Katmandu
\nOne hundred days after taking power promising sweeping reform, Nepal\u2019s 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 \u201cBalen,\u201d reached the milestone on Sunday and has moved quickly since taking office.
\nJust 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.
\nThe two have since been released without charge while investigations continue.
\nObservers say that first move set the tone for the government\u2019s subsequent actions \u2014 fast and symbolically loaded but also often legally contested and executed with little patience for institutional processes.
\nShah 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.
\n\u201cIn three months, we know very little about the man we have elected as the prime minister,\u201d said journalist Pranaya Rana. \u201cHe needs to open up.\u201d
\n\u2018On an expressway\u2019
\nFew predicted the scale of Shah\u2019s landslide victory in the March 5 general election, the first vote since the youth-driven anti-corruption protests toppled Oli\u2019s 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.
\nThe 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.
\nShah said in a rare public address to a meeting of the ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party in June that his administration was \u201con an expressway\u201d toward change.
\n\u201cThe brakes will only be applied when we reach our destination,\u201d Shah said.
\nThe 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.
\n\u201cThe nation is standing at a decisive crossroad of comprehensive economic reform,\u201d Minister of Finance Swarnim Wagle said as he presented the budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katmandu One hundred days after taking power promising sweeping reform, Nepal\u2019s 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 \u201cBalen,\u201d reached the milestone on Sunday and has moved quickly since taking office. Just a day after he was sworn in, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99891,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99920,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99908\/revisions\/99920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}