Across countries and political systems, a recurring pattern has become increasingly visible. While economic growth has continued and poverty indicators have improved, social dissatisfaction has intensified, particularly among younger cohorts. Protests have emerged even in contexts where economic indicators appear relatively stable. Rather than indicating disorder, these developments point to underlying structural pressures within economic and political systems.
This article advances the argument that persistent inequality, when interacting with weak or unresponsive institutions, can convert economic frustration into political protest. While the immediate triggers of a protest may vary across contexts, the underlying dynamics are often similar. When societies expand access to education without generating proportionate employment opportunities and when growth is unevenly distributed, institutional credibility gradually erodes. As confidence in formal mechanisms, including the elections, administrations, courts, and markets declines, political participation increasingly shifts toward non-institutional channels. In this sense, protest functions less as disruption and more as an alternative form of political communication.
What Do We Mean by Inequality?
In common usage, inequality is most often understood as economic or income inequality. This form of inequality captures differences in income, wealth, or material living standards among individuals and households. In simple words, it refers to a gap in income or wealth between individuals, which is also referred to as “Inequality of Outcome” in development economics. This remains the most frequently discussed dimension of inequality, largely because it is comparatively straightforward to measure.
Income inequality is typically measured using the Gini Coefficient, which captures how evenly income is distributed across a population. A Gini value of 0 represents perfect equality, where everyone earns the same relative income, while a value of 1 represents maximum inequality, where all income is concentrated in a single hand. For Instance, Nepal recorded a Gini coefficient of 0.30 (or 30 on a 100-point scale) in FY 2022/23 AD (2079/80 BS), indicating a moderate level of income inequality in Nepal. However, while such indicators offer useful insights, income distribution alone provides only a partial account of social disparities and does not fully explain rising dissatisfaction, particularly among educated youth.
Inequality Beyond Income: Power, Access, and Opportunity
Inequality is not solely a matter of how much people earn. It extends beyond income gaps to encompass the distribution of power, access, and opportunities. This broader perspective is commonly described as “inequality of opportunity,” which refers to disparities in individuals’ starting points and their capacity to pursue desired outcomes. Economic growth often concentrates in certain regions, sectors, or social groups, while others experience limited mobility or stagnation. These disparities operate across multiple dimensions:
- Economic: Differences in income, wealth, and asset ownership.
- Political: Unequal access to decision-making, representation, and voice.
- Social: Disparities in education, health, and life prospects shaped by factors like caste, gender, or ethnicity.
- Spatial: Persistent divides between urban and rural areas or between regions.
- Intergenerational: Advantages or disadvantages transmitted across generations.
Historically, Amartya Sen’s capability framework reframed inequality around the 1970s by shifting focus from income to the freedom of individuals to be and do what they choose and value. Under this approach, reducing inequality involves expanding real opportunities rather than merely narrowing income gaps. Therefore, inequality should be measured not by wage gaps, but by the gaps in people’s actual opportunities. Frances Stewart further extended this framework by introducing the concept of horizontal inequalities. According to Stewart, inequality is not always an individual matter, but it can be inherited from the group a person belongs to, including their social position, gender, ethnicity, or age. These group-based disparities signal systematic exclusion, giving rise to discrimination and marginalization among people. The merit-based narratives lose power in these kind of system, where institutional advantages systematically favour certain groups, further embedding inequality across generations. Fundamentally, when these inequalities persist, institutions are expected to mitigate them, but when they do not, dissatisfaction accumulates and is eventually expressed politically.
Why Growth Fails to Feel Fair: The Access Inequality
Among inequalities of opportunity, unequal access to essential services and institutions is one of the major components. Access inequality refers to differences in individuals’ ability to obtain quality education, healthcare, stable employment, justice, and public services.
For instance, despite improvements in major economic indicators in Nepal, inequalities across capabilities remain deep and persistent. Nepal demonstrates reductions in extreme poverty, a rising Human Development Index (HDI) score, and rising life expectancy, yet the practical divide between those who have and those who do not has widened in recent period. According to the 2019 Human Development Report, ‘Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today,’ the global HDI shows strong gains in basic capabilities, including life expectancy and primary education. Many people have moved beyond the threshold of extreme deprivation. Yet evidence consistently shows widening gaps in enhanced capabilities that encompass quality higher education, secure employment, political participation, and agency. While access to basic needs has expanded globally, access to university education, political participation, and opportunities necessary for genuine agency in one’s life is still lacking. These disparities tend to become institutionalised, reinforcing horizontal inequalities and limiting mobility for those without economic or social capital. As a result, this institutional disadvantage and discrimination create tension among the people. This dissatisfaction increasingly reflects constraints on access rather than income alone.
Protests as a Symptom of Institutional Inequality
Protests are often misread as abrupt breakdowns of order. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that they are more accurately a response to prolonged institutional strain. When formal channels fail to address widening inequalities, confidence in these systems weakens. As institutional responsiveness declines, political participation increasingly shifts outside formal arenas. In this sense, protests represent late-stage institutional failures, emerging from perceived exclusion, uneven access to opportunity, and declining trust in governance systems. The United Nations notes that while protest movements differ in their immediate triggers, they are frequently connected by underlying grievances related to inequality, corruption, and limited social mobility. These conditions reduce the perceived effectiveness of conventional political engagement and increase the likelihood of collective protests.
In Nepal, this dynamic became visible in September 2025, following the government’s decision to restrict access to multiple social media platforms. While this decision acted as an immediate catalyst, it intersected with longer-standing concerns regarding corruption, governance systems, and institutional credibility. Nepal ranks 107 out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, reflecting persistent challenges related to accountability and public trust. Additionally, youth-led online discourse during the protests, such as the widespread use of the hashtag #nepokids, highlighted perceptions of disconnect between younger cohorts and political elites.
Comparable patterns have been observed across the region as well. In Bangladesh, student-led protests in 2024 were triggered by changes to public-sector recruitment quotas perceived as undermining merit-based access. In Indonesia, public demonstrations intensified following scrutiny of parliamentarians’ allowances relative to minimum wages, before escalating after a high-profile incident involving police violence. Earlier, the Arab Spring uprisings reflected similar dynamics of institutional exclusion, unemployment, and governance failures, despite differing national contexts. Taken together, these cases suggest that while the immediate triggers varied, the underlying system of restricted mobility, perceived institutional bias, and unequal access to opportunity remained broadly consistent.
Why Young People Are At the Forefront
The prominence of youth and students in recent protest movements reflects a structural mismatch. Across many economies, educational attainment has expanded more rapidly than labour markets’ capacity to absorb skilled graduates, resulting in persistent underemployment among young cohorts. This pressure has been amplified by a sustained rise in the cost of living following global shocks, including the pandemic, climate-related disruptions, and geopolitical tensions, that increased prices for food, energy, and housing. These pressures disproportionately affect individuals without family wealth or social capital, further intensifying inequality of opportunity and shaping patterns of political participation among younger cohorts.
Way Forward
The evidence suggests that protests are indicators of underlying institutional stress. When inequality persists across income, access, and opportunity, and institutions fail to correct these disparities, economic frustration increasingly takes political form. Addressing such dynamics, therefore, requires moving beyond short-term stability. Policy responses focused solely on growth or poverty reduction are unlikely to be sufficient if access to quality education, employment, justice, and political participation remains uneven. Sustainable development depends not only on expanding economic output, but on strengthening institutions that ensure inclusive access and human development.
Viewed through this lens, protests should be interpreted not as threats to order, but as signals that institutional arrangements are no longer aligned with social expectations. Rebuilding trust requires restoring the link between effort and opportunity, and between participation and representation. As Nepal approaches its upcoming elections, the central question is whether future governments can meaningfully address the structural inequalities highlighted by recent protests and restore institutional credibility. Or will the unresolved grievances once again push people back into the streets in protest?
Heykha Rai holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from Kathmandu University and serves as a Research Fellow at the Nepal Economic Forum. With a keen interest in international economics and economic history, she contributes insightful research to advance economic discourse. Passionate about policy analysis and development strategies, Heykha is dedicated to fostering informed economic decision-making in Nepal.
