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As Bangladesh and Nepal hold crucial elections — on February 12, 2026, and March 5, 2026, respectively — following dramatic youth-led uprisings, the outcomes will be closely watched, for they will not only reshape domestic politics in the two countries but also impact regional dynamics. Speaking to The Hindu, Roman Gautam, Editor of Himal Southasian, reflects on the political churn in the region, India’s role, and the prospects for regional cooperation.
The region has seen three uprisings in recent years — Sri Lanka in 2022, Bangladesh in 2024, and Nepal last year. When you look back, what was most striking?
The most obvious take away was the depth of discontent that has existed in all of these countries. While some say it is all social media — social media certainly played a significant role — it is the economic drivers that we must pay more attention to.
In Sri Lanka you had an outright economic crisis that was in many ways more than the political discontent. It was economic desperation that was driving so many people out onto the streets. In Bangladesh, the focus was on the authoritarianism and the brutality of the Sheikh Hasina regime. But if you remember in the lead up to these uprisings in both Bangladesh and Nepal, cost of living was a big question that kept coming up.
The fixation on politics in the near-term is because it is easier to make sense of, especially when there is an election. The economic dynamics evolve over a longer term. The frustration with corruption was such a universal theme.
In Sri Lanka, the presidential and general elections were held [after the uprising] and we saw a pretty thorough sweeping out of the old political order and the first real opportunity at governance for the JVP [Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna]. I remember conversations back home in Kathmandu, where when [the uprisings in] Sri Lanka and then Bangladesh happened, on a few occasions I heard people saying “we have the same problems, our turn will come too”, and it did, very shockingly and violently.
Both Bangladesh and Nepal are going to the polls. What does the political landscape look like now?
With the elections, it is now the consolidation phase. The question is how much of an overhaul are we likely to see. In Bangladesh, was the uprising against the entire old order or much more against the Awami League? The BNP [Bangladesh Nationalist Party] is the front runner, the favourite in the election right now, which is not a complete root-and-stem overhaul of the system. The BNP has its own, very problematic history. The BNP’s record shows many of the same sins that the Awami League was castigated for.
The big question in Bangladesh now is what is the BNP? With Khaleda Zia’s passing, there is a generational shift and [emerging] dynamics within the party, including over exactly how the new leadership takes shape. So what kind of BNP are we likely to get and what is the BNP now going to stand for?
There are fears within Bangladesh of a return to some of the old ways. The security apparatus that Hasina inherited and built up remains largely intact. The students-led party [National Citizen Party], born out of the July revolution, has tied up with the Jamaat [Jamaat-e-Islami], which some people saw coming, but a lot of people were surprised and shocked. Women leaders, who were at the forefront of the July revolution, are asking if this party is really going to represent the spirit of what they came out onto the streets for. The Jamaat is making statements that it will not throttle women’s rights. Given its record, that needs to be taken with a big grain of salt.
What about Nepal? The old actors are still in the fray, isn’t it?
In Nepal, it is that process of reconsolidation. It is fair to predict that the old parties, the traditional three for us in recent times, the Nepali Congress, the UML [Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist)], and also the Maoists, will take a beating at the polls.
Even within each of those parties, there has been a process of trying to reinvent themselves, certainly within the UML and the Congress. Voters are trying to understand what kind of party each of them will emerge as.
The frustration and the memory of the revolt remain very fresh. We have seen some consolidation among the newer political forces. Especially now, the two newer faces of Nepali politics, Rabi Lamichhane and Balen Shah, have come together under a single party structure. That in itself has its own contradictions and clashes, and we will have to wait and see how long it lasts. There is a very good chance that we see a very scattered mandate in Nepal. Compared to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, Nepal is more unpredictable because of the sheer number of little parties.
India is avowedly pursuing a ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy. How would you evaluate that?
A realistic assessment of ‘Neighbourhood First’ from the time the slogan was launched is that it has been little more than a slogan. Whatever efforts there have been out of New Delhi, they have largely failed because overall New Delhi’s relationships and ties with its neighbours are not better than they were back then [2014]. In many cases, they are severely worse. Bangladesh is a stark example. Anti-India sentiment has become an increasing part of the political landscape in the Maldives and in Nepal.
There is a process underway of the subordination of New Delhi’s regional interests to the domestic needs of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], rather than the bilateral interests or regional interests. For New Delhi, the greater metric of success right now is perhaps whether the complexities of the region can be saffronised in a way that becomes palatable to the domestic audience. The BJP does have a lot of domestic electoral and political gain to harvest from pushing this narrative on Bangladesh, as much as that narrative is deeply injurious to Bangladesh-India ties.
The amount of damage that does to India’s standing and goodwill towards India cannot be overstated. Indian aid in the wake of the economic crisis or the natural disaster in Sri Lanka, for instance, is enormously to India’s credit. In Nepal, too, we are in India’s debt after the earthquake. And yet you have all these positives in the balance sheet, and you have this massive negative that very often wipes out a lot of the positives. We must also ask where is India trading the most? India’s biggest trade partner in terms of materials being imported is China and yet you have New Delhi coming to Kathmandu or Dhaka and putting pressure on the governments there to throttle trade with China. The hypocrisy of that is noticed and known, and it counts as a massive negative in that balance sheet of bilateral and multilateral regional ties with India.
Where does that leave regional cooperation?
Things are in many ways quite bleak politically for any kind of South Asian regionalism. That is not the ultimate goal to pursue. The ultimate goal for each of our countries to pursue independently is the well-being of their own citizens. The logical course of that will lead to and will pass through greater regional integration simply because of the economic logic. With that frame in mind, it is tragic the way that politics is standing in the way of that. For all its regional and global ambitions, India is not taking a hard enough look at the extent to which its domestic politics is poisoning the well regionally and beyond.
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India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy has largely failed: Roman Gautam
