, “search readability” on questions he had, after which signal information, Bajgain advised Al Jazeera.

He would put on his trademark black jacket and pants, and black shades, every single day to the workplace. He would take away his glasses contained in the workplace, Bajgain stated. “However you’ll see him in these glasses when taking photos or in public,” he added.

As a mayor, he lived in government-provided lodging within the coronary heart of Kathmandu together with his spouse and an toddler daughter. A gymnasium common, he most popular lunch at dwelling, however would sip on countless cups of tea and low within the workplace.

To get away from the general public gaze, Balen “likes to go on lengthy rides outdoors the valley, as a result of right here, individuals encompass him fairly often in public,” Bajgain stated.

His ardour for vehicles additionally landed him in controversy, broadly circulated on-line, when he was seen driving an costly Land Rover Defender value 40 million Nepali rupees ($275,0000) in January, whereas campaigning in Jhapa 5, his electoral constituency, for the March 5 election.

Given his robust anticorruption picture, the sight of him in a high-end luxurious automobile drew heightened scrutiny. Critics accused him of a scarcity of transparency over the automobile’s possession and use, whereas some identified that, regardless of selling modesty in public workplace, he not often used public transport because the mayor. The automotive, it turned out, had been given to him by a rich businessman to be used throughout his marketing campaign.

Balen is now additionally pursuing a PhD in conventional infrastructure at Kathmandu College. However he’s removed from a reluctant public determine, neither is he an ivory-tower researcher.

Balen’s songs, which mock political events, criticise corruption and speak of the sacrifices of on a regular basis Nepalis, have been the soundtrack to the efforts by Nepal’s Gen Z to reshape the nation’s politics in latest months.

One tune, Nepal Haseko (Nepal Smiling), grew to become an anthem throughout final yr’s protests, and already has greater than 10 million views on YouTube. Within the tune, kids sing within the refrain: “I need to see Nepal smiling; I need to see Nepalis residing fortunately.”

One other tune, Balidan (Sacrifice) has 14 million views on YouTube. It talks about impunity and corruption. On the Discord server “Youth In opposition to Corruption”, the place Gen Z protesters picked the nation’s interim chief after Oli’s resignation in September, the identify “Balen” was talked about 16,328 instances — excess of anybody else’s.

However Balen additionally has his critics.

‘Set on hearth’

In 2023, when Balen was mayor, his spouse was in his official automobile when a visitors policeman stopped it. Balen was not within the automotive. The federal government-plated automobile was getting used on a public vacation, which provides visitors personnel the appropriate to ask the aim of the automobile use and whether or not the driving force has a allow for it.

On social media, Balen blew up in regards to the incident: “If any of our KMC autos are stopped by the federal government from tomorrow, I’ll set the Singha Durbar on hearth. Bear in mind, you thief authorities”. Singha Durbar homes many administrative places of work together with the Prime Minister’s Workplace.

The Oli authorities initially wished to cost him for the incendiary assertion, however backed off – Balen’s touch upon social media had drawn assist. It was an indication of issues to come back. In the course of the Gen Z rebellion in September, Singha Durbar was severely broken after being set on hearth.

In one other occasion, in 2023, after India put in a mural of “Akhand Bharat” (a Larger India) – encompassing a lot of its neighbours – Shah hung a “Larger Nepal” map in his workplace, together with territories that when belonged to Nepal however now lie inside India’s borders.

The transfer immediately escalated right into a diplomatic hurdle. Shah was accused of going past his mandate as a municipal chief and stoking nationalist sentiment for political features. His supporters, nonetheless, hailed his transfer as an assertive counter to international dominance.

In 2023, Balen additionally banned the screening of Indian movies in Kathmandu, alleging that an Indian film had urged that Sita, one in all Hinduism’s most revered goddesses, was born in India. In actual fact, she was born in present-day Nepal in keeping with Hindu scriptures.

As Kathmandu mayor, Balen bulldozed unlawful buildings and ordered garbage to be dumped outdoors authorities places of work. He briefly halted waste assortment from Singha Durbar. The transfer was a riposte to what he argued was the central authorities’s failure to coordinate with town to deal with Kathmandu’s persistent waste administration disaster.

But to many belonging to the era most hungry for change in Nepal, Balen has an attract nobody else seems to have.

‘Shake up the established order’

Aayal Sah, a 20-year-old first-time voter, is a resident of Janakpur – the place Sita, the Hindu Goddess, is believed to have been born. He took three of his mates to see Balen’s first public look after becoming a member of the RSP. “I can’t straight vote for Balen as he’s not contesting from our space, however I’ll certainly vote for his occasion,” he advised Al Jazeera.

Rana, the journalist at Kalam Weekly, stated that for a lot of, Balen “embodies the outsider spirit that many younger Nepalis are searching for to shake up the established order”.

But, Rana acknowledged, questions over Balen’s capacity to guide Nepal linger because the nation heads to elections. “A main concern for many critics is Balen’s immaturity and his refusal to interact with the general public. Throughout his time as mayor, he gave no interviews to native media and didn’t reply any questions,” Rana advised Al Jazeera.

After Oli give up workplace, when Gen Z protesters voted most for Balen to take over as interim chief on Discord, the then-mayor was not out there on the cellphone when the youth motion’s leaders tried to succeed in him to see if he would take cost of the nation.

That, say analysts, was yet one more instance of Balen’s communication model: It’s at all times a method, at his time and place of selecting.

However for a lot of younger Nepalis like Sah, the Janakpur resident, none of those chinks in Balen’s public life matter. “It’s the belief he has gained among the many younger individuals,” Sah stated.

“He’s the one one who can take the nation ahead.”