An uplifting story in the cold December of 2025 warmed many hearts: “From a thatched hut in Siraha to medical school in Dang, Satyanarayan Safi’s journey inspires hope.” The achievement is indeed inspiring. What the report either overlooked—or chose not to mention—is that Satyanarayan’s father, Madhuri Safi, first learnt to imagine a different future after a stint as a migrant labourer, in a world where caste identity does not police one’s aspirations. The story demands a larger recognition: Migrant labourers are not peripheral to Nepal’s recent history; they are its protagonists.

Standing at the threshold of 2026, historians may quarrel over who shaped Nepal most in the first quarter of this millennium. Some will cite the politicians who presided over the transition from monarchy to republic. A few will credit entrepreneurs of the profit sector. Others may point to the innovators of the nascent digital economy. All of them would miss the point.

The true architect of modern Nepal does not sit in a boardroom, a design studio or a cabinet meeting. In the tradition of naming a collective force as a singular, era-defining archetype, there is only one true candidate for Nepal’s Person of the Quarter Century (2000–2025): The millions of Nepali migrant labourers sweating it out in distant lands.

Often clad in high-visibility vests under a 50-degree Celsius desert sun or working long shifts in the manufacturing hubs of East Asia, these men and women have performed a feat of national endurance that has no parallel in our history. They are the invisible sinews that held a fragile nation together when everything else threatened to pull it apart. But their contribution is not just measured in bank transfers; it is found in the way they have redefined what it means to be a resolute ‘Nepali’.

National life

To understand why the migrant worker deserves this title, one must look at the cold, hard numbers. In 2000, Nepal was gripped by an armed conflict and an uncertain future. By 2024, remittance inflows surged to an estimated $11.4 billion, contributing over 26 percent of the national GDP.

Throughout this quarter-century, while foreign direct investment fluctuated and official development assistance proved insufficient, remittances remained the only consistent and reliable lifeline. This capital flowed directly into rural Nepal, helping extreme poverty plummet from nearly 55 percent in 1995 to just 0.37 percent in 2023, a success “unparalleled among its peers”, according to the World Bank.

Revenue from import-based and consumptive economy has helped even an inefficient and corrupt state machinery and profiteering operators of the market expand infrastructure and services throughout the country. More schools, hospitals and roads have been built in the last 25 years than in almost two centuries prior. If Nepal is no longer defined solely by its ‘least developed’ status, it is because the migrant labourer bought our way out of it.

The melting pot boiling on foreign soil has been producing a sociocultural alloy often unrecognised back home. Perhaps the most overlooked legacy of the last 25 years is that true national integration is taking place not in the halls of parliament, but in the labour camps of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

For decades, Nepal has struggled with deep internal fractures—divisions of caste, ethnicity and geography. However, in the cramped dormitories of Abu Dhabi and Doha or the factory floors of Selangor and Seoul, these hierarchies crumble. A Madheshi youth from the banks of the Kamala River, a Bahun from the Gandak region, a Rai from the eastern hills, and a Dalit from the mountains of far-west find themselves sharing a bunk bed, a meal and a common struggle.

In these ‘men only’ camps, the ‘other’ becomes a brother—a bhai or a dai—in everyday struggles. They share the same ‘Nepali’ identity as a shield against the harshness of inhospitable living conditions. They learn each other’s dialects, sing folksongs, celebrate festivals in togetherness, and—most importantly—recognise their shared destiny. This horizontal integration, born of shared hardship, has done more to foster a unified national consciousness than decades of state-led and donor-funded ‘nation-building’ projects. When they return, they bring home a version of Nepal that is more cohesive and less parochial.

Great stabilisers

The period between 2000 and 2025 was defined by three existential crises: the Maoist insurgency, the 2015 Gorkha earthquake and the Covid-19 pandemic. In each instance, the migrant worker was the ‘First Responder’ of the economy.

During the most intense phase of insurgency between the declaration of emergency in 2001 and the end of the royal-military dictatorship in 2006, migration provided a safety valve, preventing total economic collapse and providing families with the means to survive the turmoil. When the hills were empty of opportunity and filled with conflict, the Lahure culture of soldiering in foreign armies evolved into what can perhaps be termed as the Lahare compulsion of making a beeline at exit points to go abroad in search of work.

After the Gorkha Earthquake of 2015, it was migrant money, not just international aid, that rebuilt thousands of homes in the hardest-hit districts. Volunteers hogged the limelight, but relief came from family members abroad through money transfer agencies.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, remittances helped calm nerves and lower the anxiety of economic collapse. Despite job losses abroad, workers continued to send money home, helping the nation weather the global standstill and lockdown storm in the economy when tourism evaporated overnight.

The human price of progress has not been negligible. Nominating the migrant worker as the ‘Person of the Quarter Century’ is also a sombre recognition of a sacrifice that should never have been so absolute. For 25 years, the departure lounge at Tribhuvan International Airport has been a site of ritualised heartbreak just as eyes moistened every time one saw the sad faces crossing the border towards the Indian plains at Sunauli, Jamunaha, Gauriphanta or Gaddachauki.

We cannot discuss the triumphs without acknowledging the grief of affected families that sent their able-bodied members abroad. With the arrivals of coffins at TIA averaging three a day, thousands of young Nepalis have returned in wooden boxes, victims of heat stress and industrial neglect. Many come back home either diseased due to dangerous working conditions or amputated after handling hazardous tasks. Many a times, malpractices of manpower agencies lead unsuspecting labourers to fall into the hands of dangerous operators, as it happened in Iraq in 2004 with catastrophic consequences.

The social cost of men going abroad in the prime of their lives is equally staggering: Newlywed women left at home to manage the household, a generation of children growing up via video calls and fertile lands left fallow because the youth are busy building cities elsewhere. They have endured the exploitative Kafala system and a state that often views them more as ‘remittance-generating assets’ than as citizens. Yet, they persevered and helped people back home endure ruthless insurgency and counter-insurgency, squabbling politicos, an extractive regime mired in massive corruption and various forms of structural discrimination.

As we look towards 2050, it is important to reflect on the legacy of blood and sweat that irrigated Nepal’s independence and sovereignty. The challenge for the country is to transition from a ‘labour-exporting’ economy to one that can harness the skills of its returnees. The quarter-century of 2000–2025 will be remembered as the era when Nepali workers built the infrastructure of West Asia while simultaneously ensuring the survival of their own homeland.

The migrant worker did not wait for the government to fix the economy; they went out and fixed their own family’s economy, and in doing so, they saved the nation from economic collapse. They are the heroes of the modern Nepali epic—unsung, often exploited, but ultimately the most powerful force for both economic survival and social integration.

For their resilience and their role as the ultimate safety net, the collective of Nepali Migrant Labourers is the only choice for the Person of the Quarter Century of this millennium. Let us bow our heads in recognition of their contributions as we wish each other a Happy New Year, 2026.