I find it hard to beleive a rally of 500,000 can be organized by paying people to come to the streets. Sujata Koirala's money doesn't add up to that much. Most of these protests have been spontaneous, but yes there have been cases, especially outside Kathmandu where Maoists have emptied villages and brought people to the streets to protest. There is no definitive answer to whether people are out there out of conviction or compulsion : I'd say at best conviction and at worse a mix of both. But there is no way in hell these protests are fuelled solely by money or intimidation. To say so would be to deny the underlying driver: frustration with the King. To Vincent Bogada's earlier point about parties needing to control mob mentality : I fully agree but it looks like the movement has already spun out of their control and they need to do something to bring it back under control. It seems the decision to reject the King's offer was, amongst other things, driven by this. Lets hope the SPA can do this and something good comes out of it all.