Christie Lai Ming Lam Existing literature on the effect conservation-led displacement has on those evicted is at best a mixed bag. Studies show that such eviction generally harms local communities, particularly those who are socio-economically marginalised (Agrawal & Redford, 2009; Cernea, 1997; Cernea, & Schhimit-Soltau, 2006; Heming & Rees, 2000; Lam & Paul, 2013). However, some scholars also advocate that the growing population near the protected areas indicates that conservation does indeed have benefits (Wittemyer et al., 2008). One source of this ambiguity in assessing the impact of displacement could stem from the unavailability of reliable data. A further quandary is the short-term focus in many of the empirical studies. This limits our understanding of how such displacement affects households in the long-term. When forced displacement remains the common conservation…

Liana Chase and Madhu Neupane The Bhutanese refugees represent an ethnically and linguistically Nepali minority group that was forced to flee Bhutan in the early 1990s (Evans, 2010; Hutt, 2003). Throughout their protracted displacement, the Bhutanese refugee camp population has been subject to considerable psychiatric study and intervention. Moreover, in the five years since the onset of resettlement, Bhutanese refugee mental health has become a public health concern among governments and communities welcoming refugees as well as multilateral organizations facilitating the resettlement process. The bulk of previous scholarship on Bhutanese refugee mental health has focused on issues of vulnerability, morbidity, and manifestations of distress, including suicide. To date, exploration of family- and community-level processes that aim to promote healing in Bhutanese refugee communities, hereafter encompassed under the heading of 'care',…

Shankar Ghimire This research examines whether aid that is specifically targeted for trade (referred to in the  literature  as  “Aid‐for‐Trade”  or  AfT)  has  helped  Nepal  in  its  trade  performance. Effectiveness  of  AfT  is  examined  by  analyzing  the  relationship  between  infrastructure development and exports. There are two main approaches used in the paper to analyze the effectiveness of AfT: first, whether AfT helps export levels across different sectors and, second, if it favors certain sectors over others. One potential channel explaining uneven gains in exports possibly involves the development of more favorable infrastructure system, enabled by aid, in the relatively more successful sectors.  The analysis of export performance from developing countries has drawn an increased attention in the recent years as the aid donating countries have increased the aid amount targeted…

Pauline Limbu I am interested in looking at the relationship that human beings have with nature, particularly material - land/territory/space - in relation to their idea of themselves and their social production and reproduction. In looking at this relationship, I will use historical and gendered lenses. In my paper I will explore the question of territory and space in its material form, and explore the meanings of land for different genders by focusing on the indigenous Limbu group of Nepal. I will situate the position of Limbu women, in terms of their relationship to land, alongside the forces of globalization, capitalism, resistance inside Nepal and the current indigenous rights movements. I will juxtapose ideas of pure forms of Limbu culture (i.e. before the Gorkha kingdom annexation of ‘Limbuwan’) with current…

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…