Nepal PM marks 100 days with fast change and few words

Katmandu
One hundred days after taking power promising sweeping reform, Nepal’s 36-year-old rapper-turned-Prime Minister Balendra Shah has upended the government while remaining an elusive public figure. The former mayor of Katmandu, better known as “Balen,” reached the milestone on Sunday and has moved quickly since taking office.
Just a day after he was sworn in, police arrested former prime minister KP Sharma Oli and his ex-interior minister on the recommendation of an inquiry commission into the deadly September 2025 uprising that toppled Oli.
The two have since been released without charge while investigations continue.
Observers say that first move set the tone for the government’s subsequent actions — fast and symbolically loaded but also often legally contested and executed with little patience for institutional processes.
Shah has kept an unusually low profile, preferring to communicate through social media and even delivering his victory speech as a rap song. He has also avoided meetings with foreign envoys and relegated visits to neighboring India and China, the traditional first stops of a Nepali prime minister, to his foreign minister.
“In three months, we know very little about the man we have elected as the prime minister,” said journalist Pranaya Rana. “He needs to open up.”
‘On an expressway’
Few predicted the scale of Shah’s landslide victory in the March 5 general election, the first vote since the youth-driven anti-corruption protests toppled Oli’s government. His rise was powered by the same public anger that drove young protesters onto the streets, fueled by a lack of economic opportunities and corruption among the entrenched political elite.
The government launched a 100-point reform agenda covering governance, anti-corruption measures, service delivery and digitalization. About 70 measures have been implemented, with the rest underway, according to the government.
Shah said in a rare public address to a meeting of the ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party in June that his administration was “on an expressway” toward change.
“The brakes will only be applied when we reach our destination,” Shah said.
The government has presented a 2.1 trillion rupee ($13.8 billion) spending plan focused on boosting infrastructure, technology, health and education, while pledging to stabilize the economy.
“The nation is standing at a decisive crossroad of comprehensive economic reform,” Minister of Finance Swarnim Wagle said as he presented the budget.