Three years, three uprisings

THE last three years have seen three separate regimes in our region fall like dominoes before a popular uprising. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s regime in Sri Lanka fell in July 2022, when mobs enraged by the severity of the crisis brought on by sovereign default a few months earlier stormed the presidential palace, forcing the president and his ministers to flee the country. Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s government in Bangladesh fell before a mob of students that marched on her residence in Dhaka two years later in August 2024. And now Nepal, where the prime minister has resigned as violent mobs of youth burned down the parliament building and overran the residences not only of the government leadership but other political figures as well. It is hard to escape the impression that all three episodes of a popular uprising causing the countries’ leadership to abdicate authority and flee are connected in some way. The points of divergence are obvious and visible. The immediate trigger in Sri Lanka was the severe degradation of life brought on by sharp economic deterioration after a default. This included food and energy shortages, spiking inflation and mass unemployment.