REUTERS, Kathmandu

Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah was sworn in as prime minister of Nepal yesterday, tasked with restoring political stability and creating jobs in the poor Himalayan nation long troubled by fragile governments and weak growth prospects.

Shah, who wore skin-tight trousers, a matching jacket, his signature black Nepali cloth cap and sunglasses at the ceremony, is Nepal’s youngest prime minister in decades and the first Madhesi – people of the southern plains bordering India – to lead the Himalayan nation that is wedged between Asian giants India and China.

A former mayor of the capital, Kathmandu, Shah, 35, became prime minister after his three-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) won 182 seats in the 275-member parliament in the March 5 election, the first vote after the anti-corruption Gen Z protests in which 76 people were killed in September last year.

In a new music video posted on his Facebook page on the eve of his swearing-in ceremony, Shah stressed After

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