Rekha Khatri and Ian Harper  The national average for case finding of Tuberculosis in Nepal has remained between 70-76% for more than a decade now. Nepal Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) has an objective to reach the case finding rate of 82% by 2015 nationally. Accordingly, a new technology in detecting tuberculosis has been introduced in Nepal from 2011 under the TB Reach Programme supported by Canadian International Development Agency to increase early case detection of tuberculosis.  So far, sputum microscopy has been used as the basic test to diagnose TB in people based on physician’s recommendation. The new technology, called GeneXpert, endorsed by WHO in 2010,  is considered powerful as it is considered to detect the tuberculosis bacteria even in the samples that are not diagnosed as positive from the sputum…

Seira Tamang Discussions about women in Nepal, especially in tracing contributions to the nation and democracy, almost always emphasize women’s participation in democracy movements, opposition politics and various leadership positions.  Thus for example, there are numerous histories that trace the role of various women from Yog Maya Neupane onwards.  These histories are very important contributions because they are rarely covered by mainstream histories which are usually written by men.  However, they leave untouched the important relationship between gender, nation and nationalism.  The use of gender here refers not to biological differences between males and females, but to a set of culturally shaped and defined characteristics associated with masculinity and femininity. Feminist scholarship has shown how gendered power politics underlie ideas of nations and the politics of nation-building and how nationalist…

Janak Rai In this paper, I discuss how Dhimal, one adivasi community from Nepal’s easternmost lowland plains, the Tarai, use their village ritual to reclaim their historical relationships with their ancestral territories once they have forgotten and how ordinary individuals inscribe and write their ethnic histories into the newly rediscovered ancestral land by physically being at the place during the ritual. The paper is based on my ethnographic fieldwork with and among the Dhimal from 2007 and 2009 in different parts of Morang and Jhapa. Until a few years ago, a village called ‘Raja Rani’ in Morang district did not carry any special sense of place for the current Dhimal indigenous activists. After the discovery by Dhimal activists in the late 90s that their ancestors used live the Raja Rani…

Dambar Chemjong Naming and the place names have entered the main political debates in the process of delineating new provinces for restructuring the state of Nepal. The debates surrounding the naming of new provinces are fused with identity politics, which have created further contestations and confusions over understanding of identity in juxtaposition to delineating the state into new provinces in Nepal.  In this paper I will contend that problems of names, specifically the ethnic and place names, bear political valance and are integral to the collective identity that the place names carry along the attributes of collective history and culturally binding relationships of indigenous peoples. I will substantiate my arguments with ethnographic data from the Limbus and their claims of collective identity which, as they claim, is integral to the…

Pratyoush Onta The end of Rana rule in 1951 was an important rupture in the history of social science research in Nepal. The scholar of literature and history Kamal P. Malla (1970) has characterized the 1950s in the following manner: The post-1950 decade in Nepal is characterized, in the first place, by a sense of release and emancipation of the intellect from a century-old political and priestly yoke, and in the second place, by an unprecedented expansion of intellectual and cultural opportunities. The decade can aptly be called a decade of extroversion. For it was a decade of explosion of all manner of ideas, activities and organized efforts. The political and civil freedoms that became available to Nepali citizens after the end of Rana-rule allowed for the possibility of many…

Sanjay Sharma, Manoj Paudel and Shreemanjari Tamrakar  As a revolt against the exclusionary practices of the society, Dalits have been raising their voices and demanding equality from long ago. Despite the history of the movement, it is believed that the Dalit movement in Nepal has been unable to make substantial changes at the political arena and in the lives of common Dalit citizens. While some hopes were there in the first Constituent Assembly because of the ‘considerable’ presence of the Dalit lawmakers, the movement has faced a further setback with the decrease in their number in the second version of the lawmaking body. There are arguments being made that there is a danger of the achievements of the first Constituent Assembly, which included the drafting of eight main Dalit issues, being…

Amina Singh Simone de Beauvoir had famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman. From Beauvoir's claim Butler inferred that then, the notion of "woman" itself is a becoming in process and hence opens to intervention and resignification. Hence, I take the concept of "woman" not as a fixed category or passive construction of gender identity (like readymade clothes that we just put on whether it fits or not, or even if it makes us uncomfortable) but as a continuously ongoing process, negotiated by the physical, the cultural and material conditions of one's existence. To be recognized as an intelligible subject one may have to adopt the signifying practices of gender, i.e. the socially and culturally prescribed notions of womanhood. But I ask then, if gender…

Kristie Drucza My PhD research used a qualitative methodology known as grounded theory while applying a political economy lens to the situation of social assistance provision in Nepal. Seventy interviews were completed with a diverse range of key informants predominantly residing in Kathmandu. These included development partners, NGOs, GoN, unions, private sector, academics, journalists and political parties. The district of Sarlahi was chosen for beneficiary interviews because it has low human development indicators and because it covers the Madhesh region and as such the people residing there have a high degree of exclusion. Twenty one beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in three different villages were interviewed, including the Village Development Committee (VDC) secretaries. Additional interviews were completed with district-residing GoN officials and local political parties. The research found that in all villages,…

Tulasi Acharya Disability is built on the social and cultural environments. They shape our understanding and perception of what it means to be disabled and how it is different from the concept of able body. The idea of disability is gendered, and it clashes with cultural ideas about gender in specific ways. Particularly, in the case of women, as they are already considered “the second sex” or “the other, female disability is even more prevalent and transparent. This ideology of disability regarding ability preserves and authenticates what it means to be normal and this definition limits women to certain “normal” standards. Regarding this socially and culturally-based concept of disability, Garland-Thomson writes, disability provides for the able-bodied “cultural capital to those who can claim such status, [and] who can reside within…

Rajendra Pradhan It is widely believed by many Nepalis as well as Nepali and foreign scholars, e.g. Joanna Watkins (1996) and Kathryn March (2002), that the indigenous-nationalities (adivasi-janajatis) are more egalitarian, including in their gender relations, than other communities, especially the notoriously hierarchical and inegalitarian Hindus.  It is thus possible to speak of hegemonic inegalitarianism and hegemonic egalitarianism among these different communities. At the same time, however, anthropologists have demonstrated a wide variety of gender relations and patriarchy among the indigenous-nationalities and that these relations have changed over the past two centuries due to international, national as well as local causes.  Following Seira Tamang, it is therefore more accurate to characterize these diverse communities not in terms of single patriarchy but multiple and changing patriarchies. From a different register, it…