Posted by whatsupdog 9/8/2025
Compared to nearby poor nations, Nepal is safe and its people are perceived to be welcoming. It's the only serious candidate for being a ski-nation in all of mainland Asia. If Nepal wanted, it could transform itself into a Bali style tourist destination and ascend towards being a middle economy. Unlike India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have to solve 1-billion-people scale problems, at 30 million, Nepal can resort to scaled down solutions.
Nepal's refusal to leverage the (few) advantages of its geography is baffling.
The internal politics are even more bizarre. As a communist-adjacent nation, it has a closed off economy with deep suspicion towards free markets. Yet, the national messaging alternates between blaming India or China for all their problems. The local populace (like every populace) eats this up. From my observations, neither nation affects Nepal's economics much. (national security is a separate conversation)
> protests reflect young people's widespread frustration with government action to tackle corruption and boost economic opportunities.
South Asia is coming off a recent protest->overthrow movement in Bangladesh. The youth protesters had similar complaints. Yet, the outcome was an even less democratic system which now owed favors to the violent parts of the society that helped complete the ouster. Similarly, Nepal has a history of political instability and violent ousters, most of which had led of very little economic change.
The youth's complaints are valid and I support their protests. However, do the protesters have an outcome in mind ? They want an improved economy. But, will they be okay with opening Nepal up to free markets ? This may mean selling resort building contracts to major western ski companies. It may mean opening unsafe sweatshops for Adidas to make shoes there. It may mean resource exploration by foreign mining companies.
I say this, because this is a South Asian disease. We want our nations to have a strong economy. But, economic liberalization can sometimes look like colonization, and this hurts the ego of proud global-south nations. We want progress, while keeping all foreign influence at bay. We want social welfare, but the nation is bankrupt. It's paradoxical. When our nations do move towards markets, it happens at gunpoint (1991) or with steep political costs (Farm Bill, GST) to the the incumbent.
Not sure what the solution is here. But, the last decade has made me suspicious towards protest movements that do not have positive policy outcomes in mind. The student's anger is valid, but impressionable students are the the time-honored vanguard used by more powerful opposition to trigger coups.
As an aside, this categorization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South) has always seemed problematic to me.
> The Global South classification, as used by governmental and developmental organizations, was first introduced as a more open and value-free alternative to Third World,[6] and likewise potentially "valuing" terms such as developed and developing.
But I don't think it's "more open and value-free" at all. The rhetoric around it always seems to be alluding vaguely to racist and/or colonialist causes of the economic disparities; but labeling the disadvantaged places as "South" reinforces that colonialist view (cf. maps presented upside-down to avoid supposed biases), and also brings in connotations of specifically American political history (Union vs Confederacy kinda stuff, you know).
Excluding Australia and New Zealand also seems intellectually dishonest. If places like Moldova are "North" because of the physical reality rather than than economics, than Australia and New Zealand (which also were colonized) should be "South" (just as the wealthier parts of the Middle East are). The border isn't anything like straight, either.
If we want to highlight a problem with economic disparity, we should not turn up our noses at terms that are fundamentally about the economic disparity.
It can't value free, because there will always be a value judgement here.
It hurts. Yes, colonialism and a history of foreign exploitation has meant that global south nations have been dealt worse cards. But, the present is what it is. I'm sick of poor nations (like my own) feeding their delusions about the current state of their nation. The people have to learn to separate their identity as proud successors of a rich historic culture and their current state of disrepair. The inability to do so, keeps us poor and susceptible to further exploitation by local power brokers.
Just because twitter influencers use more offensive terms for these nations, doesn't mean that civil forums should overcompensate with euphemisms that hides the obvious judgement inherent to such groupings.
Even in the case when the exploitation never ended.
Indian Himalayas have ski resorts.
> If Nepal wanted, it could transform itself into a Bali style tourist destination and ascend towards being a middle economy.
Landlocked country with little natural resources. Who's funding this project? Watch a YouTube about the Kathmandu-Pokhara road. Infrastructure is not easy there.
> Nepal's refusal to leverage the (few) advantages of its geography is baffling.
They grow rice on hills, have a thriving mountaineering ecosystem, and build dense cities in the valleys large enough to support them. How are they not leveraging them?
> As a communist-adjacent nation, it has a closed off economy with deep suspicion towards free markets.
The county to their south went this way after the Raj, for what I believe are fair reasons. I can see how that influenced Nepal's hesitancy to open up more to international brands.
> Yet, the national messaging alternates between blaming India or China for all their problems.
They aren't wrong! India had "interstate entry taxes" up until 2017 - taxes that cargo had to pay in each state on the way to the ports. It wasn't even the just the national governments making life harder to Nepali, it was individual states!
> However, do the protesters have an outcome in mind
Their anger is justification enough. It's tough for college graduates in the region to find a career that matches their education level.
> But, will they be okay with opening Nepal up to free markets?
Nepal isn't as closed to free markets as you keep insinuating. There are malls with Asian brands where people can go shop. Not having as many American brands makes sense given the logistics problems. There are western restaurants. There are western hotel brands. There are Indian hotel brands.
> This may mean selling resort building contracts to major western ski companies.
Taj, Oberoi, Leela (Indian resort brands) could probably build a wonderful one. And they haven't, I presume they have the numbers demonstrating this doesn't work economically.
> It may mean opening unsafe sweatshops for Adidas to make shoes there.
There's no world where that makes sense economically. See my note about India previous state tariffs/state taxes. Just presume there's all sorts of hidden middlemen between KTM and ports.
> It may mean resource exploration by foreign mining companies.
China would be there already if it was viable (read more about the few roads north to China)
> with steep political costs (Farm Bill, GST) to the the incumbent.
Your wording makes me think you are Indian. If I'm correct, The best thing you can do is encourage more Indians to go enjoy what Nepal has to offer now, so they can afford to invest in some of the improvements you propose :)
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. The comment would have been fine without that line.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45173338 and marked it off topic.
>For years, Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., pushed the narrative that it was a neutral platform in Myanmar that was misused by malicious people, and that despite its efforts to remove violent and hateful material, it unfortunately fell short. That narrative echoes its response to the role it has played in other conflicts around the world, whether the 2020 election in the U.S. or hate speech in India.
But a new and comprehensive report by Amnesty International states that Facebook’s preferred narrative is false. The platform, Amnesty says, wasn’t merely a passive site with insufficient content moderation. Instead, Meta’s algorithms “proactively amplified and promoted content” on Facebook, which incited violent hatred against the Rohingya beginning as early as 2012.
Despite years of warnings, Amnesty found, the company not only failed to remove violent hate speech and disinformation against the Rohingya, it actively spread and amplified it until it culminated in the 2017 massacre.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-face...
Here's the report:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/8/six-killed-in-nepal-...