August 21st, 2025
We stand here with one truth: our rights are being snatched.
This is not just a slogan. It is our painful reality.
We feel it in our tired bones after twelve-hour shifts.
We feel it in the insecurity of zero-hour contracts.
We feel it in the humiliation when an algorithm cuts our pay because we took a bathroom break.
We feel it in the despair of leaving our homeland, only to be cheated of our wages and dignity abroad.
So, when we say our rights are being snatched, what does it mean?
It means the deal is rigged.
It means the most basic exchange of our lives— the selling of labour—is rigged.
The capitalist— buyer gains.
The worker —seller is cheated.
They get the benefits. We are cheated of the value we create.
This injustice is everywhere.
This imbalance shapes everything:
Therefore, the entire system cannot be patched.
The mode of production itself must change!
A Long Struggle— though, this struggle is not new.
For centuries across the world, and for nearly eight decades in Nepal, workers have fought for their rightful share.
Capitalism just keeps changing its mask.
The story of industrial capitalism is a story of invention built on exploitation.
First, it was the satanic mills of Industry 1.0, enslaving us to machines. Marx called it “primitive accumulation”—the brutal process of fencing off common land and forcing a newly created proletariat into wage slavery.
Then, Industry 2.0 fused industry and finance, birthing monopolies and empires. Lenin saw it for what it was: imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, where nation-states became servants to monopoly profit, leading to world wars and economic collapse.
Industry 3.0 went digital. Factories fled to where wages were lowest. Unions were crushed. Our hard-won welfare states were dismantled brick by brick. Precarious work became the norm. The 2008 financial crisis was this system having a heart attack—and making us pay for its ambulance.
Now, we face Industry 4.0 —the age of surveillance capitalism.
They no longer just own the factory; they own the algorithm that manages us. The platform that intermediates for us. Amazon warehouses are digital prisons. Uber and Airbnb call us “independent,” but deny us rights.
Every click, every conversation is mined for profit.
We are more connected than ever, yet more isolated.
More visible, yet more disposable.
We are the cyber-proletariat.
Alienation has deepened. We control neither our time, nor our creativity, nor even our dreams of the future.
Half the world’s workers live without security, healthcare, or pensions.
This is not only an economic crisis—it is a crisis of survival itself.
And looming ahead is Industry 5.0.
They promise “human–AI collaboration.” But in whose hands?
It threatens a future where our very thoughts are monitored for profit.
It could mean liberation from toil—or it could mean machines monitoring our very thoughts for profit!
This is the global picture of our denied rights.
But what is Nepal’s story?
From the Himalayas, our story looks different.
We never had a clean break from feudalism. It fused with capitalism.
Both poisoned by the caste system.
Our workers are not just industrial proletarians. We are semi-proletarians.
One foot in the farm, one foot in foreign factories.
One hand on a textbook, the other on a gig app.
Our oppression and exploitation is not just about class.
It is class, plus caste, plus gender, plus geography.
This is why we call our struggle “Class plus Three.”
Since the March 4th Movement of 1947, Nepali workers have demanded dignity, union rights, and a fair share of wealth.
Our history is of power changing hands at the top, while exploitation remained below. From the Rana oligarchy to today, Nepali workers have fought the same fight: for dignity, for the right to organize, for a fair share.
We started with no rights.
Our only tool was to fight.
We shook the Ranas. We won fleeting freedoms.
Dictatorship crushed us again, but we kept the flame alive.
We won collective bargaining. We built unions like GEFONT.
The 1990 people’s movement made us social partners.
The 2015 Constitution brought a new vision: new twin labour legislation at 2017, balancing flexibility with security. Our Social Security Scheme was a huge victory, protecting every worker.
Yet digital capitalism threatens to undo it all. Exploitation simply adapts.
Industry 4.0 arrives here not as opportunity, but as precarity.
Our economy runs on remittances—the sweat and blood of migrants trapped in global labour markets. Our youth are exploited by platforms, not empowered by them.
So, how do we fight back?
What is the way out? How do we get rid of this?
We do not reject technology. We must seize it!
The same AI that can enslave us could, under our control, free us for a 15-hour workweek.
The same platforms that exploit could give us more time for life, for family, for community.
We need to contextualize ourselves!
Our old tools are not enough for new problems—we need a new mindset.
We cannot fight 21st-century digital feudalism with 20th-century tools.
Our task is clear:
Our rights were never given. They were always won through struggle.
The chains today are digital, but they are chains nonetheless.
And, this is not just about wages. It is about changing the system itself.
Breaking the antagonism of class. Replacing exploitation with democratic planning.
Ensuring that the next industrial revolution belongs not to billionaires, but to us—the workers, peasants, and oppressed.
Comrades,
Every right we enjoy today was won through blood and struggle.
Our rights are not granted. They are taken back. They were stolen through the greed of capital. They will be restored only through the solidarity of labour.
The chains of today may be digital, but they are chains all the same.
Capital reinvents its domination. We must reinvent our resistance.
Unions of tomorrow must be agile, visionary, rooted in solidarity that crosses class, caste, gender, and geography.
Let us be the generation that does not just resist, but that builds anew— that not only resists, but reimagines.
That builds a future where technology serves humanity.
Our task is to build a future—where a Nepali farmer has the same dignity as a Silicon Valley coder.
Where our identity is a source of strength, not a chain— where no worker, anywhere, has their rights snatched away again.
Let us march forward with one goal: to break these algorithmic chains and achieve our collective liberation.
The future belongs to us.
Thank you.
[Key-note at Asia Regional Meeting of 3F International, 20 August 2025; Hotel Mall, Kathamndu]