Current History

In our April issue, Anirudh Krishna explores the common elements in a global wave of Gen Z protests in recent years. “With a growing sense of their own economic vulnerability,” writes Krishna, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, young people in South Asia and elsewhere “have been enraged by the perception of a corrupt and unaccountable elite hoarding opportunity for its own.” The protesters belong to a generation that is “digitally savvy and globally connected,” yet economically frustrated. Taught to believe in education as a route to social mobility, youth in developing countries have been disappointed to find few employment options beyond the informal sector. Deconcentrating power and offering “alternative ladders of opportunity” could help overcome obstacles to wider prosperity.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/152/217733/How-to-Address-the-Roots-of-Gen-Z-Frustration

Krishna’s essay, “How to Address the Roots of Gen Z Frustration,” is available along with the rest of our annual South Asia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

How to Address the Roots of Gen Z Frustration Youth protests that have toppled governments and brought life to a standstill in countries in South Asia and beyond are united not only by visible symbols, notably a Jolly Roger flag from a Japanese anime, but by a common underlying logic. These countries tend to share three key elements: low social...

In our annual South Asia issue, Sara Shneiderman and Salina Dolmo Lama show how discontent with corruption and nepotism, channeled by social media, brought down Nepal’s government. As most young Nepalis struggled to find jobs, widely circulated images of so-called nepo babies exposed the “elite accumulation of wealth and impunity,” write Shneiderman and Lama, both scholars at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. An ensuing ban on social media sites drew outrage, since digital spaces provided a “lifeline” for Nepalese young people at home and abroad. When the ban was lifted, social media “became a real-time archive of events” amid raucous protests and a violent response by the state. Online platforms served as “hubs for coordination, deliberation, and democratic experimentation.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/145/217738/Can-Gen-Z-Protests-Transform-Nepal-s-Political

Shneiderman’s and Lama’s essay, “Can Gen Z Protests Transform
Nepal’s Political Futures?” is available along with the rest of our April issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

Can Gen Z Protests Transform Nepal’s Political Futures? In September 2025, Nepal was shaken by youth protests against corruption and nepotism, state violence that left at least 76 people dead, and widespread destruction of infrastructure. The government was dissolved, an interim government was appointed, and elections were called for March 2026. This ess...

In our April issue, Magnus Marsden examines the long-standing connective role of Afghans in Pakistan, whose presence there is now at risk. Amid border clashes, “Pakistan has made increasingly strenuous efforts to identify remaining Afghan residents and return them to their ‘homeland,’” writes Marsden, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Sussex. Yet the territory that is now Pakistan has long been a homeland for Afghans. For centuries, “Afghan trading networks were part of a rich and complex history of commercial, military, and political interaction between Afghanistan and South Asia.” Although Afghans who arrived as refugees in recent decades have been associated with negative stereotypes, they have also become integral to social and economic life in Pakistan’s cities and borderlands. The present crackdown on Afghans reflects a recurring pattern in which they are used as “political pawns.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/870/139/217732/The-Imperiled-Connective-Presence-of-Afghans-in

Marsden’s essay, “The Imperiled Connective Presence of Afghans in Pakistan,” is available along with the rest of our annual South Asia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/870

The Imperiled Connective Presence of Afghans in Pakistan The mass deportation of Afghan refugees and mobile people from Pakistan to Afghanistan is reshaping trade networks and routes, dividing families, and disrupting local economies and identities. For centuries, traders and others in the Afghan diaspora were crucial to economic and cultural interconnect...