A closet Madheshi comes for Baluwatar

Through the Maithili speech, Balen showed how he can instrumentalise his identity to be politically profitable.

A decade after the third Madhesh revolt –a climate so tense the country stood on the precipice of a rupture–Nepal may be on the verge of electing its first Madheshi to the highest executive position. If the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s (RSP) crowd sizes and social media buzz are anything to go by, Balen Sah, the darling of youth and a rapper-turned-mayor, may be Nepal’s youngest and South Asia’s second -youngest elected prime minister. His steep rise from an artist to a potential PM at 35 has no parallel in the region’s gerontocratic politics and will mark the dawn of a new era.