The Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya – Kathmandu, Nepal

Conference Year: 2021

Moral Panic and Othering Practices during Nepal’s COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID19 pandemic which started in early 2020 has a major socio-economic impact through both the burden of the diseases as well as the consequences of lockdown and travel restrictions.  The pandemic has also exposed serious inequities in access to health care facilities and delivery of services, especially for poorer and marginalised communities.  The article …

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Participatory Planning in a Federal Setting of Nepal: New Trends of Participation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), or simply the COVID-19, has impacted the mode of participatory practices in Nepal. My research investigates these new trends and the challenges of participation in local level planning process in one of the Nepal’s Municipalities during the pandemic. The analysis focuses on the structure and …

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Nepal’s Post-Earthquake Development Surge: The Unintended Local Impacts of Reconstruction

The fields of development and disaster have largely existed as two distinct bodies of knowledge, with post-disaster reconstruction considered as a process separate from development. However, this article argues for the reconceptualization of post-disaster reconstruction as a form of development that operates embedded within and largely shaped by the historical, cultural, social, and political context …

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Caste and Ethnicity Based Earning and Access: Discrimination in Nepal’s Labour Market

Rising income inequality among Nepalis should be an issue of grave concern for policy analysts and decision-makers as ‘the richest 10 percent of Nepalis make three times more income than that of the poorest 40 percent’ (Oxfam International and HAMI, 2019). Among many driving factors, income inequality could be attributed to labor market discrimination as …

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Groupism in Dalit Lived Experience

Just as Suraj Yengde’s milestone book, Caste Matters, “offers a statement on the beingness of Dalit,” (20) so this paper offers a footnote to that statement.  This footnote includes previously unpublished ethnographic research on details of the lived experience of Dalit people among whom I have worked in Nepal in recent decades.  Unlike Yengde and …

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The Contents and Relevancy of Social Studies and Life Skills Education Curriculum

The In the history of Nepal’s formal education sector, the Government of Nepal has first introduced Social Studies and Life Skill Education curriculum for grade eleven and twelve in 2020. At the beginning, as there were debates about when to begin implementing the curriculum that led to filing a petition at the Supreme Court, it …

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“Lahure Nabhai Marne Chhaina”: Locating Lahure Aspirations through Wholesome Memes

Becoming a Lahure has been a major aspiration for Nepali youths for many generations now. Although getting recruited in the British (Indian) Army during the major wars was discouraged and even actively resisted primarily by mothers and wives, young Nepali men have always been fascinated by the cherished lives of Lahures, monies that they brought …

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A Promise of Unconditional Acceptance: Conversion to Christianity and the Struggle for Being in Sinja, Nepal

Over the last few decades, Nepal’s Christian population has grown at an extraordinary rate, flourishing even in quite remote contexts such as the Sinja Valley, in the northwestern district of Jumla. The reasons why people are drawn towards Christianity are, foremost, existential, and are intimately related to the problematic situations they are confronted with in …

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