The Political Economy of Underdevelopment and Poverty in Nepal
Abstract
This study analyzes caste-based social exclusion and poverty using primary data collected from 448 households in Bheri municipality, Jajarkot district, Nepal, supplemented by secondary data from 34 companies listed on the Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE). The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and econometric models such as the chi-square test, t-test, and binary logistic regression analysis. The study reveals that low-caste people are facing discrimination and social exclusion in accessing quality education and the labor market. These factors negatively affect their livelihoods, resulting in low-quality education, an income gap between upper and lower castes, and overall income inequality. These negative impacts contribute to consumption-based national poverty for low-caste and marginalized households in rural Nepal. Being low caste increases the probability of being poor by 1.533 times, which is statistically significant in less than 5%. Engagement in daily-based labor for their primary income sources will increase those households' likelihood of being poor by 3.65 times compared to other sources of income, with a significance level of less than 1%. Moreover, having more dependent family members in households and engaging in subsistence farming also significantly contributes to falling into poverty. To enhance the livelihoods of low-caste and marginalized households, the government should prioritize combating poverty by increasing community engagement programs, ensuring equal access to the labor market, and quality education for these communities. Furthermore, private companies should also prioritize combating poverty through providing start-up business funds, job opportunity, and corporate social responsibility initiatives.
キーワード：貧困問題，カースト，社会的排除，日本企業，ネパール (論文)
Contrary to claims made by some scholars who have not thoroughly assessed the situation, this article argues that Nepal does not suffer from brain drain. The paper adopts an academic and archival approach, utilising qualitative desktop research methods to comprehensively examine the issue. The arguments presented are supported by the Delphi method and firsthand experiences. The study relies on secondary sources supplemented by personal observations and informal discussions to provide a well-rounded perspective. Recent publications accessed through widely used archiving platforms are given priority to ensure the credibility and relevance of the sources cited. Through this rigorous methodology, the paper concludes that the real issue plaguing Nepal is excessive labour drain, not brain drain. The analysis reveals that the notion of brain drain in Nepal is largely a misconception, with only a negligible number of individuals falling into this category. The departure of this small group has not significantly hampered the nation's dignity or development. On the contrary, the labour drain has created a severe shortage of workers in critical sectors, impeding the nation's progress and exacerbating economic vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is imperative to reorient strategies to address the labour drain by focusing on creating employment opportunities, improving working conditions, and offering incentives for workers to stay. By concentrating on these areas, Nepal can curb the outflow of its labour force and channel the energy and skills of its people towards national development. Consequently, the paper asserts that it is unnecessary to no longer concern oneself with brain drain.
South Asia has been accommodating a significantly large share of global
income and multidimensional poor compared to other regions. The multidimensional poor refers to individuals who are deprived of more than one dimension such as health, education and living standards. During the last decade, the share of income poor in South Asia has increased, despite the share of multidimensionally poor showing only a marginal decline. Poverty reduction achievements in Sri Lanka have
been remarkable during the last two decades and therefore Sri Lanka accounts for South Asia’s lowest poverty incidence in terms of both income and multidimensional poverty. The analysis based on international income poverty line of 1.90 USD (2011 PPP) per day and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
The study was done to explore various issues facing by the squat dwellers of two densely populated squatter settlements of the Kathmandu valley (Manohara and Thapathali). A series of temporal satellite imageries along with orhtophoto were analyzed and mapped focusing the food security and their livelihood conditions, sanitary and hygienic conditions and the flood hazard assessment. The study revealed that there has been a drastic landuse change in the Manohara area as compared to the Thapathali one. The squatter settlement that currently exists is found to have been in the flood plain. The household survey has disclosed that a majority of squatters who have settled in these places belong to Janajatis and they have mainly migrated from the hilly region and the surrounding districts of the Kathmandu valley. Besides, drinking water tested from both of the areas is contaminated with high concentration of Nitrate and Coliform. Hygienic conditions are also very poor as toilets lie along the river banks resulting in the depletion of the river quality and the scenic beauty of the surrounding environment. The community-based flood hazard mapping done with the GPS survey has revealed that all the settlements from both of the areas had been inundated in the month of July in 2009. In both area, people are deprived of basic amenities and they have been neglected by the concerned government authorities. Adequate research on scientific basic is an urgent need so as to draft a clear cut specific policy that can address their issues and stop environmental deterioration, destruction of beautiful green grassland and the sanitary conditions.
The History of squatter settlements on the bank of Bagmati River shows that these were established more than 50 years ago but they were few in comparison to the present. Growth rate is 37.94 percent in relatively small; some comprise fewer than 20 households are located on public land on the bank of rivers, these are heterogeneous not only in terms of the ethnicity or caste of their residents but also in terms of their places of origin, present occupation and income, family structure and reason of squatting. Riverbank seems to be the area that highly attracts the squatter communities. People residing in squatter settlements face many problems like improper sanitation, unhygienic environmental conditions, social, economic, health, educational and cultural problems and many more. The basic problems inherent in slums are health hazards, lack of basic amenities like safe drinking water, proper housing, drainage and excreta disposal services, make slum population vulnerable to infections. These further compromise the nutrition requirements of those living in slums. The squatter environment is the perfect breeding ground for a wide range of social and environmental problems. High unemployment often causes men to stay around the home growing increasingly frustrated with their pathetic situations and the worsening poverty. Cramped conditions mean that there is nowhere to go when tensions rise, a factor that regularly leads to domestic violence. Sometimes the situation goes to the other extreme, where people abandon their homes, lured by the prospect of stupor through alcohol or drug abuse.
Foreign aid is huge global endeavour with an annual tumover in the tens of billions of dollars, large workforces, and never-ending streams of ideas about how non-Westem societies should develop. Rich and poor states use it to manage relations with each other. Both givers and receivers, at least in public utterance, applaud foreign aid as a good thing that should continue. Yet something is the matter with foreign aid.
This article summarizes in four pages the 234-page book, Give & Take. What's the Matter with Foreign Aid?, published by Zed Books in 2002 { ISBN: 184277 -069- I }
A manuscript of that book is available on Research Gate: =Give and Take. What's the Matter with Foreign Aid [ book manuscript ]=
Using independent estimates of China's industrial output, this paper compares the performance of the manufacturing sectors in China and India over the past half century at a disaggregated level. It finds that China's industrial growth rate is close to one and half times that of India's over the entire period, with the gap widening gradually. But Indian growth has been more stable. China's superior performance seems understandable in terms of its faster agricultural and exports growth. Does it mean there is little prospect of India catching up with China in the foreseeable future? China seems to suffer from huge excess capacity, misallocation of resources and a gross wastage of capital - as evident from the persistently high capital-output ratio. China's impressive industrial edifice seems to be built on somewhat shaky microeconomic and institutional foundations. In comparison, India's relatively strong foundations and domestic entrepreneurial capital seem to have the potential to improve performance, with a sounder macroeconomic environment: a step up in fixed investment to augment infrastructure supply and agricultural productivity, revival of long-term finance to boost industrialisation, and easier credit delivery to small and medium enterprises.
This paper proposes a theoretically grounded Asta-Ja framework of Eight "Ja" ─Nepali letter "Ja", Jal (water), Jamin (land), Jarajuri (plants), Janawar (animals), Jungle (forest), Jadibuti (medicinal and aromatic plants), Jalabayu (climate), and Jansakti (manpower) and referred to as Asta-Ja in Nepali language for economic development and management of Nepal. More concretely, it identifies and analyzes key elements of the framework to derive its implications for theory and policy development.
The textbook outlines the most significant and relevant trends taking place in the modern world economy, and examines their impact on the activities of international companies. Section I is devoted to the study of the basic concepts, sources of competitiveness and strategies for conducting international business. Section III examines the key changes taking place in the system of multilateral regulation of foreign trade and the principles of regulation of modern methods of making trade transactions. Section III highlights the specifics of the activities of international companies in the context of financial globalization, examines the basics of regulating their investment activities and sources of financing. Section IV outlines the impact of the most relevant trends on international business: digitalization and technological development, global value chains, environmental aspects and sustainable development. It is intended for students of bachelor's degree programs in the field of Economics, containing specializations in the world economy or international business.
This paper examines the geo-political reaction to President Harry S. Truman’s 1949 Inaugural Address, wherein he catalyzed post-war global development in the form of his Point Four program. Truman proposed sharing American scientific and technical expertise, ostensibly aimed at reducing or eliminating poverty in the developing world. Newspaper accounts and analysis of internal CIA documents reveal domestic and international responses to the policy initiative. Predictably, these responses mostly varied along early Cold War ideological lines. Examining Truman’s plan and other anti-communist American policies in the late 1940s reveals that although global development may have been a laudable effect of the plan, the primary aim was to prevent communism from spreading to countries viewed as vulnerable to subversion. The Cold War imperatives behind the plan seem to have been either implicitly assumed or ignored in the historiography. A brief sampling of Cold War historians shows a lack of explicit attention to Truman’s initiative.
p>The aim of this paper is to provide a discursive analysis of the phenomenon of squatting in Nepal. The paper begins by charting the concept of discourse from its inception as an analytic framework in Bakhtin’s theory of discourse to more recent application in tracking regimes of power, including international developments. The paper then examines the discourse of representation and praxis characterizing government and urban planning approaches to squatting in Nepal, followed by two case studies conducted in Chapagaun that illustrate the manner in which power circulates in a Nepali squatter settlement as well as in the lives of individual squatters. The paper concludes by arguing that the resources which fuel the praxis of squatting (e.g. finances, political connections and knowledge) often exclude the very people most in need of land and housing through disarticulation, or the omission of local voices.
Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol.4(1) 2016: 3-18</p
The nature of contemporary political economy in third world countries like India precludes not just socialist planning, but even Nehruvian planning, social democratic planning, fascist planning, or even planning in the sense of the nation state managing or negotiating its relations with globalised capital. It precludes any role for a "Planning Commission".
This article attempts to explain the relationship between foreign policy and foreign aid. The question of how Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme is related to Japan's foreign policy will be explored. The findings suggest that foreign aid has been used to promote Japan's national interests and national security since the 1950's. Although Japan has used ODA in order to prevent humanitarian violation and promote democracy, especially since the 1990's, the humanitarian aspect of ODA has remained secondary to concerns about national interests. Japanese aid programs to ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) nations, Africa, China and the Kurile Islands will be analyzed in support of our argument that ODA is, at root, a realist approach.
The transition from the Planning Commission to the NITI Aayog reflects the completion of the transition from a state professing anti-imperialism to a neo-liberal state. NITI Aayog will oversee a greater centralisation of powers in the central government, and with the abolition of the National Development Council and its replacement by regional councils, the limited say the states had on policies and the flow of funds stands further eroded. In short, the constraints on state governments will be tightened rather than loosened in the NITI Aayog era.
The twentieth anniversary issue of Monthly Review in May 1969 carried the announcement that Harry Magdoff—the independent economist—had officially joined Paul Sweezy as co-editor, replacing Leo Huberman, who had died in 1968. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
I. Introduction, 65. — II. A model of long-run growth, 66. — III. Possible growth patterns, 68. — IV. Examples, 73. — V. Behavior
of interest and wage rates, 78. — VI. Extensions, 85. — VII. Qualifications, 91.
Planning in Nepal has little to do with anything that happens in that country. Planned targets are not met. Planned expenditures are not made. This paper explores the reasons-insufficient information, few and poor project proposals, inability to program foreign aid, opposition of the finance ministry, and severely limited capacity to administer development-given for the failure of planning. Special attention is paid to the tortuous release of funds and the effort to overcome basic political and administrative factors through surface changes in the form of organization for planning. The author argues that planning cannot create the preconditions for its own success.
India has one of the fastest growing economies on earth. Over the past three decades, socialism has been replaced by pro-business policies as the way forward. And yet, in this 'new' India, grinding poverty is still a feature of everyday life. Some 450 million people subsist on less than $1.25 per day and nearly half of India's children are malnourished. In his latest book, Atul Kohli, a seasoned scholar of Indian politics and economics, blames this discrepancy on the narrow nature of the ruling alliance in India that, in its newfound relationship with business, has prioritized economic growth above all other social and political considerations. In fact, according to Kohli, the resulting inequalities have limited the impact of growth on poverty alleviation, and the exclusion of such a significant proportion of Indians from the fruits of rapid economic growth is in turn creating an array of new political problems. This thoughtful and challenging book affords an alternative vision of India's rise in the world that its democratic rulers will be forced to come to grips with in the years ahead.
The theme of this note is bourgeois hegemony in contemporary third world countries. The focus is on one particular expression of bourgeois ideology, namely, the concept of economic development. In recent times, there has been a critique of the traditional accumulation-based approach from within bourgeois discourse and an alternative consumption-based approach has been suggested. This dual approach to economic development reflects capital's attempt to incorporate pre-capital within the ambit of its ideology. It is argued that an extension of the Gramscian framework is necessary in order to capture the nature of hegemony in contemporary third world countries. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, 1 contain multitudes)" —Walt Whitman 'Song of Myself Leaves of Grass HEGEMONY implies the dominance of an ideology and here I focus on one particular expression of bourgeois ideology, namely, the concept of economic development. The concept of economic development projected by the bourgeoisie in third world countries has undergone significant changes in recent times. A critique of the traditional accumu-lation-based approach has emerged from within the bourgeois discourse on economic development and an alternative consumption-based approach has been sug-gested. I argue in this paper that this dual approach to economic development reflects capital's attempt to incorporate its 'other', pre-capital, within the ambit of its ideology: capital is projecting a universal by accom-modating pre-capital. In doing this I draw heavily on Gramsci, particularly his discussion on the relation-ship between the state and civil society. However, in the end, I try to point out that an extension of the Gramscian framework is necessary in order to capture the nature of hegemony in contemporary third world countries.
Even as some households are coming out of poverty, other households are falling into poverty in almost equal numbers; poverty is being created even as it is being destroyed. The usual methods of studying poverty prevent us from learning more effectively about the nature and causes of falling into poverty, and this lack of knowledge prevents us, in turn, from reducing poverty at a faster rate. A bottom-up methodology for studying poverty has been developed to help examine escape and descent more carefully at the grassroots level. Applied within 107 villages of three states in India, this methodology revealed that (a) escape from poverty and descent into poverty have occurred simultaneously in every village; (b) even some quite well-to-do households have succumbed to descent; and (c) the set of factors associated with escapes differs from the set of factors associated with descents. Two separate sets of poverty policies are required therefore: one set to assist households to escape from poverty and another set of policies to head off descent. Because reasons for escape and descent vary by region, both sets of policies need to be regionally differentiated.
This article draws on examples from east Asia to point out that political will, well-conceived vision and clear strategic directions have been critical ingredients in the most successful stories of development. With this perspective, it examines the role of the state in guiding, stimulating and hindering growth and distribution in Pakistan over the last 60 years. It reviews Pakistan's economic progress with reference to commitment to markets and the private sector, strategic directions provided by the state, the burden of defence on national resources, the quality of governance, effectiveness of delivery of basic public services, attention to matters of distribution and domestic resource mobilisation efforts. It assesses progress under president Musharraf on macroeconomic, governance and structural economic issues. It then lays out the key economic and non-economic challenges that remain.
Following the June 1, 2001 murder of king Birendra and the royal family, the US intervened militarily in Nepal. At first India closely coordinated with the US strategy for the military defeat of the Maoist-led People's War in Nepal, and China acquiesced. But starting in the spring of 2004 both India and China came to reject the US anathema of the Nepali Maoists as "terrorists" and accept them as legitimate actors on the international stage. With the "12-point agreement" in November 2005, the success of the April 2006 urban insurrection, the comprehensive peace agreement in the fall of 2006, and the Maoists entering the government in early April 2007, US intervention in Nepal has, for the time, been thwarted.
The Soviet impact on non-socialist countries between 1947 and 1991 was felt at three different levels. First, the US altered its own policies towards its allies radically to foster their economic development and make them less susceptible to Soviet influence. Second, countries in western Europe and east Asia borrowed some key economic ideas and instruments from USSR to hasten their economic growth. Third, direct economic aid was offered by the Soviets to non-aligned countries keen on industrialisation. This article examines the contemporary relevance of the Soviet model for non-socialist countries.
A number of conditions determine how much India's poor share in economic growth. The extent to which growth stems from the rural economy, particularly agriculture, is the key. The gains to the poor from non-agricultural growth vary greatly between states, reflecting past attainments in human and physical resource development, especially in rural areas. The lesson for the future is clear: unless these conditions improve, don't expect rapid poverty reduction from growth-promoting economic reforms. There is, however, plenty that can be done now to change those conditions.
Nepal experienced a semi-colonial status with British India, and its landlocked position helps perpetuate a dependence on its neighbour. It is heavily dependent on foreign aid, both financial and in personnel terms. The country's limited progress in administrative terms is analysed. -J.Yockney
Lords of Poverty is a case study in betrayals of a public trust. The shortcomings of aid are numerous, and serious enough to raise questions about the viability of the practice at its most fundamental levels. Hancocks report is thorough, deeply shocking, and certain to cause critical reevaluation of the governments motives in giving foreign aid, and of the true needs of our intended beneficiaries.