A Year After Nepal’s Uprising, Self-Immolations Test the State’s Promise of Change

Five people set themselves on fire in Nepal in July. Some are now reading the deaths as political in a country whose citizens are asking whether, one year after its Gen Z revolution, anything has changed.

Ganesh Nepali, a 25-year-old ride-hailing driver from a marginalized Dalit community in Nepal’s Mugu district, left home early on the morning of July 9 and told his brother to cook beans and goat trotters for when he returned.