Rape has been a common way of victimizing woman or men in the world physically, mentally as well as socially with sexual abuse. It is not a new phenomenon, however. There has been a generation being raped in the history in the various parts of the world. Considering past as past and moving on in the present, there are rapes every now and then around the world. Of course some are reported and hundreds of them or even thousands of them go unreported. Those unreported are never heard and a sheer silence always covers the victim and the victimizer remains free. But what about those reported rapes? There is a lengthy process when you consider reporting rape. A woman especially when she reports of rape has to undergo various kinds…

It is well known that the study of ‘other culture’ constitutes the crux of what we know as comparative sociology and social anthropology. As such, the focus on the other society or for that matter the insistence in cross-cultural comparisons or explorations of a new culture was not unknown to Indian sociology and social anthropology. Earlier generation Indian sociologists/ social anthropologists like G. S. Ghurye and K. P. Chattopadhyay have made some notable contributions by making cross cultural comparisons in their studies. A handful of later generation Indian sociologists/ anthropologists have also made some pioneering efforts in this regard. However, compared to the volume of sociological/ anthropological researches those have a focus to India, the number of studies focusing foreign country as their subject matter or field is negligible. In…

This paper presumes that language can be a significant factor in shaping the courses of belongingness. Arguing as such it attempts to provide an overview of the contemporary linguistic situation in Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalayas with a significant poser: as to whether language can yield multiple modes of belonging for the same linguistic group at different intervals of time. As is well-known Darjeeling-Sikkim region falls within the geographical limits of the Eastern Himalayas which can again be conceived of as a ‘cultural area’ distinguishable by a single cultural criteria i.e. Nepali language. Conceiving Darjeeling-Sikkim region as a distinctive cultural space within this broad culture area (distinguishable on the basis of the predominance of Nepali language) of the Eastern Himalayas and drawing experiences from contemporary realities of neighboring countries like Nepal and Bhutan…

My paper examines the intersection between structural violence, health, healthcare and the daily lives of women living in the mountain villages of Jumla.  Structural violence, a theoretical perspective first described by Galtung (1969) and recently championed by Farmer (1996; 2004), is a contested frame for understanding the causes and effects of poverty and social injustice on the most disadvantaged (Schleper Hughes and Bourgois, 2004). However, the framework of structural violence has rarely been applied to Nepal and the usefulness of the concept has not been adequately evaluated (Basnyet, 2015; Kohrt, 2009).  In particular, the voices of women engaged in subsistence agriculture, living outside district capitals have been absent.  Women living in remote areas, burdened by life and work, can be invisible to researchers leading to unhelpful generalisations about their capabilities,…

In post-conflict Nepali society, death is discussed particularly in subjective terms, depending upon the context in which one died where Maoists war equated death with sacrifice. This equivalence was made explicit in the various practices, such as the conventional understanding that death on the battlefield does not pollute the relatives as death normally does (Lecomte-Tilouine 2006). The meaning of a human life was principally focused on death. However, the meaning of death is discussed in contrasting terms when it came to guerrilla fighters in the Maoists conflict. Death was discussed by guerrilla fighters in the context of a political and social movement. The Maoists’ propaganda discourse discusses it as death soaked with the blood of the martyrs, from which the soil germinates, and power grows (Lecomte-Tilouine 2006).  Consequently, while the…

The earthquake of April 2015 and the numerous aftershocks had severe impacts in most of the central hill districts of Nepal including the capital, Kathmandu. With months after the major quakes and recurring aftershocks, every individual, however difficult, is trying their best to shift towards normalcy. In this quest towards coping the stress brought about by the earthquake are also the street children. The global literature of natural hazards suggests that the children are one of the most vulnerable groups during the time of calamities. It is also observed the number of street children shoots up after such disasters. Like in any other unplanned city and highly unequal society, in Nepal too the street children are present in all the major urban centres. Being one of the byproducts of uneven…

It is often argued that women candidates are less competent than their male counterparts and hence only few women candidates are listed in a party list for the electoral competitions (Paxton & Hughes, 2007, Philips, 1991; Tamale,1999). The reasons behind that are resource differentials between male and female. Male are more resourceful than female.  The resource differentials can be level of education, income, and property ownership. Therefore, gender quotas are provided for women to encourage and ensure women’s equal participation in the politics – parliament, cabinet and political parties. The electoral statistics of Nepal – election result 1991, 1994, 1999 and a couple of Constituent Assembly (CA) Elections  2008 and 2013 suggest that despite resource differentials between men and women,  women are equally competent as male candidates if they are…

Junga Bahadur Bhuda was 33 when he died as a result of a motorbike accident in Jumla. Through a series of ramifications springing from this episode, in this paper I try to reflect on howconsciousness of death manifests itself in the Sinja Valley of Jumla. In such a way death may appear much more present than commonly thought, and the consciousness of it, at first glance so philosophically distant from ordinary life, constitutes a vantage point from which to observe and reflect upon the sense-making of existence as me-in-the-midst-of-others and of death-in-the-midst-of-life. Thus, drawing attention on the existential meaning of death, I present it as the flip coin of life rather than its opposite – a complementary and indispensable aspect of our experience-of-the-world. Albeit being confident that to a certain extent there are some…

Introduction: Assessing and understanding governance is crucial to ensure accountability and transparency and to improve the performance of mental health systems. Using the health system governance framework developed by Siddiqi and colleagues this paper assesses the situation of mental health system governance in Nepal and provides recommendations for improving governance. Methods: In-depth individual interviews were conducted with national level policymakers and district level planners. The interview checklist was developed based on the Siddiqi framework for assessing governance of health system. Data analysis was done in NVIVO 10 using framework matrices. Results: The mental health system governance assessment reveals a few positive developments and many challenges. The facilitating factors include availability of mental health policy, inclusion of mental health in other general health policies and plans, increasing participation of Non Governmental…

Studies on climate change have been dominated by climate science while its impacts are studied by economics, both of the disciplines using empiricist methodologies. Such studies have interpreted the change as environmental, economic and political problems. Studies of climate change from social science perspectives or using humanistic methodologies are still lacking, particularly in Nepal. As a result, social scientists in Nepal are still confined to understand climate change as what the climate scientist tell, and are restrained to accept the impacts of change as what the economists convey. The reality however is that, whatever the lenses: environmental, economic or political is used to look the climate change; the problem is particularly the social. Therefore social scientists should have their own ways of studying climate change, and associated implications and societal…