Shrochis Karki Although public schools have been rapidly on the decline in Nepal, this paper traces the circumstances under which a school has emerged as a quality education provider in the region. Positive deviance (PD), which first gained prominence in the field of nutrition and public health, provides the theoretical grounding to understand why and how certain actors and/or institutions flourish in hostile environments. Secondary schooling is a major component to the transition to becoming an ‘educated’ youth and while most analyses focus on the severe problems that public schools face, this PD approach helps find possibilities for change. However, the picture is not entirely rosy because even these graduates then face harsh realities where their success does not translate into meaningful higher education or employment. The category of ‘educated’…

Michael Hutt In his seminal book Literature, Popular Culture and Society, Leo Lowenthal argues that studies of the representation of society, state, or economy in the literature of a particular country or time contribute to our knowledge of ‘the kind of perception which a specific social group—writers—has of specific social phenomena’ and therefore to our knowledge of the ‘history and sociology of shared consciousness’ (1961: 143). This discussion will focus on five Nepali novels published between 2005 and 2010, i.e. during the final months of the internal conflict between the CPN (Maoist) and the monarchical state, and the period of political transition that followed. The novels were selected mainly because they have been widely read and discussed, at least in Kathmandu, and can therefore be seen as possessing sociological as…

Mahendra Lawoti This paper investigates the attitudes of Nepali parliamentarians toward democratic values during Nepal's second democratic interregnum (1990-2002). Was the elite attitude favourable for the consolidation of democracy in Nepal? Elites play significant roles in democratization of a country. Investigations of elite attitude becomes important when democracy does not consolidate, and even more so when the general public and scholars blame the elite for it. Empirical study of democratic values elite hold not only help us determine whether they are responsible for the lack of consolidation, but can identify variables that can be targeted for addressing the problems. The study is based on structured interviews of 101 (out of 265) legislators in 2000. The random sample was stratified based on political party, ethnicity/caste, gender, and regions. The survey employed…

Gregory Pierce For at least one thousand years, the Dolpo-pa, the people of Dolpo, an enclave of culturally Tibetan transhumant agro-pastoralists dwelling through the high Himalayas of Midwestern Nepal, have caravanned ware-laden yak over the high passes and through the barren valleys of their mountain homeland. Masters of the salt-for-grain circuit of trade between the Tibetan Plateau and the Gangian Plains, in moving through those unforgiving lands Dolpo-pa herders have, through the centuries, been confronted by a range of natural hazards—landslides, avalanches, flash floods, earthquakes, etc. Yet, as argued in this paper, the Dolpo-pa are not ‘vulnerable’. Nor are they ‘resilient’, at ‘risk’, or possessive of ‘adaptive capacity’. These, among other buzzwords common in hazard and disaster studies, take the individual as an explicit centre of consciousness somehow detached from…

Gérard Toffin Since the fall of royalty in May 2008, Nepal has theoretically become a republican state made up of equal citizens. Nepali society is still based on caste (and ethnicity) but the ideological context has changed considerably. The egalitarians values, which have been operative for some decades, and the new political environment have gradually caused a shift. Today, the caste system is rejected by a large number of people and of religious movements, even among Hindus. This rejection is perhaps of a more radical nature than in India, where it still plays an important role in public discourse. This paper addresses these paradigmatic changes and their impact on caste reality throughout the country. First of all, it focuses on the changes in terminology (if any), in the meaning of…

Dhruba Bahadur Khatri Introduction Intimate partner violence (IPV), a form of domestic or gender-based violence (GBV), includes acts of physical aggression, psychological abuse, forced intercourse, and other forms of sexual coercion, and various controlling behaviors. Although IPV is a widespread and deeply rooted problem, it receives limited public attention in Nepal mainly because domestic violence (DV) is seen here as a private family affair, and intervention by outsiders is disapproved. Few studies have been done on this field but do not provide sufficient information. The main objective of the study was to therefore characterise the present state of physical, sexual, and psychological violence and identify their demographic, socio-economic, and individual/personal determinants. The study was carried out on behalf of Social Inclusion Research Center (SIRC), Pokhara from September 2011 to March…

Christopher Butler Several South Asian countries have pinned a hefty portion of their future growth to hydropower from dams (Crow and Singh 2009; Pomeranz 2009). To ensure their success, state and corporate authorities have privatized many natural resources formerly considered to be common property, a development that dispossesses rural residents of land and water access, and delivers a serious impediment to already difficult livelihoods.  Nepal is no exception to this trend. In a country the size of the state of Indiana, Nepal hosts two dams with two more currently under construction, and seven others proposed for construction within the next decade (Dharmadhikary 2008). Having recently emerged from a ten-year civil conflict (1996-2006) with Maoist insurgents, the new Nepalese republic is faced with a delicate balancing act: attempting to grow the…

Christie Lai Ming Lam The main theme of this paper is to focus on how gender relations of Rana Tharu society were changing to reflect the new material conditions and cultural ideology. The key question I intend to answer is: did these changes have any implications for the status of Rana Tharu women? The labour arrangement between men and women has been widely recognised as a unit of critical analysis by social scientists in understanding gender relations and its role in the transformation of a society (Beneria 1982; Harris 1981; Mies 1986). Gender division of labour does not only reflect the social values of men and women but it is also shaped, recreated, transformed, and reinforced by social and economic changes taking place (Deere 1990; Moore 1988). Bear in mind,…

Andrea Kölbel Recent studies of Nepal’s labour market indicate that unemployment rates are highest for the age group between 20 and 29 years, with almost half of the young population being reported to be underutilised. In search for an adequate solution to the persisting problem of youth un-/underemployment, public actors, including national policy-makers and international partner organisations, increasingly place their hopes on the resourcefulness of young people themselves, emphasising on the ‘hidden potential’ of youth-led initiatives. In this paper, I investigate to what extent Nepal’s educated youth can indeed fulfil the role of a change agent by taking initiative to contribute to the wider social good. I argue that this is a question not only of young people’s motivation per se but also of their latitude to follow through with…

Amanda Snellinger Over the last decade and half, there has been a converging international and national interest to establish a youth policy agenda. The first initiative of youth-specific policy was in the Ninth Government Plan in 1998, in which youth were separated from adolescents and given a subsection, 14.2.1 'Youth mobilization'. It identified education, culture, employment, health, sports, crime involvement, and substance abuse as major priority areas (NPC 1998). Youth issues took less priority in the Tenth Plan devised by the last HMG of Nepal. However, since the institution of the 2006 interim government, there has been heavy investment in creating a National Youth Policy (2008), The Ministry of Youth and Sports, and broad scale education and employment schemes in the post-conflict era. It is not surprising that youth policy…