Jeevan Sharma

Practices of Male Labor Migration from the Hills of Nepal to India in Development Discourses: Which Pathology?

Abstract This article provides a critique of authoritative development discourses on the migration of men from Nepal to India. Drawing on my ethnographic fi eldwork at multiple sites, I illustrate how migration is not perceived as a problem by migrants themselves but as an integral practice in people’s livelihoods. Many see migration to work in India as an escape from a diffi cult socio-economic, cultural and familial situation and an opportunity for young men to experience a distant place, experiment with the pleasures and possibilities of consumption and earn and remit money home to fulfi l their obligations as responsible men with the hope for upward socio-economic mobility of their families. The authoritative discourse is criticized for failing to comprehend the socio-cultural meanings associated with this form of human movement and for viewing ‘migration’ and ‘migrants’ as aberrant. The presence of a disjuncture between the authoritative discourses and the complex ethnographic reality raises important questions about the politics of migration in international development.

Conflict resilience among community forestry user groups: experiences in Nepal

This paper explores the impact of violent conflict in Nepal on the functioning of community forestry user groups (CFUGs), particularly those supported by the Livelihoods and Forestry Programme, funded by the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID). The key questions are: (i) what explains the resilience of CFUGs operating at the time of conflict?; (ii) what institutional arrangements and strategies allowed them to continue working under conflict conditions?; and (iii) what lessons can be drawn for donor-supported development around the world? The study contributes to other research on the everyday experiences of residents of Nepal living in a period of conflict. It suggests that CFUG resilience was the result of the institutional set up of community forestry and the employment of various tactics by the CFUGs. While the institutional design of community forestry (structure) was very important for resilience, it was the ability of the CFUGs to support and use it effectively that was the determining factor in this regard.

Marginal but Modern: Young Nepali Labour Migrants in India

Migration to India has been one of the key livelihood strategies amongst marginal households in the middle hills of Nepal. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in western and far-western hill villages in Nepal, including tracing the experience of young men who take on adult responsibility to travel to find work opportunities in Mumbai and Nainital in India, this article discusses how the steady flow of marginal migrants from the middle hills is shaped and sustained by gendered and generational considerations. An intriguing aspect of young migrants’ lives in India is their participation in consumption of modern commodities despite their marginal position and difficult working condition.

Torture and ill-treatment under perceived human rights documentation and the poor

ABSTRACT:This article addresses the question of how human rights practitioners know about harm. In particular, what forms of torture and ill-treatment are made legible through human rights documentation? We argue human rights documentation techniques can systematically under perceive the extent of torture and ill-treatment among people living in poverty. The article is based on research in Kenya, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and sets out five key predispositions in documentation techniques that result in implicit discrimination.

Societies, Social Inequalities and Marginalization: Marginal Regions in the 21st Century

Inequality is a major global challenge. While significant progress has been made in poverty reduction, with improvements in various development indicators, for the last several decades, the benefits of these developments have not been equally distributed. Paradoxically, the very processes of development further marginalize some places and people. It is in this context that this edited book sets out to explore the concepts of marginalization and marginality and to build an analysis through an empirical examination of its manifestation and causes in different parts of the world, drawing particularly on mountainous areas of South Asia. Organized in 18 chapters, the book brings together thematically diverse empirical studies on the livelihoods of people living in marginal mountainous regions of South Asia and beyond. It is unfortunate that there are no chapters on marginal areas in Nepal, given that there has been some interesting discussion on margins, marginality, and marginalization in Nepal (Blaikie et al. 1980; Gellner et al. 1997; Shneiderman 2013). Speaking from the perspective of the Himalayan regions, the authoritative writing on marginal areas in South Asia is mostly written by ‘‘Northern’’ scholars or those based at Northern institutions. In a recent article, Liechty (2018) provides an intriguing account of how the Western writings constructed a particular imagination of the Himalayan region marked by mystical alterity. The present volume offers several essays written by ‘‘Southern’’ scholars based at institutions in peripheries of South Asia. Given the number of chapters and the diversity of topics tackled in the book, it would be an injustice to try to summarize the individual chapters in this review. Instead, it is more useful to focus on the overall conceptual discussion and pick up on some of the interesting issues that emerge in different chapters. Chapter 2, by Pelc, offers an overview of the concepts of marginalization and marginality. It presents a brief discussion of the words ‘‘marginal’’ and ‘‘marginalization’’ and then goes on to summarize various meanings of marginalization offered by different schools of thought. Pelc concludes the chapter by saying that marginality is very complex and hard to define. Accordingly, we are left with very little understanding of what marginality and marginalization actually mean. At the outset, it would have been useful to get a more thorough conceptual discussion on the very meaning of margins, which is always in reference to the center or mainstream. Marginalization, or the process of making of margins (and the core or mainstream), is a political and historical process and could have been discussed as such. It would have been useful to see a more comprehensive conceptual discussion on marginality, drawing on existing social theory and engaging with related concepts such as border, borderland, core/periphery, and social exclusion, among others. Such a discussion of margins, marginalization, and marginality would necessarily have included an analysis of the process by which margins are produced in relation to the core or mainstream. As it stands, the political-economic framework needed to contextualize the lives of people discussed in this volume is absent. Part I contains 5 chapters that are framed within the theme of poverty, social inequalities, and marginalization. These empirical chapters offer useful insights into the marginality of the selected regions. They describe the situation of people living in marginal regions, but it is unfortunate that we do not learn much about the marginalization of these places and people: How did these people and places become marginal in the first place? Part II contains 7 chapters that offer insightful discussion on the themes of indigenous communities, identity, livelihoods, and biodiversity. These chapters focus on livelihoods of specific ethnic groups living in marginal areas. It would have been interesting to expand these chapters analytically to include state–society relations. Two chapters in Part III deal with the question of migration. Outmigration is a major feature of livelihoods in marginal areas of South Asia, particularly in the mountainous regions. Migration processes may be a key feature of marginalization and/or an adaptive response to it. The dynamics of migration remind us that marginal areas are not sedentary and isolated from the forces of globalization but play a key part in it. Despite rich potential, the chapters do not delve into what migration means in the context of marginalization. Part IV, titled ‘‘Policies and Strategies,’’ has two chapters that deal with the potential of tourism and cash crops for the economic development of marginal populations in these marginal places. Overall, the empirical chapters offer important insights. However, they are descriptive and do not delve into analysis. A much more explicit link between the concepts of margins, marginality, and marginalization and the empirical chapters would have made the book more coherent. It would have been good to see a more systematic gendered analysis: The rich possibilities offered by Chapter 4 (on women in Uttarakhand) and 5 (on women tea garden workers in Mountain Research and Development (MRD) An international, peer-reviewed open access journal published by the International Mountain Society (IMS) www.mrd-journal.org MountainMedia

Accountability and Generating Evidence for Global Health: Misoprostol in Nepal

Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) is a major cause of maternal morbidity and mortality in Nepal. Compounded by the remote terrain, endemic poverty, and a lack of access to health facilities, the use of misoprostol has advantages over the standard use of oxytocin for PPH management. Drawing on our qualitative study of a pilot intervention managed by the Nepal Family Health Programme, we map the institutional relationships involved in the design, implementation, and practices for bringing misoprostol into national policy. In the intense and competitive global and national policy arena, sustained lobbying and getting the ‘right people’ on board were as powerful drivers as the quality of the intervention itself. The case study takes us to the heart of the debate around the politics of generation of evidence for interventions in global health programmes, and ultimately the question of accountability for health policy and practice.

New forms of development: Branding innovative ideas and bidding for foreign aid in the maternal and child health service in Nepal

BackgroundNepal has been receiving foreign aid since the early 1950s. Currently, the country’s health care system is heavily dependent on aid, even for the provision of basic health services to its people. Globally, the mechanism for the dispersal of foreign aid is becoming increasingly complex. Numerous stakeholders are involved at various levels: donors, intermediary organisations, project-implementing partners and the beneficiaries, engaging not only in Nepal but also globally. To illustrate how branding and bidding occurs, and to discuss how this process has become increasingly vital in securing foreign aid to run MCH activities in Nepal.MethodThis paper is based on a qualitative study. The data collection method includes Key Informant Interviews, the review of relevant policy documents and secondary data, and finally field observation visits to four maternal and child health (MCH) projects, currently funded by foreign aid. Through these methods we planned to gain a comprehensive understanding of the aid dispersing mechanism, and the aid-securing strategies, used by organisations seeking funds to provide MCH services in Nepal.ResultsStudy findings suggest that foreign aid for the provision of MCH services in Nepal is channeled increasingly to its beneficiaries, not through the Government system, but rather via various intermediary organisations, employing branding and bidding processes. These organisations adapt commercial models, seeking to justify their ‘cost-effectiveness’. They argue that they are ‘yielding good value for money’, with short-term target oriented projects. This ethos is evident throughout the aid dispersing chain. Organisations use innovative ideas and intervention packages, branded internationally and nationally, and employ the appropriate language of commerce in their bid to secure funds. The paper raises an important question as to whether the current mechanisms of channeling foreign aid in the MCH sector, via intermediary organisations, can actually be cost-effective, given the complex bureaucratic processes involved.ConclusionsThe study findings are very important, for Nepal’s development in particular, and for international development in general. The paper concludes by recommending strongly that foreign aid should concentrate on supporting and strengthening the national government system. Complex bureaucratic process must be minimised and streamlined in order to provide quality care to the beneficiaries.

Comment — WHO outsourcing dilemma: For whose benefit, at whose expense?

In recent years, global development and humanitarian organisations have come under intense scrutiny for failure to provide to people in need. Critiques are wide ranging, and are driven by a range of issues: from ideological and political differences—the recognition of ultimate authority to intervene; critiques of western imperialism; to the practical—the failure of the system to ‘recognise’ the real issues on the ground, to more recent critiques that focus on lack of effective and efficient response in the face of global crises. The commentary ‘Outsourcing: how to reform WHO for the 21st century’ argues that the WHO has underperformed and is in need of reforms. Established in 1948, at a particular juncture in world history, the WHO is not considered to be fit for purpose in the context …

Understanding Health Research Ethics in Nepal.

Abstract Unlike other countries in South Asia, in Nepal research in the health sector has a relatively recent history. Most health research activities in the country are sponsored by international collaborative assemblages of aid agencies and universities. Data from Nepal Health Research Council shows that, officially, 1,212 health research activities have been carried out between 1991 and 2014. These range from addressing immediate health problems at the country level through operational research, to evaluations and programmatic interventions that are aimed at generating evidence, to more systematic research activities that inform global scientific and policy debates. Established in 1991, the Ethical Review Board of the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC) is the central body that has the formal regulating authority of all the health research activities in country, granted through an act of parliament. Based on research conducted between 2010 and 2013, and a workshop on research ethics that the authors conducted in July 2012 in Nepal as a part of the on‐going research, this article highlights the emerging regulatory and ethical fields in this low‐income country that has witnessed these increased health research activities. Issues arising reflect this particular political economy of research (what constitutes health research, where resources come from, who defines the research agenda, culture of contract research, costs of review, developing Nepals research capacity, through to the politics of publication of data/findings) and includes questions to emerging regulatory and ethical frameworks.