Kathmandu today exists in a conjuncture framed through multiple layers of overlapping moments: On the one hand, there is an evolving politico-economic landscape of municipal and local governance owing to projects of economic liberalization that might be termed ‘gentrification of state-spaces’ (Ghertner 2011); on the other hand, there is a changing aspirational landscape for the unpropertied working class tied to the fading promises of Nayaa Nepal and the failure of radical politics to reimagine ‘the urban’. In this context, this paper seeks to interrogate the demand for the right to the city advanced by squatter communities, or sukumbasi, in Kathmandu, as a category of analysis with recourse to an account of extreme marginality. As a starting premise, this paper seeks inspiration from Kristin Ross’ (1967) take on everyday life incubating not just…

In the wake of economic and political instability, high rates of unemployment and outmigration and the decade-long violence of the “People's War,” increasing cases of “mass hysteria,” also known in Nepali as chhopne rog, among adolescents have been reported in government schools throughout Nepal. Investigating the phenomenon of mass chhopne rog, which affects mainly female adolescents in rural Nepal, this paper traces connections between new forces of social change which have taken shape in the post-conflict period, and the psychocultural dimensions of people’s lives. Why are adolescent girls disproportionally afflicted by chhopne rog and how might this be connected to relations of power? What is the public discourse on “mass hysteria” in Nepal, and how do families, healers, and psychiatrists understand, explain, and treat this illness? What is the nature…

In this paper, I will uncover the politics behind the use of new label- the indigenous as an umbrella category to denote former ethnic groups of Nepal. The former ethnic groups known as ethnic nationalities (Janajati) shifted into indigenous nationalities (Adivasi/Janajati) in 1991 on certain global historical process. As Adam Kuper (2003) states, that it is not a bad idea to call people by the name they recognized themselves, but some discredited old arguments are lurked behind new names. As culture is a euphemism of race, the word indigenous is a euphemism of primitive. The term Indigenous is a fancy word used in the place of what we call ancient, hunting gathering, tribal, native and aboriginal peoples etc. For Kuper (2003), the politics behind the construction of indigenousness is no…

The transition from monarchical democracy to a democratic republic was a significant step taken by political parties towards democratization of the Nepal, which occurred in the second people’s movement (2006). At the time of second people’s movement Nepal experienced many structural changes such as the conversion of monarchical democracy to a democratic republic, Maoist converted into a political party and realization of an elected Constituent Assembly all this straighten out by the political parties. With the widespread growth of electoral politics, political parties have proliferated around the world. Parties can be found in every continent and country, and multiparty systems of government have become the primary way to organize politics. Political parties play a vital role in the expansion and consolidation of democracy. The emergence of political parties in Nepal…

The proposed paper aims to discuss how international education produces and reproduces the inequality in the case of Nepalese student migrants in Japan. In the paper, I particularly examine an emerging type of migration that has not received adequate attention in the Nepali migration literature. While much research has focused on either low skilled Nepalese migrant workers typically working in Malaysia and middle east countries, or high education Nepalese professionals studying and working in western countries, there is no enough study on the growing college students particularly their participation in migration. My ethnographic study of Nepalese students in Japan shows that facing the high youth unemployment, political instability and attraction of ‘high-paid’ jobs, more and more Nepalese youth perceive migration as rite of passage to secure their future. In most…

For 240 years, Nepal was ruled as a Hindu kingdom under a Hindu king from the Shah dynasty. The government was administered under widely divergent political configurations across this time, and the country was administered alternately by the king himself, by successions of prime ministers, by Shah family regents, or by Rana hereditary rulers. What varied much less was how the government was performed in the contexts of state-level ritual. In these contexts, regardless of who held the lal mohar or administered the tax structure, the king was annually performed to be the center of power and the pinnacle of the state. The ritual identity of the king rested on a variety of annual events, from Indra Jatra to Dasai to Basanta Shrawan to Shiva Ratri to Bhoto Jatra. Bhoto…

Since the 1980s, Nepal has gained worldwide recognition for path breaking achievements in community forest management. Community forests currently occupy nearly 23% of Nepal’s total forest area, the management of which involves over 18,000 community forest user groups comprising 1.6 million households and nearly 40% of Nepal’s population (DoF 2012). The spatially-explicit impacts of this 30-year transition in forest management, however, have not been documented in part due to the lack of surveys studying the same forest patches through time. The author has studied forest and agricultural practices in a village near Gorkha since 1980 and conducted forest surveys in 1980, 1990, and 2010. This paper describes changes in the village between 1980 and 2010, with a focus on forest status, use, and management. In 1980, the vast majority of…

This paper explores several emergent social movements in Kathmandu; these movements draw most of their membership from an elite group of internationally experienced young people.  “Bipals” or Bideshi Nepalis (Foreign Nepalis) return from study or work abroad with high expectations, both their own and their communities’, for success and contributions to building a better country.  Yet, most quickly find barriers to their progress, whether in the form of entrenched bureaucracies and hierarchies or physical infrastructure limitations. Whereas overseas experience once guaranteed a high-paying and secure job, this is no longer the case in contemporary Kathmandu, and many returnees must forge a new narrative of success. For some, this has taken the form of involvement in entrepreneurship organizations that encourage the creation of independent businesses and advocate for a more productive…

International migration has a long-standing history in Nepal. While Nepalese migration to other countries is not uncommon, India remains the main destination. A large number of Nepalese began to migrate to the coal mining areas in the Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya during 1970s. One of the factors attracting them to Jaintia Hills was the presence of coal mines that needed plentiful of labour. The coal mines offered them with an opportunity to generate income. In Jaintia Hills coal mining is done by means of private ownership. Landowners have adopted a crude form of excavation that employs “rat hole mining” (narrow shafts dug). Most of the Nepalese migrant workers can make a decent earning within a short span of time. However many lose their lives due to accidents resulting unscientific…

In Nepal as elsewhere, the design of climate change policies and programmes is based on the assumptions that policy-makers, scientists and development practitioners make about what constitutes and causes the vulnerability of others. On the other hand, there is little space for Nepali farmers to voice their perceptions and experiences of their multiple vulnerabilities in the policy arena. This research explored the concept of deliberative governance as a process to build a common understanding of problems and issues and develop a basis to develop solutions (Fischer 2003; Leach et al., 2007). This action research first started with of a one-year participatory video project where farmers from Dhanusa District produced twelve films on different facets of vulnerability, interviewing around 50 farmers from different social groups in their VDC. Each film was…