There is long history of using social sciences theory and methods in the fields of health and development to examine a range of public health issues in Nepal. Anthropologists have used interdisciplinary approaches to make public health interventions more culturally relevant in community settings[1-3]. However, there is a lack of systematic approaches to identify and address barriers to development and uptake of community-based mental health and psychosocial programs [4]. This formative study aims to qualitatively identify resources, challenges, and potential barriers to development and implementation of culturally adapted community-based mental health programs in accordance with the mental health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) for persons with severe mental disorders and epilepsy. Focus group discussions (n=9) and key informant interviews (n=26) were conducted in the community including key policy makers, health workers,…

Conservation, management and utilization of forest resources primarily depend upon policy provisions and legislations. However, participation and contribution of stakeholders in the whole processes, including public policy debates, is more crucial to shape forestry sector governance. This paper attempts to discuss and analyze the undercurrent discourses in Nepal's forestry sector. In doing so, this paper has attempted to discuss presence and contribution of indigenous peoples (now onwards adivasi/janajati) in overall forestry sector public discourses in Nepal. The analysis is based on seven multiple dimensions: (a) constitutional provisions; (b) provisions in policies and legislations; (c) presence in the forestry sector governing institutions; (d) number of publications; (e) number of authors appeared in the publications; (f) presence in the civil society forums and networks; and (g) presence and voices in the public…

Natural disasters like flood, earthquake and landslides are common occurrences in Nepal. Along with the socio-economic costs, the bigger disasters have more often than not brought political consequences too. We choose the 1934 earthquake to argue that revisiting such a natural disaster through archival sources will not only provide a more nuanced understanding of the event, but also compel the research community to ask questions that will have implications on how states and societies can better cope with natural disasters and what kind of bearing the nature of the state will have on the aftermath.

The lecture deals with the three inter-related concepts of migration, livelihood and identity from the perspective of the Nepalis without Nepal, located mainly in India’s Northeast. It tries to show how their identity as migrants from Nepal has been a bane for them in India’s Northeast, how it influences their orientation towards Nepal and India, and how it affects their livelihood pursuits in the latter country.Listen to or download lecture in audio formatNepalis without Nepal: Migration, Livelihood and Identity{play}http://www.soscbaha.org/downloads/audio/nepalis_without_nepal_migration_livelihood.mp3{/play} 

  Sikkim, in the Eastern Himalaya, is named ‘sacred land’ (Ti. Bas yul) by the Bhotyas and other sikkimese ethnic groups. And in the West Sikkim, the area is known as Beyül Demojong, ‘the hidden valley of rice’.In my doctoral thesis (Chiron, 2007), I have developed the idea that the patrimonial heritage within the Kaychupalri area of West Sikkim transcends the physical element of property ownership. It also includes the inheritance of the sacred landscape (Beyül Demojong), topography and ecology, and its connotation such as pilgrimage centre. Vidal de la Blache, a leader of the tradition of Human Geography during the XIX century, once observed that man and his environment are more intimate than a snail and its shell. I want to demonstrate here that the relationship between nature and…

On the eve of the First Constituent Assembly’s deadline to draft a constitution, a consortium of politicians and civil society groups under the banner Akhanda Sudurpaschim, “Undivided Farwest,” announced a transportation strike across Nepal’s Farwest Development Region that lasted for 32 days. Anxious that the two Tarai districts of the region—Kailali and Kanchanpur—would be separated from the seven Hill districts and consolidated into an ethnic federal state, “Tharuhat,” Akhanda Sudurpaschim supporters demanded the government recognize the entire Farwest Development Region as a single federal province under the principle of “geographic federalism.” In this paper, I address how it became possible for the development region concept to garner sentiment and create territorial attachments in Nepal’s Farwest. Using archival documents and administrative reports describing the planning of the development region model in…

Communities choose their identities over time with distinct objectives in mind. Nepalis IN Sikkim and Darjeeling  had to struggle at various periods in the last 150 years as ‘Paharias’, ‘Nepalese(of Sikkim)’, and ‘General (common) citizen of India’ for their citizenship, political rights and recognition of Nepali language as an Indian language. The year 1990 turned out to be critical for them like of the other Nepalese communities. The democratic movement in Nepal let loose a movement of ‘janajati’, an under- current that also spread in east of Nepal in India. The movement received a momentum after the Government of India accepted the recommendations of the Backward Commission that had termed most of the Sikkimese Nepalis as the ‘OBC’- (Other Backward Classes). When pressed for the implementation of the above decision…

Substantively, the debates about secularism in Nepal are over the proper place and role of religion in a modern, heterogeneous nation-state. The manner in which these debates take place, however, reveals much about how democracy can be made to operate and how particular democratic ideals are constructed. In this paper, I examine how political agency is conceived of, employed, and negated in the secularism debates. Political agency is a concept and concern central to the work of sociologists interested in how states function. Most studies are concerned with agency from one of two directions: topdown and bottom-up. The top-down approach focuses on how states or other corporate bodies facilitate or suppress the agency of individuals and groups. The bottom-up approach focuses on how individuals and groups express or self-suppress their…

In the 1950s, Nepal not only became a democratic state, but also entered into the international community of nations with its much celebrated membership in the United Nations and other regional and international forums. This was a time when the state, in a fairly celebratory mood, tried to become like other states. Its projection to the outside world was of a Hindu state claiming to have embraced the global values of “modernity”, such as human rights and democracy. In the 1960s, when it constitutionally adopted Hinduism as its religion, this did not change Nepal – as the discourses show – from claiming its adherence to the modern global values. The state’s modernization efforts during all the 30 years of Panchayat were deemed to be compatible with its Hindu identity. After…

The slogan “Buddha was Born in Nepal” can be seen on taxis and t-shirts throughout the streets of Kathmandu and is pervasive in popular discourses of Nepali national pride. In the formerly Hindu, newly secular state of Nepal, why does it matter so much where Buddha was born? Who makes this claim, and for what purposes? In this paper, based on research conducted during 18 months of anthropological fieldwork, I will investigate the ambivalent tensions surrounding the claim that Buddha was born in Nepal through discursive analysis of personal conversations and observations, along with media artifacts and unfolding events. On the one hand, the claim is frequently deployed as an assertion of a unified and proud Nepali national identity. Nepal’s ownership of Buddha’s birthplace gives it a unique status among…