By Narayan Prasad Mishra

Nepal’s political leadership never tires of boasting about running the country with transparency, efficiency, and good governance. Slogans flow easily from podiums and parliamentary benches, painting a picture of a nation marching toward prosperity and stability. But these claims ring hollow when they collide with the harsh realities faced by millions of ordinary Nepalis—victims of a state that has turned its back on their suffering.

Nowhere is this betrayal more visible than in the streets, where over 7.5 million cooperative victims have been demanding justice for the past several years. These are not political agitators or foreign instigators. They are ordinary citizens—laborers, teachers, farmers, retirees, and small business owners—who trusted the cooperative system to secure their hard-earned savings. Instead, they were met with betrayal. Their life savings, entrusted to what was supposed to be a backbone of community-based financial inclusion, were siphoned off by unscrupulous operators who flourished under the watch of a negligent and complicit state.

In these three years of relentless struggle, dozens of these victims have died—not in accidents, but from hunger, untreated illnesses, and the slow agony of despair. Their pleas echo through the streets of Kathmandu, but the government, engrossed in ceremonial posturing, has offered them only silence, empty promises, or token investigations that lead nowhere.

Stripped of Savings, Stripped of Dignity: Nepal’s Cooperative Victims Protest in Desperation

In the heart of Kathmandu, a heartbreaking scene has unfolded. Even Women, victims of cooperative fraud, have resorted to a semi-nude protest—an act both shocking and profoundly moving. They are mothers, sisters, and grandmothers who entrusted their life savings to cooperatives, only to be betrayed by systemic corruption and a government that looks the other way.

Stripping down in public is not an easy choice. In Nepal’s deeply traditional society, it carries enormous social stigma. But when justice remains elusive for years, when officials remain indifferent, and when fraudsters roam free, what options remain? These women, robbed of their savings and dignity, have laid bare not just their bodies, but the naked truth of a broken system.

This protest is not about vulgarity. It is about vulnerability. It is a desperate, last cry for attention from a state that has failed its own people. Their silent screams demand justice—not just for themselves, but for the countless voiceless victims of financial exploitation.

For those with a conscience, this protest should not be dismissed as a mere spectacle. It is a mirror reflecting the cost of corruption, where ordinary citizens are stripped of everything—wealth, dignity, and hope.

The world must see, and the world must care.

Women victims of cooperative fraud stage a semi-nude protest in Kathmandu, Nepal, laying bare their pain and desperation. For anyone with a conscience, this scene is shocking, heart-wrenching, and deeply tragic. 

A Parallel Exodus: The Tragedy of Unemployment and Forced Migration

If the cooperative scam victims represent those robbed within the country, there is another equally devastating tragedy unfolding beyond its borders. Every year, thousands of Nepalis—many young and skilled and unskilled —leave the country in search of jobs, dignity, and hope. Not because they wish to, but because they are forced to flee a homeland that offers them neither opportunity nor security.

Nepal, blessed with abundant natural resources, youth potential, and a strategic location, is being emptied of its working-age population. This is not a coincidence. It is the product of decades of systemic corruption, mismanagement, and political apathy. The same leaders who sing songs of patriotism are the architects of an economic system that pushes its citizens into the deserts of the Gulf or the factories of Malaysia—often to endure exploitation, abuse, and, in tragic cases, death.

The irony is painful: Nepal exports its labor and imports its humiliation. At home, those left behind—women, children, older people—bear the brunt of broken families, social fragmentation, and economic stagnation.

The Twin Crises Are Interlinked

The cooperative scam and mass unemployment are not isolated crises. They are symptoms of the same disease: a corrupt, self-serving political class that governs for itself, not the people.

When governance is reduced to slogans and shows, fraudsters hijack financial systems, and the economy becomes a hollow shell, unable to generate decent jobs for its citizens.

The Way Forward: Accountability, Reform, and National Awakening

Solving these twin crises requires more than token speeches or cosmetic reforms. It demands courageous political will and systemic overhaul at multiple levels:

Immediate Justice for Cooperative Victims

  • Establish an independent, empowered special tribunal to investigate and prosecute cooperative fraud cases.
  • Reform the cooperative regulatory framework, placing it under strict, transparent public oversight. Enact laws immediately to confiscate assets linked to cooperative frauds—including those of their close relatives, friends, and supporters.
  • Confiscate the assets of all responsible parties, including politicians and bureaucrats who shielded the fraudsters, and use these assets to repay the victims.
  • Ensure victims receive their money, big or small amount —both principal and interest—without delay and within a clearly defined timeframe.
  • Do not burden victims with unnecessary court procedures that drag on for decades, often beyond their lifetimes.
  • Recognize that this is not a matter of legal dispute or controversy requiring prolonged court battles. The cooperative organizations’ official records clearly show who deposited how much, making the victims’ claims straightforward and undeniable.

A National Jobs and Economic Revival Mission

  • Launch a Marshall Plan for Youth Employment, investing heavily in agriculture modernization, hydropower, tourism, and green industries.
  • Create public-private job creation partnerships, with special incentives for industries that create decent jobs at home.
  • End bureaucratic red tape and corruption that suffocate entrepreneurs and investors.

Restoration of Trust in the State

  • Using performance-based evaluations and recall mechanisms, make bureaucrats and political leaders personally accountable for their promises.
  • Strengthen civic engagement, media freedom, and grassroots watchdog groups to keep power under public scrutiny.

Conclusion: The Hour of Reckoning

Nepal’s cooperative victims and unemployed youth are not just statistics—they are the human face of a failed governance model. Their suffering is a national shame that cannot be brushed aside with political rhetoric.

If Nepal is to reclaim its dignity, its leaders must face the mirror and choose whether to continue down the path of betrayal and decline or embrace a politics of accountability, justice, and national renewal. At the same time, donor countries—who are friends of Nepal and well-wishers of the Nepali people—and the International Cooperative Alliance, the global guardian of cooperative values, must step forward to pressure the Nepal government to deliver justice to the cooperative victims without delay. Their solidarity, support, assistance, and intervention—within their effective powers—are urgently needed to ensure this happens.

The choice is clear. But time is running out.

narayanshanti70@gmail.com