Paper 1: Reconstruction and the Rise of One-roomed Houses in Rural Nepal
Presenter: Bina Limbu
Affiliation: Research Associate, Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal
Paper Abstract: In the four years after the 2015 earthquake, some considerable progress has been seen in the private housing reconstruction. Starting with the establishment of NRA followed by Reconstruction Act 2072 and execution of Rural Housing and Reconstruction Program (RHRP), various reconstruction policies and provisions most notably, the private housing grant disbursement guidelines have been introduced and implemented with the objective to facilitate ‘earthquake resilient houses’. Out of thousands of affected families or ‘beneficiaries’, several families have rebuilt ‘one-roomed house’ adopting one of the government-prescribed designs. Although there might be multiple reasons behind adoption of the one-roomed houses, dissenting voices and dissatisfactions have been expressed against such house questing usefulness and appropriateness of the house as well as the whole concepts of ‘owner-driven reconstruction’ and ‘building back better’.
In this paper, based on several months of ethnographic work in two sites of Dhading and Sindhupalchowk districts of Nepal during 2018 and 2019, we try to address two major questions in regards to the one-roomed house: a) What are the key factors that have led some earthquake affected families or beneficiaries build a one-roomed house? And; b) How do the affected families perceive rebuilding of one roomed-house and, why?

Paper 2: Earthquakes and Cashflows: Disaster Financialization and the Microdynamics of Disaster Capitalism in Nepal
Presenters: Manoj Suji¹ (on behalf of co-Presenters Philippe Le Billon² & Dinesh Paudel³)
Affiliations: ¹Research Associate, Social Science Baha; ²Professor, Department of Geography & Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada; ³Assistant Professor, Department of Sustainable Development, Appalachian State University, USA
Paper Abstract: The literature on the political economy of post-disaster reconstruction tends to contrast two arguments. One is that the victims of disaster are dispossessed as a result of ‘disaster capitalism’ processes, and the other is that people benefit from greater opportunities and improve their lives as a result of the post-disaster reconstruction boom and ‘building back better’. This paper engages with these two contrasting perspectives and seeks to provide a more nuanced account through a case study of post-earthquake reconstruction in Nepal in three locations (Bhaktapur, Dhading and Sindhupalchok). We introduce the concept of ‘disaster financialization’ to capture not only the integration of disaster-affected households into a ‘cash-based’ reconstruction economy, but also a ‘financialization’ of some aspects of their lives, social relations, and subjectivities. Contrasting experiences across three different reconstruction areas, we suggest that highlight that not all categories of households and aspects of live have been financialized. Processes of financialization reflect a diversity of factors, including local economic contexts, ousehold composition, and the behaviour of financial institutions such as banks and cooperatives.

Paper 3: Accelerating a Status Quo? The 2015 Earthquakes and Nepal’s New Constitution
Presenter: Michael Hutt
Affiliation: SOAS, University of London
Paper Abstract: Two national-level institutional developments occurred within months of the earthquakes that struck Nepal in April and May 2015. These were: (a) the drafting and promulgation of a new national constitution; and (b) the establishment of a National Reconstruction Presenterity (NRA). The urgency felt by the leaders of Nepal’s three largest parties to reach a constitutional settlement was plainly apparent. They signed a Sixteen-Point Agreement on the basic principles of the new constitution on 8 June, just 45 days after the Gorkha earthquake, and the constitution was promulgated on 20 September 2015. Although a Constituent Assembly had been elected in April 2008 with the task of producing a new constitution within two years, Nepal’s government and state institutions had been functioning under an Interim Constitution since January 2007. Thus, a constitution that had been promised but not delivered for over seven years was eventually completed and promulgated within a timeframe of just a little over 100 days.

In contrast to this, the Bill to establish the NRA was not passed in parliament until 16 December 2015 and no staff (other than its CEO) were appointed to it until January 2016. When these developments are viewed in outline—from a distance, as it were—there would seem to be a direct causal relationship between the earthquake of 25 April 2015 and the prioritisation and ‘fast-tracking’ of what was in certain respects a relatively conservative constitution. As such, this Nepali case would appear to be a classic example of the reinstatement of an ‘accelerated status quo’, described by Pelling and Dill (2010) as one of the possible political outcomes of a natural disaster.

Drawing upon conversations and interviews conducted in Nepal over the winter of 2017-18 and a close reading of media discourse and political analysis from 2015, this paper will examine and assess the extent of this supposed causality in some detail. Given that the most radical change ushered in by the new constitution is the introduction of a federal structure, particular attention will be paid to the evolution of the debate on this key issue.

Presenter: Mark Liechty
Affiliation: University of Illinois
Paper Abstract: One of the principle challenges of post-disaster analysis is attributing causation: What causes a disaster’s aftermath? Heeding Watts’ (1983) warning against crudely attributing causation to the disaster itself, scholars have increasingly turned toward historical approaches that link outcomes to pre-disaster sociopolitical dynamics. Disasters lead to “critical junctures” and “tipping points” that “trigger” events unfolding in the disaster’s wake (e.g., Pelling and Dill 2010). In this paper I argue that the “critical junctures” paradigm shares limitations with “path dependency” theory from which it derives (David 2000), namely a tendency toward historicism—a functionalist teleology better able to explain continuity than change (Kay 2005:553). As an alternative, I use Foucault’s understanding of “conditions of possibility” (1970:xxii, cf. Popper 1957) as a way of rethinking agency/causation away from individual subjects, events, or even historical conditions toward , instead, the new, radically-destabilized “epistemological field” emerging in the disaster’s aftermath. In this new epistemological field earlier forms of subjectivity (social organization), knowledge (history), and structure (power) still exist but now in profoundly transformed and contingent material and epistemological “modalities of order” in which no outcomes are “locked in” and no “tipping points” lead to inevitable outcomes. This paper examines a series of devastating earthquakes in Nepal (1934, 1988, 2015) to consider how post-disaster “epistemological fields” open up new “conditions of possibility” within which new ideas, actions, and outcomes become thinkable and possible in ways that pre-disaster historical conditions could not have predicted.

Presenter: John Whelpton
Affiliation: Chinese University of Hong Kong
Paper Abstract: Following the great earthquake of 12 January 1934, awareness of the continuing threat was preserved through the frequent occurrence of lesser tremors and the memories of earthquake survivors, by officially-provided advice, starting with the recommendations of John Auden, published in Nepali translation in the Gorkhapatra in July 1934 and included in Brahma Shamsher’s Nepalko Mahabhukampa and continuing with a warning in 1941 to stay outdoors on 25 April, when a similar conjunction of planets to that of 1934 would occur. Although there were few casualties in the Kathmandu Valley, the earthquakes of 1980, 1988 and 2011, which over the whole country killed 125, 721 and 11 people respectively, provided more vivid reminders of the danger. The 1988 event, as well as prompting political recriminations that foreshadowed on a much smaller-scale those of 2015, led to increased official attention and to the establishment of the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET) which was at the forefront of efforts to retrofit existing buildings and promote better safety standards for new ones. In the 1990s warnings of the potential for catastrophic casualties in the increasingly densely populated Valley were also frequently voiced in the expanding private press and in 1999 an annual Earthquake Safety Day was instituted on the anniversary of the 1934 quake. Some of Nepal’s efforts were hailed as setting a model for South Asia as a whole and the earthquake of 2015 showed the resilience of retrofitted school buildings and the efficacy of the `Drop, cover and hold on’ advice when actually followed. However 2015 also showed that National Building Code guidelines had not been properly followed and that the most of the population had not been aware of official advice on how to protect themselves.

Presenter: Jeevan Baniya, Anisha Bhattarai & Sita Nepali
Affiliation: Social Science Baha
Paper Abstract: Since the immediate aftermath of 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, Nepali mass media including newspaper editorials and op-eds have extensively covered various aspects of the earthquakes such as impacts, rescue, relief, recovery and reconstruction. Op-eds, as argued, have the potential to shape public opinion (Porpora and Nikolaev, 2008), to trigger public debate on some agenda (Alexander, 2004, Sommer and Maycroft, 2008, Rosenfeld, 2000) and to persuade elites. Contrastingly, some also point to their ineffectiveness in terms of effecting any substantive change in policy and mindsets of elites due to their elite authorship and focus on complex policy topics (Ciofalo and Traveso, 1994; Zaller, 1992). This paper, by no means, intends to evaluate or examine any impacts or effects of the op-eds on changes in policies, attitudes and perceptions. Instead, this article, based on analysis of about a total of 85 op-ed articles published in the five major national daily newspapers of Nepal (Annapurna Post, Gorkhapatra, Kantipur, The Kathmandu Post, Naya Patrika and Nagarik), seeks to analyse the discourses related to relief, recovery and reconstruction in the post-2015 Gorkha Earthquake.
Discussant: Dinesh Paudel, Appalachian State University