The idea of creating new universities out of the constituting colleges of Tribhuvan University (TU) has a long history. When the then Mahendra Sanskrit University (MSU) was started as Nepal’s second university in 1986, this idea was first put into practice by transferring some of TU’s colleges to MSU. However it was only after the end of the Panchayat System in 1990 that discussions around this idea became thick as a way to reduce the size and management challenges of TU. After many false starts, it was only in 2010 that three new universities – Agriculture and Forestry University, Far-Western University and Mid-Western University – were established by separate Acts passed by Nepal’s parliament with the proposed transfer of specific constituting and affiliated campuses of TU to the new universities.…

Nepal’s oldest university, Tribhuvan University (TU), was established in 1959 as a state-supported public university. In keeping with the centralized king-controlled nature of the polity under the ‘Partyless Panchayat System’ (1960-1990), TU was allowed to be the only university in Nepal until 1986. When Panchayat folded in 1990, the size of the student body at TU, the number of its constituent colleges and those to which it had provided affiliations had grown by many folds. After describing the manifold problems in Nepal’s higher education sector, the 1992 Report of the National Education Commission (NEC) identified the centralization of authority whereby all of TU’s colleges had to rely on its Kathmandu officers for academic direction and financial assistance as a main reason for that institution’s ill-management. Several projects funded by donors…

In this paper, I look at the trajectories of higher education expansion in Nepal through “affiliation” mode, which in essence allows a university to award degrees to students from campuses in return for the payment of affiliation fees. Nepal has a relatively short history of higher education. Discussions for the establishment of a Nepali university were first initiated in 1948, which focused, inter alia, on the nature of the university to be established—teaching or affiliating, or both. In the mid-1950s, when Nepal embarked on a systematic development of a national education system following the political change of 1951, the option laid out for the establishment of a university was a combination of “teaching” and “affiliation” functions. According to the report of the Nepal National Education Planning Commission (1955: 129), this…

Various high level commissions set up by the Government of Nepal and several projects funded by donors such as the World Bank have attempted to address the problems in the higher education sector in Nepal. Some of the major reform initiatives that were started in the early 1990s include the concepts of multi-universities and the decentralization of Tribhuvan University. However, macro-level evidence thus far suggests that these efforts have not been all that successful. Furthermore, there is relatively little research-based academic or media engagement with the various reforms initiated in the higher education sector in the past 25 years. The three papers in this panel try to redress this gap by providing analyses based on detailed historical and contemporary data collected through a mix of research methods. The first paper…

Nepal's Lok Dohori industry is based on migration. The majority of performers, arrangers, producers, investors, and even most of its audience are rural-urban migrants within Nepal, and many have spent time working abroad. Song production is a collaborative process involving many different individuals, most of whom will have personal experience engaging with popular songs as migrants themselves. Based on ethnographic research in Nepal's music industry and among migrant performers and fans in the UK, US, and Bahrain, this paper examines how artists in the music industry contribute to shaping the experience of migrant life by highlighting particular emotional states, particularly those of suffering, longing, and nostalgia, in the songs and music videos they produce. I suggest that modern Nepali popular songs about migration draw on poetic tropes of dukha (suffering)…

Despite recurrent stories of exploitation, ill-health, suffering and death amongst Nepali labour migrants, widely circulated in literatures, media and NGO discourses, young men’s aspiration to out-migrate from rural Nepal has never been higher. In their attempt to escape the regimented and constrained life in rural Nepal, most migrants go through a considerable debt and hardship to organize their mobility only to find themselves in the midst of difficult and exploitative working and living conditions in their destination. Migrants’ lives are also characterized by fun, excitement, adventure in the form of drinking, cinemas, use of gadgets such as mobile phones, images of high rise buildings and wide roads amongst others that offer powerful avenues through which these migrants maintain sense of purpose despite the difficulties they face. Reflecting on my own…

Why are stories worth telling about Nepali experiences of labor migration necessarily focus on suffering (dukha)? Studying the XXth century Nepalese diasporic literature, Michael Hutt (1998) has demonstrated the pervasiveness of dukha in many novels or short stories about the flight and settlement of poor Nepalese in India. Recent research, documenting diverse experiences of Nepalese migration to India, the Persian region, and the West, increasingly centers on discourses about pain, dilemma, and hardship abroad. These migration narratives of dukha are widely spread in the form of poems, popular songs, amateur films by Nepali migrants and their families at home and abroad. The cultural production and circulation of these migration narratives in the Nepalese society and in popular media, however, has not been fully understood. Migrants themselves, on Youtube for example,…

Present paper aims to discuss the Issues of Social Security and Citizenship pertaining to an elderly in Nepal. People of Nepal are deprived of social security benefit being devoid of the citizenship certificate. However, genuine and traditional and social and religious Janma Kundali, Chaurashi and Janko System are in existence in Nepal to verify the actual age of the elderly. Under the broad framework of the theory of Welfare state, the paper focused on issues of social security. Paper analyzes whether or not social security scheme in Nepal reflect the norms and values of the welfare state. Furthermore, paper analyze the aspect of micro level pros and cons of social security scheme and trace out systematic way to manage social security and citizenship program. Similarly, paper aims to analyze the…

To what extent does third-party coordination contribute substantially to conflict resolution? While the strategies mentioned in the existing conflict management literature focus on the fact that third parties should be coordinated to make them effective in intervention processes, they do not address how such coordination strategies have contributed to conflict resolution in actual practice. In the light of this research gap, and drawing upon the case of the Maoist armed conflict and peace process of Nepal, the focus of this paper is to provide empirical justifications of coordination strategies from two perspectives: coordination success and coordination effectiveness. The coordination success component evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of certain third-party coordination processes in conflict resolution efforts. The coordination effectiveness component assesses the actual contribution to conflict resolution of different coordinated actions…

Nepal is one of the world’s poorest countries with a per capita GDP of $427, ranking 163 out of the world’s 179 countries. Most of Nepal’s population, over 80%, is rural and involved in agriculture, mostly subsistence, with limited educational and economic opportunities. In the national level, over 60% of men and 45% of the women are literate. Among farming households, over 60% of the poor smallholding women and men are illiterate and are struggling for enough food to eat. Save the Children acknowledge and supports that all the people, especially children, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Realizing the food insecurity situation and vulnerability in the Mid-Western…