On a July night in 2022, Sri Lankan protesters surged past barricades and swarmed the president’s residence, swimming in his pool, marvelling at the gilded interiors, and forcing the Rajapaksas to flee. Two years later, in August 2024, Dhaka’s streets filled with students furious at a rigged job quota system; by dusk on August 5, Sheikh Hasina, South Asia’s longest-serving female leader, had resigned and left the country. And last week, Kathmandu erupted as a ban on social media ignited Nepal’s TikTok generation.Different places, but a common choreography: drift, corruption, trigger, mobilisation, fracture, collapse. When centralisation, media throttling, and selective repression intersect with sudden shocks – economic collapse, exclusionary rules or digital bans – the result is mass mobilisation. Those protests turn into regime change when elites fracture: cabinet resignations, military neutrality or judicial intervention, making repression unsustainable.A region with protest in its DNASouth Asia has long carried protest in its DNA. Bangladesh’s anti-Ershad movement in 1990 toppled a dictator after weeks of student-led demonstrations. Sri Lanka’s 1953 Hartal paralysed Colombo in fury over food subsidies. Nepal’s Jana Andolans of 1990 and 2006 remade its constitutional order and ended a monarchy. Pakistan’s 2007 Lawyers’ Movement revived judicial independence after General Musharraf’s dismissal of the Chief Justice. India’s JP movement of 1974-75 mobilised youth, students and workers in ways that helped usher in the Emergency. Even Bhutan, often seen as insulated, has had its share of demonstrations, particularly during its 2008 transition to constitutional monarchy. The Maldives saw youth-led pro-democracy protests in the 2000s, while Afghanistan, under both republic and Taliban rule, has witnessed students, women, and ethnic minorities take to the streets despite immense risks.South Asia is a region where grievances often burst through formal institutions and spill into the streets. Yet outcomes differ. In Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, leaders were driven from office. In Pakistan, elite manoeuvre, a no-confidence vote, mattered more than street heat. In India, farmers forced repeal of laws but did not topple the government. In the Maldives, “India Out” campaigns swayed elections, not barricades.The Sri Lankan implosion (2022)Sri Lanka’s drift came through dynastic consolidation. The Rajapaksas filled cabinet seats with family, cowed institutions, and flaunted wealth while the economy cratered. Hare-brained policies, most infamously the sudden ban on chemical fertilisers that devastated agriculture, collided with entrenched corruption and fiscal mismanagement. The trigger was economic collapse: fuel queues that stretched for days, inflation that gutted salaries, shortages that emptied store shelves. Latent discontent turned into the Aragalaya (“struggle”), a coalition of students, unions, clergy, professionals and even elements of the diaspora.The state tried tear gas and curfews, but security forces hesitated. The decisive moment came when cabinet ministers resigned en masse and the president fled. The outcome was stark: the Rajapaksa era ended, though the economic malaise and corruption networks endured. Like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka’s economy depended heavily on remittances; instability at home rippled outward to its migrant households abroad, adding another layer of urgency to the protest wave.Bangladesh’s student revolt (2024)By 2024, Sheikh Hasina had ruled for more than 15 years, presiding over impressive growth while eroding democratic space. Opposition parties were marginalised, media curbed, patronage entrenched and corruption increasingly tolerated as the price of loyalty. The trigger was deceptively small: restoration of a job quota system seen as privileging ruling-party loyalists. Students erupted, and repression radicalised moderates.As protests spread, the government doubled down; imposing internet curbs, using lethal force. Dozens were killed. But repression backfired: more citizens joined, and by August 5, Hasina fled. A caretaker was installed. Here too, remittance dependence shaped the context. Bangladesh’s globalised labour force was acutely sensitive to disruption of communication and trust; any erosion of those links risked compounding discontent at home.If remittances added urgency to protests in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, in Nepal they defined the very character of mobilisation.Nepal’s digital-rights revolt (2025)K.P. Oli’s government had chipped away at institutions, mixing patronage with corruption scandals, but the sharp trigger was a ban on social-media platforms. In a country where TikTok and Facebook dominate youth culture, the ban was not seen as technical regulation but as an assault on identity and freedom.Students and Gen-Z users poured into Kathmandu’s streets. The government used lethal force; over 70 protestors were killed. The crackdown only hardened resolve. On the second day, there were widespread attacks on symbols of authority and power. The army, wary of mass casualties, pressed for compromise. Oli resigned; Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, became interim prime minister.But the ban cut deeper than culture. Nepal’s economy is one of the most remittance-dependent in the world; remittances account for nearly 30% of GDP. Outflows of workers have doubled in recent years, and families depend on daily digital transfers and conversations to sustain livelihoods. The ban threatened to isolate millions of workers abroad from their households at home. Not long ago, as we argued here, even temporary disruptions to communication undermined trust in governance, markets, and family security. The 2025 ban revived that old truth: when leaders sever citizens from their economic and emotional lifelines, resistance intensifies.This was South Asia’s first digital-rights revolution: protests centred not only on expression but also on the right to maintain the transnational ties that sustain households. It showed the paradox of digital authoritarianism: shutting down platforms can mobilise the very citizens one seeks to silence.India’s farmers and the buffers of federalismIndia’s protests are often larger than those elsewhere in the region. The 2020–21 farmers’ movement drew hundreds of thousands, sustained encampments for a year and forced repeal of farm laws. Earlier protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019–20 mobilised students, minorities and civil society. In 2011, Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign shook Delhi.For decades, India’s federalism and competitive elections absorbed dissent: opposition-ruled states gave platforms to critics, courts offered occasional relief, voters could punish incumbents. These buffers bent governments but did not break them.The lesson from the neighbourhood, however, is that buffers can erode. Sri Lanka’s institutions bent until they snapped. Bangladesh’s growth masked narrowing civic space until a quota dispute ignited fury. Nepal’s federal experiment could not shield it from the force of digital-age mobilisation. India still has stronger guardrails, from scale to electoral cycles to military neutrality. But resilience is not immunity; buffers bend until they break. India’s experience shows both resilience and risk: institutions bent once, during the farmers’ protest, and will need to remain flexible if they are to withstand sharper pressures in the future.Patterns across the regionAcross South Asia the choreography repeats. Leaders consolidate power, narrow civic space, throttle the press, and lean on patronage to secure loyalty. For a time, drift is tolerated. Then comes the trigger: fuel queues in Colombo, a quota rule in Dhaka, a social-media ban in Kathmandu. Suddenly grievances that seemed scattered ignite into fire.Youth and students lead, unions and professionals follow, the middle classes join. Governments reach for familiar tools: curfews, shutdowns, live fire, but find repression swelling protests rather than stilling them. The turning point comes not in the streets but in the corridors of power: cabinets fracture, soldiers hold back, judges refuse to rubber-stamp.Then leaders fall, hurriedly, often by night. Drift, corruption, trigger, mobilisation, fracture, collapse: the rhythm of South Asia’s protest politics.External influences: amplifiers, not initiatorsIt is tempting to see a heavy external hand. But in case after case, protests were about domestic failures, not India, China, or the West. India appears mainly in the aftermath: stabiliser in Sri Lanka, lightning rod in Bangladesh, peripheral in Nepal. China looms in the background: debt in Sri Lanka, influence in Nepal, but rarely sparks protest. Western governments issue statements, but cannot ignite discontent.The lesson is sobering: external actors amplify; the cause is internal. When leaders overreach, by banning social media, reinstating quotas or flaunting palatial wealth, citizens act.Protest as South Asia’s reckoningSouth Asia’s streets have always been a stage for politics. What is new is the speed with which today’s youth can mobilise, the visibility of repression in an age of livestreams, and the fragility of governments that mistake autocratic drift for permanence.The lesson for the region’s leaders is stark: autocratisation buys time, not immunity. And when the choreography begins, it ends not with applause but with flight into the dark.Shyam Tekwani is a professor and columnist specialising in security affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.