India, March 9 -- Voters in Nepal have swept aside the country's dominant political forces and handed a victory to a party formed only four years ago and led by a 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician in the election held after the Gen Z protests of last September. The disillusionment with the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-UML, which have had a stranglehold on the political landscape for almost 30 years, was so great that leaders such as four-time premier KP Sharma Oli were roundly rejected by the electorate. The youth-led protests found closure with Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) leader Balendra Shah defeating septuagenarian Oli in his home constituency by a record margin. The RSP now appears set for a two-thirds majority in the 275-member lower house of Parliament, and the results reflect the desire of the electorate, including nearly a million first-time voters, for sweeping changes after decades of a revolving door of coalition governments created by the same forces. In this sense, the outcome has been different from those of elections in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which also witnessed youth-led protests but saw established parties securing power once polls were held. Growing public frustration with an old guard that failed to address corruption and nepotism, and the brutal repression of last year's uprising, are among the factors that led to the humiliating defeat of the established parties. Shah and his cohort will now have to deliver on the expectations of a young generation hungry for change. They may soon learn that governance requires a different language than that of street protests. Shah, whose experience in office is limited to serving as the mayor of Kathmandu, now faces the onerous task of rebuilding the shattered economy, creating jobs and improving health care and education in one of the poorest and slowest-growing economies in South Asia. The polls have also shifted the narrative from the traditional India-China binary and other such faultlines to focus on the hardware of governance. Shah and the RSP can take a leaf out of the playbook of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in Sri Lanka, where the party won office in similar circumstances but changed course to adopt a reasonable middle-of-the-road approach. The JVP even abandoned its legacy of hostility toward India to build bridges with New Delhi. For India, the challenge will be to familiarise itself with the new party in power in Nepal and quickly rebuild bridges and establish a working relationship....