Why Youths Are Protesting In Several Countries

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From Dhaka to Jakarta to Kathmandu, the message on the streets is unmistakable: young people are done watching their futures bartered away by dynastic politics and entrenched corruption.
The rage is not sudden.
It is the accumulation of years of broken promises, rising inequality, and the suffocating dominance of “nepo babies” who inherit power and privilege while the rest are told to wait their turn.
What links these protests is not just geography but the raw hopelessness of a generation that feels abandoned.
Youth unemployment soars, education systems crumble under neglect, and the cost-of-living spirals while the ruling class enriches itself.
Governments across South and Southeast Asia have perfected the art of rhetoric, but the young see through it: no one is coming to rescue them.
The retaliation has a clear target: parliaments, ministers, political dynasties, and business tycoons who hoard wealth and control opportunity.
Protest in IndonesiaThese are not abstract enemies; they are the architects of a system that bleeds public coffers dry - while ordinary families scrape by, slide into debt, and despair in silence.
Suicide, migration, and daily humiliation are the price of this betrayal.
Betrayal fuelled defiance
That betrayal has birthed defiance. The staggering crowds in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nepal are not passive demonstrators.
They are citizens reclaiming the public square as the only arena left for accountability. They know ballot boxes are rigged by money, the media is stifled by power, and institutions are captured by elites. Protest is not a choice; it is survival.
Anti-government protest in Bangladesh last yearWhat these uprisings signify is a generational rupture. The young will not play the role of silent bystanders while the privileged few gorge themselves on public wealth.
They are demanding not charity, not crumbs, but recognition as rightful owners of their nation’s future by demanding jobs, affordable housing, fair education, and dignity.
Read the signs
The systemic rot cannot be papered over with token reforms. To earn back trust, governments must break the stranglehold of patronage politics, redistribute opportunities with equity, and ensure access to livelihoods that do not depend on lineage, race, religion, or skin colour.
Anything less entrenches the very inequalities that fuel revolt.
Governments across the region should read these protests as a cautionary tale.
To underestimate the intelligence, resolve, and organisational capacity of the young is to gamble with stability. These movements are less about episodic unrest than about the redefinition of citizenship itself.
The warning is clear: youth will not be taken for granted.
They are no longer the future waiting in reserve but the present, demanding recognition. - Mkini
CHARLES SANTIAGO is a former Klang MP.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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