I've really enjoyed making this podcast since 2020, but the time has come for the last episode. After I returned to Canada at the end of last year I was committed to continuing, but I haven't been able to find a strong focus for the show. To me that's the signal that I need to stop, rather than keep making new episodes just to maintain the show.

Thanks to everyone who's been involved over the years: the guests who gave their time to speak to me, the subscribers who paid regularly to help me cover costs and others who encouraged me to keep going when I wondered if anyone was listening. My wife Niku deserves a shout out. She was an unpaid producer all these years: answering my many questions about Nepal, helping with translation, and listening with a an especially acute ear. Finally, thanks to you listeners, who found ways to let me know that you cared. I will miss our connection. 

I am looking forward to creating a new journalism venture here on the west coast of Canada. If you're interested, stay up to date on my website, martylogan.org or my Substack, 11,020 km. I'm also on LinkedIn and Bluesky. 

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Sasmit Pokharel was sworn in as Minister of Education, Science and Technology and Minister of Youth and Sport in the Nepal Government on 26 March. When I interviewed him five years ago he was co-leader of a group of young people dedicated to fighting Nepal's "rape culture". 

I never imagined that in a handful of years he would be a senior government leader, which was a lack of imagination on my part, salted I think with a layer of ageism.

I'm re-posting this episode so you can hear future leader Sasmit, and his fellow guest Sagoon Bhetwal, speak passionately and articulately (despite issues of sound quality, back in the early days of the podcast) about rape in Nepal. Sasmit especially also talks at length about the role of youth in developing democracy in the country and points a finger at current leaders (5 years ago) for ignoring their needs.

Listening to this conversation I hear how determined and strategic these two activists are. No doubt those qualities would be very useful in Sasmit's new job. 

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

The number of Nepalis migrating to Canada has zoomed upwards in recent years, many of them first arriving as international students. They came for good education opportunities, free healthcare, and the promise of secure, stable futures.

Many are on the path to reaching those goals, but it hasn't been as easy as they imagined. 

Researchers Deepa Nagari (Toronto Metropolitan University and York University) and Richa Shivakoti (TMU) interviewed a group of Nepali immigrants for a working paper they published last year. They learned many things, of course. Among them:

• Persistent problems in Nepal were a central reason cited by many people for leaving the country
• Nepalis have great networks for learning about possible destination countries like Canada, but social media can present an unrealistic portrayal of life in those places
• In the post-Covid world, settling in Canada is tougher than it used to be
• Many Nepalis have a profound sadness about leaving their country.

That last point really hit me. Of course, I know how strongly many Nepalis are attached to their country and culture, including things like eating dal bhat and speaking their mother tongue. But as someone who always knew that I could come back to Canada more or less when I wanted to, hearing those sentiments I felt the pain of people who believed that they were leaving permanently.

I suspect that every immigrant carries that feeling with them, more or less, forever. 

Resources

Working paper on Nepalis in Canada 

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Bibek Poudel had a very detailed plan for succeeding in Canada. He would graduate from college, then work to gain experience in his IT field, setting himself up as a digital nomad—someone who could get a job and support himself basically anywhere, at any time.

Then his luck ran out. On March 1st Bibek flew back to Nepal after five years, without getting permanent residency (PR). But in today's episode he tells me that is not an entirely bad development, and that he has another detailed plan to return.

Unlike Aayush Pokharel, who we talked to in our last episode, Bibek hit significant delays on his journey to PR status. He graduated, but had to strengthen a few specific skills before he could start a job. Then he had to wait to apply for an opening in the IT workstream that would lead to his PR until his employer had been given the green light. 

By the time that approval came, the Ontario government decided it no longer needed skilled IT workers and Bibek had to shift to a category that requires more points to qualify than he had. 

Eventually he just ran out of time.

Both Bibek and Aayush were well entrenched in Canada when the federal government started shutting the door to international students a couple of years ago. They had, and still have, good opportunities to succeed. 

But many other students are likely to cross Canada off of their list of countries to study in. I've been hearing that Australia is again a preferred destination. It's closer to Nepal and has a huge Nepali diaspora.

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Aayush Pokharel is very close to getting his 'invitation' to apply for permanent residency in Canada. It's taken the former student five years to get to this point, and he's had some tough times along the way. 

Not surprisingly, he's learned a few things, and has some advice for current students in Nepal contemplating the path that he took.

Resources

Government of Canada immigration

Immigration jargon
    - CRS = Comprehensive ranking system
    - CLB = Canadian Language Benchmark
    - PG = Post-graduate
    - PNP = Provincial nominee programme

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It's been more than to months since I posted an episode, so I thought it was about time I was in touch. 

I'm speaking from the top of a hill, catching my breath as I look back at the ocean and a large island beyond the harbour. Continuing my walk I can see snow on the local mountain, so it's quite chilly here, for the west coast of Canada. 

I've been thinking a lot about the podcast. I do plan to continue it, with a focus both on Nepal and Canada. The government here has been making lots of changes to immigration rules in the past couple of years, and I want to talk to Nepalis about how they've been affected. They could be people already living here, those who planned to come — and have maybe changed their minds — and even those who have to leave now because of a new rule. 

You can help by putting me in touch with people you know who have stories to tell. If they don't want to be identified, we can arrange that. Text me with their info at the link at the top of the notes above, or email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com. Meanwhile, I will keep talking to people and plan to post the first interview in January 2026. 

Until then, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and I'll talk to you next time.

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Today you will hear the last episode that I recorded in Kathmandu. I had long wanted to talk to a representative from a so-called labour receiving country – one that hires some of the hundreds of thousands of Nepali migrant workers who leave home each year to earn their livelihoods abroad. Although it was difficult to speak to someone from an embassy in Kathmandu, I did make contact with a project of the Korean International Development Agency, or KOICA, called K-HaMi. It focuses on reintegrating workers after they return to Nepal from South Korea. p3eiiquy

What I learned was how complicated that process can be. It includes the regular pre-departure training, plus more if, at the start of the migration process, a worker is already interested in learning about reintegration. Then there are choices of various skills training while abroad and finally, more training after workers return. It feels a little like choosing to stay in Nepal can actually be more work than signing up for another job abroad.

Unfortunately, because this project started only in 2023, there seems to be a lack of hard data on its impact to date. But my guest Simran Shah says she feels positive that the project is having an impact. One correction: in the interview Simran says that K-HaMi has worked with 2,500 migrants to date. That figure should be more than 10,000 migrant workers.

Resources

K-HaMi project on YouTube

2024 report on returnee migrant workers’ experiences in Nepal

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In Monday's Kathmandu Post I read short bios of two of the 19 protesters killed by police in the GenZ demonstration one week ago. Both were from Nepal's Far West — Deepak Singh Saud was from Baitadi district, Subas Bohara from Bajhang. Deepak was 18, Subas 21.

I send my condolences to their loved ones. 

As you probably know by now, the protest was about much more than the recent Nepal Government ban on social media. It was an explosion of frustration at how the political class has been running this nation for decades, longer than many protesters had been alive. And for a lot of those disaffected young people, the fact that they had to leave their country in order to find a job or continue their studies was a slap in the face, a symptom of all that was wrong with Nepal.

In fact, both Deepak and Subas had been learning a foreign language so they could go abroad and get the sort of job they felt they needed to earn a decent living — Subas to Japan, Deepak to South Korea. I think there's a good chance that other victims had also considered leaving Nepal.

I've been looking into migration and Nepal long enough to know that, despite the horror stories — and there are many — it does have benefits. Individuals can earn much more money than at home. They can pick up skills and women in particular can grow in confidence as they navigate a new society more independently than they would in Nepal. The country of course is a winner thanks to the money that migrants send home — at least a quarter of Nepal's overall income these days, one of the highest rates of the world's labour sending countries. 

But overall, to me nothing shows more plainly the failure of the entrenched leaders of the political parties than the hundreds of thousands of young people who every year feel that they have no option but to leave their country and loved ones to try and launch themselves into their adult lives in a strange land. 

I really really hope that in this new Nepal young people will feel like they have a choice — to leave, or to stay; a real choice, one whose pros and cons need to be carefully weighed before deciding. It will definitely take time to get there but last week a door opened that could lead in that direction, unfortunately not without unforgettable sacrifices.

Resources

Kathmandu Post article about Deepak Singh Saud

Post article about Subas Bohara

Detailed article about the GenZ andolan by Pranaya Rana

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Help steer the future of Nepal Now as it moves to Canada in September 2025. Fill out the survey. It takes just 3 minutes. 

You might have guessed from the headline for this episode that I am leaving Nepal. It’s a family move actually, back to my home country of Canada. Of course I will miss Nepal, where I’ve now spent 14 years of my life, but I’m confident we’ll be back one day. I will also miss doing this: speaking to all of you every couple of weeks about this fascinating place and its people. Thank you for taking the time to listen.

I’m not sure what the next episode of Nepal Now will sound like, or when I’ll be able to post it, but I can say 100% that there will be another one. So keep checking this feed. While waiting you can explore our back catalogue of more than 100 episodes since 2020, which you can listen to for free. 

So, Nepal Now… from Canada. I’m not yet sure what that sounds like. Could I actually pull off a Nepal-focused podcast from 11,000 km away? I could simply change the focus to Nepalis in Canada. That would certainly be easier — but I have the feeling that you all might tire of hearing those stories rather quickly. 

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The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 21 hit Nepali migrant workers hard. Thousands working in India were blocked from crossing the border into Nepal. Others overseas were laid off and confined to living quarters with little or no food, no money, and no tickets home.
 
We recorded this episode in the midst of that dark period. While it describes the terrible conditions and uncertainty affecting migrants, it is at the same time a good primer on some of the core issues around migration and Nepal. With my guests Bijaya Rai Shrestha of the NGO AMKAS and academic Ramesh Sunam we touched on topics including:

• the ban on women migrating to work in Persian Gulf countries
• the impact of caste on decisions to migrate
• the ‘invisibility’ of Nepalis who migrate to work in India and
• the need for stronger policies from Nepal’s governments.

Unfortunately it seems like some of the optimism you’ll hear in this episode was unrealistic —little seems to have improved in the migration file in the past five years.

Resources

AMKAS

Ramesh Sunam

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The rise in the numbers of Nepalis migrating to Japan in recent decades has been phenomenal — and I think overshadowed by movement to countries like the US, UK and Australia. Today the Asian country is by far the top destination for students going abroad to earn degrees and, in many cases, a path to settlement in the country. 

I doubt that you would ever guess that the origin of today’s migration to Japan is colonial Britain’s presence in Nepal’s neighbour, India. I’ll leave today’s guest, visual anthropologist Dipesh Kharel, to draw out that thread for you. He says that the link has led to a current population of about 230,000 Nepalis in Japan — five times more than the number of Indian migrants. One sign of how fully settled they have become in their new country is that many women no longer return to Nepal to give birth. 

By the way, Dipesh mentions the Japanese currency, the yen, a couple of times. As of today, 1 Nepali rupee was worth 1.07 yen. 

Resources

About Dipesh Kharel

Nepali students’ destinations (2023-24)

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Undoubtedly the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign has been a success. In less than five years it has led the identification and return to Nepal of about 160 religious icons — statues, paintings, and more. These were stolen from this country and displayed or stored in public museums and private collections globally since Nepal opened to the world in the 1950s. 

Now what? The aim of the NHRC is to have these gods and goddesses (devi-devta in Nepali) returned to their communities, we learn in today’s chat with Alisha Sijapati, a founding member and former director of the campaign. Some have made that journey, such as the Lakshmi-Narayan statue taken from Patko Tole in Patan in 1984, but most have not. Blocking their way is a lack of resources and underpinning that, an absence of understanding of the importance of heritage to the health of this country, she adds. 

Today’s episode is an update to our conversation in October 2021 with NHRC member Rohan Mishra, titled Recovering Nepal’s Stolen Art and Restoring its Culture. I encourage you to search for it wherever you’re listening now. If you want more of these interviews, sign up to be a supporter wherever you’re listening by clicking on the Support the Show link.

For those of you in Nepal, the NHRC will take another step towards raising the profile of the living heritage of the stolen gods and goddesses in an exhibition at Patan Museum from July 31st to August 4th.  

Resources

Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign

Previous episode - Recovering Nepal’s Stolen Art and Restoring its Culture 

Lain Singh Bandel 

Juergen Schick

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Talking to Prakash Gurung made me realize that not all migrant workers from Nepal are leaving the country out of necessity. When I interviewed him last year the 26-year-old told me about his failed migration attempts – as both a student and a migrant worker – but I got the sense that he had options in-country as well; he just preferred the idea of leaving. I think there are many people in similar circumstances — they could find a job here at home, but believe that abroad they might be able to save more money, live in better conditions, or have more promising future prospects, for themselves and/or their family. 

One year later Prakash has shelved his migration plans. In their place he has chosen an unusual path—learning classical guitar. A guitar player since his teenage years, Prakash says that playing classical requires much more discipline than playing and singing rock songs, including hours of daily practice. He’s found a teacher to guide him on that journey. 

As you’ll hear, Prakash is now talking about finding satisfaction and inner peace on his musical quest. This is a huge turnaround from the half-hearted pledges he was making when we talked in 2024, and a pleasant surprise to me. 

Want more of these interviews? Sign up to be a supporter wherever you’re listening by clicking on the Support the Show link.

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Gyanu Adhikari is co-founder of The Record, the online news portal that published from 2014 to 2024. With 10 years’ experience running a media outlet that not only innovated in its content – offering long reads, history series, and podcasts, for example – but also experimented with funding—using a subscriber model—Gyanu has lots to share about media in Nepal. 

But surprisingly, he was most eager to talk about the state of the country—and more optimistic than most people I speak to about the future of Nepal. This episode was first published in 2024. I’m re-posting an episode today for the first time, mainly because I’ll be out of town this week and couldn’t finish a new one fast enough. I chose to feature my chat with Gyanu because it’s one of the most popular I’ve published since 2020 and also because it’s evergreen, since it deals with the media and the future, two subjects that many of us never tire speculating about. 

I reached out to Gyanu a couple of days ago to ask if he wanted to add anything to his thoughts three years later. He told me, quote, “I still believe we are on a good path provided we can keep the constitution and rule of law — a secular federal republic will take us far. To speed up the progress, Nepal should be inspired by China and Scandinavian countries’ green transition. Democratizing the energy industry, for example, with feed-in tariffs, and replacing dirty with clean energy in every domain. That’d allow us to leapfrog ahead instead of merely play catchup with developed countries. We are also still badly under-investing in human capital, including in the arts.”

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If I told you about a 30-year study that has already resulted in 261 research publications, you’d be impressed right?

And if I added that the study is based in Chitwan, and co-led by a Nepali, Prof. Dirgha Ghimire? I think you’d be even more enthusiastic. At least I was when I learned about the Chitwan Valley Family Study just a month ago. I’m not sure how I missed it over the past two decades that I’ve lived here but I’m a firm believer in the adage ‘better late than never’.

Before we get to today’s episode, did you know that we now have an e-newsletter? If you’re curious about what we’re working on for future shows, the latest news about migration and Nepal, or you want to share feedback and ideas, I encourage you to sign up now. 

Researchers at the Chitwan Valley study, based at the University of Michigan in the US, have been contacting members of the same 152 communities for the past three decades to collect key details of their lives: births, deaths, how they’re aging, how their children are growing and much, much more. Especially key for our purposes is what happens to them—and their family members—when they migrate. 

Resources

Chitwan Valley Family Study

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I’ve said it to you listeners more than once: it seems that almost every young person I've met in Nepal in the last couple years was planning to go overseas, or knows someone who's doing so. 

Now I have proof, kind of. Yesterday I spoke to a researcher whose team surveyed a high school graduating class. 40% of the students said they want to go study abroad after graduation; another 40% said they hope to go work overseas. That's 80% — a huge number, but I'm not surprised. 

So when I meet someone in their 20s who graduated high school in Nepal, then did a bachelor’s degree, and then a master’s degree, and is now working in this country, I get curious. 

Today’s guest, Paribesh Bidari, tells me that the youngest people he’s working with in his various offices are in their 40s. And while he’s juggling many gigs to advance his career, he’s also making it a point to motivate his juniors to stay in Nepal.

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Just like coffee shops, it seems that education consultancies are multiplying faster than rabbits in Kathmandu. 

I’ve always wondered why prospective students spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of rupees to have someone fill out their overseas college and university applications for them. After all, if they've made it to Grade 12 or beyond, surely they must be able to do it themselves. 

So I was very happy to have nursing expert Radha Adhikari on the show to explain some of the reasons why it's not quite as simple as I thought. I think you'll agree that her information and insights are fascinating.

Also, I am happy, and proud, to announce that Nepal Now is 100 episodes old! 

Thank you to everyone who’s listened since 2020. That’s when I started the show as a way to broaden the conversation about ‘development’ and Nepal, and to share more of the kinds of interviews that I was already doing, instead of having them reduced to just a couple of paragraphs in an article.

For those of you still listening, I have just one request: Feedback please! I know you’re out there, but I really want to know what you’re thinking. Love the show – fantastic; hate it – not so good, but tell me anyway. Even better if you have suggestions. 

It’s extremely easy to get in touch. Send a text by clicking on the link at the top of the notes to this episode, or message us on social media. We’re @nepalnowpod.

Questions or comments: email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com. 

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It’s been more than a dozen years since Maya Sherpa returned from working in Kuwait. Today she devotes herself to helping other returned female migrant workers readjust to life in Nepal. 

One reason why she's so committed to that work is because of the violent reaction she faced, not as a migrant in Kuwait but after she returned to her community in Nepal. 

My three takeaways from today's conversation are: 

• Women continue to be stigmatized as 'fallen' or immoral, and accused of sexual misconduct when they migrate to work; 
• Surprisingly, there is a class aspect to this – those women who can afford to migrate to Europe and America are seen to have fallen less morally than women like Maya who go to traditional labour destinations like Malaysia and Persian Gulf countries; 
• Governments in Nepal prepare great policies and plans, but deliver few of them.

This is episode 99! We want your ideas about how we should mark #100. Text us at the link in the show notes or message us on social. We're (at)nepalnowpod.

We have a newsletter! Check out the first issue and subscribe for the next ones. 

These episodes are linked to Maya's story—check them out: 

• Women migrant workers: Lift the ban and get positive
• Nepal unprepared to reintegrate women migrant workers

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Hi everyone. I have to admit that I had a pretty good idea of what this episode was going to be about, how it was going to unfold, as they say.  I was talking to the father of three daughters, grown daughters, all living overseas, and I thought that he and his wife were planning to go live with them in the US, but I was wrong. 

You're gonna have to listen to find out exactly how I was wrong, but I will say that it was one of the most enjoyable interviews I've done in a long time.  I spent just over an hour with Rajendra, but I think we hit it off pretty quickly and got into some pretty personal areas quite fast and had a lot of fun, some laughs, and I think he also enjoyed it.  I'm really curious to hear what you think. So let me know. 

I want to give a shout out to S.U.,  I only have their initials, who posted online about Nepal Now:  they are "fascinating and insightful interviews and discussions that share so much about lived experience in Nepal. I am listening while on a trip in Nepal." 

Thank you very much for that review, which S.U. posted in May, 2024. I feel bad that I only found it recently.  If you're interested in supporting the show, but, can't do it financially at the moment, one of the next best things you can do is leave us a review. It  might help introduce a newcomer to the show and turn them into a listener, which would be great.

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Khakendra Khatri paid 7 lakh or 700,000 Nepali rupees (about 5,000 USD) for a job in Russia, but soon after arriving he realized that he was being sent to the front line of the Russia-Ukraine war. Desperate, he bribed a commander, and then escaped by walking through a forest overnight with a group of other trafficked Nepalis. 

Needing work to feed her children, Sushma found a recruiter to send her to join her aunt working in Kuwait but got sick and returned to Nepal after three months. The recruiter’s calls began soon after she returned, demanding that she pay him more than 3 lakh. Both Khakendra and Sushma filed reports with police, and they, and their families, are now deep in debt. 

Welcome to Nepal Now: On the Move. My name is Marty Logan. This is the podcast that talks to some of the hundreds of thousands of people migrating from — and sometimes to — this small country surrounded by global giants China and India. Months later we reach out again to find out if reality in their new, temporary, home is meeting expectations. Occasionally we call in an expert to try and better understand all of this movement. 

The stories of Khakendra and Sushma, which you might remember from earlier episodes, make the idea of ‘fee-free’ migration sound like a dream. But it’s not. Today we're speaking with Upasana Khadka, a migration expert who is working on both no-cost and low-cost migration, which do both actually happen. 

This chat opened my eyes to how labour migration from Nepal is intertwined with global events, such as criticism of forced labour in countries including Malaysia. Upasana, who founded Migration Lab in Kathmandu, also highlights what is becoming a theme in this podcast: the positive aspects of migration.  

Thanks again to Upasana Khadka for coming on the show. 

Resources

Tricked into going to Russia, Khakendra fled before reaching the front lines

Three months in Kuwait: The story of migrant worker Sushma

Diaspora Diaries

Other Upasana Khadka articles in Nepali Times

Migration Lab

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Hi everyone. Today we're speaking with Tanka Dhakal, a journalist who’s currently doing a Master’s degree in the US. He’ll tell us about how the targeting of migrants in that country affected a city council meeting he was reporting on. But what I think is even more interesting is Tanka’s personal reaction to that meeting. 

But before we get to that, I want to let you know that you can now support Nepal Now with a monthly subscription. This is totally voluntary, but if you want to do it the cost starts at 3 US dollars a month, up to $10. You choose the amount. The money will help defray my costs for making the show. For now, you can subscribe only by credit card, which I know isn’t possible for everyone – if you really want to support us and don’t have a credit card let me know and we can work out a mobile money transfer. Depending on where you’re listening to this, you might see a link in the episode notes called Support the Show, under the resources heading. Click on that. Otherwise, go to nepalnowpod.buzzsprout.com, then click on Subscribe to see your options. 

Welcome to Nepal Now: On the Move. My name is Marty Logan. This is the podcast that talks to some of the hundreds of thousands of people migrating from — and sometimes to — this small country surrounded by global giants China and India. Months later we try to reach out again to find out if reality in their new, temporary, home is meeting expectations. Occasionally we call in an expert to try and better understand all of this movement. 

Back to today’s episode. You’ve probably heard about the list of 1,300-plus names of undocumented Nepalis who are supposed to be deported from the US. I heard a rumour last week that about 100 have already been returned, but there’s been no confirmation. I think what Tanka’s account makes clear is that you don’t need to be undocumented to be living in fear in the US today. 

A couple of notes before we start: Tanka mentions that Nepalis have paid 50 lakh to 70 lakh to travel to the US illegally. That’s roughly $36,000 - $50,000. I’ve heard of people paying even more. He also talks about university students with DACA status. Known also as ‘dreamers’, those are undocumented people who entered the US as minors. 

Resources

Article - US to deport 1,365 Nepalis

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. I’m sorry for the delay in releasing this episode. In a minute, we’ll get to this week’s chat about how female migrant workers are treated after they return to Nepal, but first I want to share some personal news.

My stepfather passed away in December, which changed everything. Like many of us he was a migrant. Born on a farm 90 years ago in northwestern Ontario, the centre of Canada, when he was a young man he moved 2,500 km away to Vancouver on the Pacific Ocean. Soon after he moved even further, across what was then Georgia Strait, now the Salish Sea, to Vancouver Island, where my family lived. After he retired, my wife and I, then living in central Canada, encouraged him to visit his hometown. But insisting that he was afraid to fly, he always said no. He also refused to make the trip by train or car. I think maybe he had just become too much of a homebody at that point, preferring to spend his time caring for his yard and small house in a small city. I dedicate this episode to my stepfather, Joe. 

This week we’re talking with Sunita Mainali, Executive Director of WOREC, an NGO that works on a broad range of women’s issues. As I said, we’re talking mainly about what happens to female migrant workers after they return from working abroad. As you’ll hear, I just assumed that the focus would, and should, be on finding work for these women in Nepal. But I learned quickly that without social reintegration there can be no economic reintegration.

One note: Sunita mentions the GCM. That is the Global Coordination Mechanism, an international treaty on migration developed by the United Nations.

Resources

WOREC website

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Today we’re replaying our most popular episode of the year. Like every migration story, it is a unique one. Prem Awasthi moved to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, almost exactly one year ago to start a new job with the United Nations. We talked with him just hours before his plane left Kathmandu, to hear his expectations of this new stage in his life, and the life of his family.

Welcome to Nepal Now: On the Move. My name is Marty Logan. This is the podcast that talks to some of the hundreds of thousands of people migrating from — and sometimes to — this small country surrounded by global giants China and India. Months later we reach out again to find out if reality in their new, temporary, home is meeting expectations. Occasionally we call in an expert to try and better understand all of this movement. 

Not only did we talk with Prem Awasthi before he left Nepal, we caught up with him six months later to see how his new life compared to what he imagined before leaving. What struck me most about our second conversation was his feeling that already his roots to his homeland were getting shallower.

Thank you to everyone who listened in 2024. Focusing solely on one issue – migration – was something new for Nepal Now, so I hope you enjoyed that approach. Whether you did, or didn’t, you can send a comment or an idea for a future episode by clicking on the link at the top of these show notes. Message Nepal Now on social – we’re @nepalnowpod on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. You can also email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com.

I’ll talk to you next time. 

Resources

Follow-up episode with Prem Awasthi

Updated trailer explaining why we do this show

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Pragati Nepali is just 19 but already she has been married, migrated to work in neighbouring India, and then moved to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for other opportunities. That’s where friends told her about a job in a garment factory in Jordan. When we talked last week she estimated that she might be finished her paperwork and winging toward the Middle Eastern country by mid-December.

Jordan is one of very few Middle Eastern countries to which the Government of Nepal allows women to migrate for work. That’s because of past incidents of violence against women migrant workers in the region’s countries. We talked about this ban earlier this year in our chat with expert Sadikshya Bhattarai. The flow of migrant workers from Nepal to Jordan has never been  huge, peaking at just over 2,700 in 2016-2017 and then falling to just 621 in 2022-23. Regardless, tens of thousands of women have made the trip to other countries in the region illegally, often being trafficked through India. We spoke with one such woman, Sushma, earlier this year.

Pragati says an aunt working in Jordan encouraged her to apply for a job in the factory, which reportedly makes clothing for Nike and other brands. Pragati has already set out a path after she completes her three-year contract in Jordan: she will return to her home district, Mugu, and start a design business.

Resources

• Nepal labour agreement with Jordan, 2017
• Flow of migrant workers from Asia to Jordan
• Previous episode — Women migrant workers from Nepal: Lift the ban and get positive

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Today we’re catching up with Aayush Pokharel, a graduate student in Canada who we first talked to in May. This year, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has severely cut the number of temporary residents it allows into the country, including international students. It also chopped the number of temporary work permits for grad students like Aayush, which are usually followed by a chance to apply for PR — permanent residency. Many temporary residents in Canada now worry that their PR dream is disappearing.

While Canada’s new rules have led to a spike in students applying for asylum, or refugee protection, Aayush says he’s not worried that he won’t qualify for PR – he just wants to get a job where he can use his education. Otherwise, what was the point of leaving Nepal?

Resources

Our first interview with Aayush Pokharel

Recent update from The Globe and Mail

Growing number of students claiming asylum

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Of all the reasons I’ve heard for Nepalis migrating to work abroad, this one was the most shocking: to fight for the Russian Army in its invasion of Ukraine. The news first reached the mainstream media in mid-2023 but long before that, photos of young Nepali men posing in Russian Army uniforms had been circulating online. For the unemployed, or under-employed, Russia quickly became the newest, fastest way to earn foreign currency, topped up in some cases with the promise of an appealing foreign passport.

But soon after, news of growing numbers of battlefield deaths began making headlines, and calls grew for the Nepal Government to intervene. It did ask the Russian government to prevent recruitment, which seems to have happened in recent months, according to reports. But the government says 40 Nepalis are confirmed to have died fighting for Russia and an even larger number of corpses are undergoing DNA tests.

Today’s guest, Khakendra Khatri, was planning to go work in South Korea when he was approached by a Nepali recruiter in Dang district. At first he wasn’t interested but the man persisted for more than a month to sell him the dream. Finally, Khatri agreed that the conditions offered were worth his recruiter’s fee of 7 lakhs (700,000 rupees or 5,200 USD) to buy a spot. He was promised a 5-lakh monthly salary, permanent residency in Russia after 1 year, and the chance to procure a visa in a western country.

Khatri was told that he would be cooking for the soldiers, behind the front lines, but when he got closer to the battlefield he saw that wasn’t accurate—he had been designated as a fighter. The Nepali man  quickly started negotiating a way out.

A quick note before we start: SLC means school leaving certificate, or a grade 10 diploma.

You'll notice that the sound quality isn't at its usual level in this episode. That's because we were missing some equipment in the studio so we had to go to Plan B to produce this one. Apologies for that.

Resources

Article about Khakendra Khatri, Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal

40 deaths confirmed of Nepalis fighting in Russian Army – Kathmandu Post article

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

You might know Nepal as home to the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, as the place where the Buddha was born, or as the location of many sites sacred to the world’s Hindus. This country is also a geopolitical hotspot, encircled by the world’s giants—China and India—eying one another warily over the Himalayan range. 

I’m Marty Logan. As a Canadian journalist who’s lived here going on 13 years, what astonishes me about Nepal is the ever rising number of people leaving the country to find work, or to study. About 70,000 a month are flying out for jobs overseas, mostly to Malaysia and Persian Gulf countries, South Korea and Japan. Do the math and that’s more than 800,000 a year, from a country of 29 million people. Of course most come back, after 2, 3 or more years abroad. Some of them stay home but many leave again as soon as they scope out a new opportunity. 

For decades huge numbers of the poorest Nepalis have been walking across the open border to India to work. The practice is so ingrained that these workers aren’t even counted—they could number 500,000 or a few million. 300 students a day are getting written permission to migrate so they can study abroad, at last count. Many don’t return after graduating. They settle in their new country and become non-resident Nepalis.

What happens to these people who shift their lives abroad in order to improve the lives of those they leave behind? Many—but not all—workers send money home regularly, providing a steady income, something elusive in Nepal. Some even save. But what about family relationships when loved ones live apart year after year? Of husbands and wives, migrant parents and their children, migrant children and their aging parents left alone in Nepal? Although it’s changing fast, most Nepalis still live in multigenerational joint families rather than nuclear ones, where children are expected to care for their elders as once they were cared for.  

What’s happening to this country, from which nearly every young person I meet wants to flee as fast as possible while, ironically, Nepal’s allure as a global tourism hotspot continues growing. In one way Nepal benefits massively—remittances from abroad now make up about a quarter of its gross domestic product. But villages are emptying and fewer farmers remain to grow the food the country needs. 

Of course, migration from poorer to wealthier countries is a global trend, so you can hear echoes in Nepal of other peoples’ journeys, but Nepalis’ experiences are unique to them. On this show we talk to the people leaving—and sometimes returning to—this country. If possible we check in with them after they’ve settled in their new homes, to learn if the reality matches their expectations. Occasionally we talk to officials or experts to better understand why so many Nepalis are on the move. 

We post new episodes every two weeks. Like, follow or subscribe now so you don’t miss the next one. 

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Nurses. I don’t know about you but when I think of people migrating for better opportunities one of the first groups that comes to mind is nurses. Not only in Nepal: I know that this is a huge issue for Caribbean countries and I read recently that in Nigeria, midwives too are being recruited to work in countries of the north.

Back in Nepal, over a third of nurses have sought documents that would permit them to practise overseas, I read in one media report.

I met Sudipa Poudel about 1 ½ years ago in Chitwan, a district in south-central Nepal. She was working as a school nurse and I believe she mentioned then that she might be going to work abroad soon. So when I caught up with her last month I wasn’t that surprised to hear that she was on her way to Canada. The big question was ‘why’?

You’ll have to keep listening to hear her answer, but for now I’ll say that Sudipa has already come a long way since she became a nurse a decade ago. 

Please listen now to my chat with Sudipa Poudel, recorded at Himal Media at Patan Dhoka. Her words are interpreted by Heema Rai.

Resources

Nigerian midwives being recruited along with nurses — article

One-third of Nepali nurses consider moving — article

Prime Minister Oli appeals to youth to return home - article 

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Today we’re doing something different. We’re devoting this episode to last weekend’s huge rain, the flooding and other disasters it spawned, and the climate migrants who will emerge from these incidents. And here I’d like to give my condolences to the family and friends of the more than 200 people confirmed killed in the devastation. 

I know: last week I guaranteed we would share the episode about the nurse migrating to Canada but I thought the topic of climate migration — which I’ve been wanting to discuss for a while — was just too timely to postpone. 

This episode also has a different format. I have two guests: Sagar Shrestha, Director of the Disaster Management Department at the Nepal Red Cross Society and Manjeet Dhakal, Head of the LDC Support Team and Director, at the South Asia office of Climate Analytics. I recorded this very quickly so the first chat with Sagar, which we did Sunday night, lacks the usual introduction and goodbye, and the quality is not quite up to our usual standard. I recorded with Manjeet on Monday evening. He was in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, so the line wasn’t crystal clear either. 

One note: Unfortunately, since Monday the number of confirmed deaths has risen to 209, as I’m recording on Tuesday, and dozens more people are still missing

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This is a very short episode, basically to say that we are behind schedule so this week's episode is delayed until next week. 

We think that it will be worth the wait, as we'll be talking to one of many nurses from Nepal who are leaving the country for better opportunities abroad. In fact, this is not a trend only in Nepal; nurses throughout the global South are moving North for what they see as better working and living conditions. 

Please watch for the new episode to drop in your feed next week. 

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From Kathmandu to Kabul is not really that far in this era of daily intercontinental flights. And today’s guest Prem Awasthi is also fortunate in that he gets to make the return trip home at least every six weeks. But still, he already feels that less than a year after migrating to work abroad, his roots in his homeland are somehow shallower. 

If you missed it, Prem was the first ever guest of the show after we relaunched earlier this year to focus solely on migration and Nepal. In that chat, he told us about his early life in Doti district, in Nepal’s Far West region. When he spoke you could hear his deep attachment to that place, so I wonder—for him, does living and working in Kabul not only mean being away from his country, but does it also signify one more step away from his deepest roots, in his home village?

In our latest chat, which we recorded at Himal Media in Patan Dhoka, we also discuss if Prem has become comfortable in his new, less visible role, on a much larger team, that he’s taken on in Afghanistan. His tasks there are much different than during the nearly two decades that he worked on the frontlines of humanitarian assistance for the UN in Nepal. 

Finally, Prem has some thoughts for others who might be contemplating a similar move. 

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Today’s episode is not a migration story; you could even call it a non-migration story. I’m chatting with someone successful enough in her field that you could easily imagine her skills being in demand in many other countries, and that she could leave Nepal if she wished. But of course she hasn’t. 

Like many Nepalis, Dr Rojina Shilpakar went to Bangladesh to study medicine, then returned to Nepal. Searching for a niche, she found it quite fast at Sushma Koirala Memorial Hospital, performing surgery on survivors of burns. Today she is deputy medical director at the hospital, a trainer of burns surgery at the regional level, and an advocate for training of health personnel working outside Kathmandu, so that burn survivors who arrive in the capital have a better chance of survival. 

As much as I enjoyed this conversation, I hesitate to draw any lessons from Rojina’s story that might apply to Nepal more broadly. The experiences she’s lived and the decisions she made are unique to her. What I do know from our chat, is that she has been able to find a job in Nepal that challenges her and that she is devoted to. I wish that more people will find themselves in such a situation. 

Thank you as always to Himal Media for welcoming me into their studio for this recording. And a warning: there are some graphic descriptions of surgery in this episode. Please take care while listening.

Resources

Sushma Koirala Memorial Hospital, Facebook page

Interburns network

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Up until now I've been recording most of these episodes speaking into a half-empty clothes cupboard. It's sounded surprisingly good, at least to me, but from next week I will have a slightly more professional setup: a dedicated — though tiny — space, basic soundproofing on the walls, and a new mic. I hope we'll be able to hear the difference.

In migration news this week, I came across an article featuring data on students going overseas to study in the past year. I must admit that my western bias shows when I say that I didn't even imagine the country that was the #1 destination — Japan. Why Japan? Thanks to a engaging documentary by Dipesh Kharel, The Japanese Dream: Nepali students in Japan, I learned that there are many reasons. First, visa requirements are  easier for Japan than for some other countries. Once there, students can work part-time — a set number of hours a week — which is also key. 

By the way, according to the documentary, there were 45,000 Nepali students in the country in 2023. This compares to 5,000 Nepalis in total in Japan in 2005. A fun fact that I learned: there are 600 Nepali restaurants in Tokyo alone.

Dipesh follows a handful of students, from when they're studying Japanese in Nepal and planning to migrate, to their arrival in Japan and in later years, juggling responsibilities of work and family. I like that he doesn't paint a fake, rosy portrait, but shows some of their hard times also. There's a particularly poignant scene when he's interviewing the father of Rajkumar, who's now in Japan. The father tells him that the day his son learned that he got his visa he had the equivalent of $18. Six days later he had raised $15,000 so his son could migrate. "I can't pay this back," he told his son, meaning the burden was now shifted to the young man.

Resources

Nepali students' destinations

Documentary about Nepali students in Japan, by Dipesh Kharel

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Mistreatment of migrant workers, especially those forced to work in hot, dangerous conditions, created huge headlines in the run-up to the Qatar World Cup in 2022, thanks in part to the work of today’s guest—journalist Pramod Acharya. Pramod’s subsequent reporting also made the news globally. Also done in collaboration with journalists around the world, it spotlighted the conditions faced by Nepalis and others working in Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia, and led to Amazon changing some of its work practices.

For that reporting, Pramod and his colleagues have received numerous nominations and awards, including—for the Amazon work—the Excellence in International Reporting award from the Asian American Journalists Association and the Human Rights Press Award, from Human Rights Watch and others. Today he’ll tell us how and where he got his start in journalism, how migration from Nepal has changed in the decade since he started investigating it, and the role that the media might play in making positive change. 

Resources

One of Pramod’s reports on the Qatar World Cup
A report from Pramod on Amazon warehouses
Centre for Investigative Journalism, Nepal 

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Last week the show reached 80 episodes. It's not a significant number, except that it brings us closer to what will be a milestone—100 episodes. I figure we'll reach that at around the end of the year, and will definitely want to mark it somehow. Maybe with T-shirts, other 'merch', or a Best Of episode? How about an online party? If you have any ideas to celebrate, send them along using the text message link at the top left of these notes.

In migration news this week, Republica newspaper reported that the government had put 'on hold' 548 manpower agencies. These are the companies that arrange jobs for migrant workers going abroad, and which are constantly being accused of over charging and otherwise trying to take advantage of workers. 548 is a huge figure, given that the total number of agencies is said to be about 850 - 870, but based on the accusations that fly around about deceitful agencies, it's not all that surprising. The big question for me is: will these companies soon be let off the hook or will they actually be punished somehow?

This week's other news that I noted is an argument that the 'brain drain' of educated students should actually be considered a 'brain circulation'. The authors suggest that eventually the students give back a huge amount to their home countries, via remittances and other means. I would like to see more statistics behind these claims, but it's certainly an interesting theory.

Next week we'll be speaking with Nepali journalist Pramod Acharya. His reporting about Nepalis working in Persian Gulf countries, especially those building stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar and others working in Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia, has earned him many awards and high praise.

Let us know what you thought of this week's episode, on social media, via email or text message.

Resources

Manpower agencies suspended

Brain drain or brain circulation?

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It’s amazing what you can find when curiosity is your guide.

I was on a reporting trip in Taplejung district in northeast Nepal, bordering Tibet and India. I had an extra day so I thought I’d look for a school that provides meals to its students. It’s a topic I’ve been following for the past couple of years. I asked a guy I met at the hotel if he knew of a school principal in town— it turned out that he was the head of the committee of a local school. He took me to see the noon meal being served, then gave me a tour of the entire school area.

I was shocked to see a new building that might have been imported from Europe. With a light-coloured exterior of sharp angles, inside it featured huge windows, tall ceilings, a super wide, wooden staircase, and — perhaps most pleasantly surprising to me — a coffee bar.

The astonishing looking building in Taplejung, on the grounds of Bhanu Jana Secondary School, is the IT Academy. It’s been running for the past couple of years and includes a studio, where we recorded this episode, with Head Teacher Kishor Kumar Rai. The main aim of the Academy is to train recent graduates with online skills so that they can work from Taplejung instead of joining the tens of thousands of young people migrating from Nepal every month. The IT Academy was built with support from the Human Practice Foundation, a non-profit from Denmark,

So far the Academy has graduated 61 young people. 14 of them are employed online as digital creators for companies in places including Denmark, Singapore and South Korea. Those are small numbers, I know, but you have to start somewhere and it does seem that the management team has a growth plan. By the way, the donor that Kishor Rai mentions is Mr Waldemar Schmidt. Learn more about the IT Academy in our conversation now.

Resources

IT Academy

Bhanu Jana Secondary School (Facebook)

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I want to start this week with a shout out to Tanka, who shared our 3 latest episodes on LinkedIn, including his favourite. His top choice was our chat with Raj and Sunita, who met, online, while working in Gulf countries, got married in Nepal and are now living here again, at least temporarily. Although they’re now pregnant, they appear destined to be a migration family, as Raj is now trying to get a work visa for South Korea.

Do you have a favourite episode of the show? If so, why not let us know via LinkedIn or other social channels. You can also text the show by clicking the link above. If you're in the US or Canada it's free, it costs 6 rupees from Nepal, and outside of these areas normal charges would apply.

This week's news about migration includes the Government of Nepal recruiting 500 men and women to work in Israel as assistants in long-term care centres. There have been some online protests about the government working with Israel because of its ongoing attack on Gaza, but I don’t expect that will affect applications

Coming up next week we'll be speaking with award-winning journalist Pramod Acharya, who reports about migration, including human rights abuses, of Nepali and other workers, during the building of World Cup facilities in Qatar. He also worked with other media to uncover abusive practices in Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia.

News links

Recruiting Nepali workers for Israel

Your brain on audio podcasts

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If you’ve been listening to this show since we re-launched in March to focus only on migration, I think, like me, you would have started to see that there is no one type of migration story. Yes, there are two large groups of migrants — people going abroad to work and others going to study. But within those are a vast number of sub-groups, for example, people going to work because they cannot imagine any other way to earn money (and then within that group are the people who walk across the border to India because they can’t afford the cost of flying to work in another foreign country). Among those who can afford an air ticket, are Nepalis who can access enough cash only to make it to a Persian Gulf country, not Europe, and so on. I think you get my point. 

Today’s guest, Prakash Gurung, has tried to migrate both to study and to work. And he’s certainly not alone in doing that. But from what I understand after our chat, and re-listening as I was editing it this week, he might belong to another sub-group: people who could earn enough money to get by in the capital Kathmandu if they found a job, but who think they could do better working overseas, even if it means doing the same work. 

When we talked a few months ago at the Himal Media studio in Patan Dhoka, Prakash told me that since he finished ‘plus-2’ – what might be called grades 11 and 12 in other countries – he has tried to get a study visa for the US and when that failed, working visas for Croatia and the Netherlands. None of those came through either, and he was working as a driver for the ride-sharing app Pathao when we met. Doing his plus-2, Prakash focused on hospitality so I mentioned the large number of 5-star hotels that are sprouting in Kathmandu. Prakash said he would definitely be willing to work in one of them, but even if he did manage to get a job, he would probably keep seeking an overseas opportunity, because the pay would be better. 

But then later in our chat he stated that before going abroad, Nepalis should try first to find an opportunity at home. I remember thinking that sounded contradictory, but on second thought it might simply be a reflection of how complicated a migration journey can be. 

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Thank you to listener Trilok for pointing out a typo that was on the Nepal Now webpage for almost 4 years, from episode #1. I'm embarrassed but grateful to his sharp eyes.  

Please keep the feedback coming, via LinkedIn, as Trilok did, or at the other social channels listed below. You can also email: nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com, or text the show at the link at the top left. It's a US number so the usual messaging charges would apply.

I don't think we have many listeners who use Google Podcasts but if you do, that option will soon be discontinued according to reports, so you’ll need to find a new app. We’re available on most of them — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Deezer, and many more — so don’t forget to make the move.

Recent news about migration and Nepal included a poignant report in Nepali Times that quoted family members of 12 migrants who ended up fighting for the Russian Army and died on the battlefield. This reflects the desperation people must feel to earn money to keep their families afloat. 

You can hear other news items in the audio, and check out the links below. 

Coming up next week

We speak with Prakash Gurung, who keeps trying to move overseas but is yet to succeed. Why does he keep trying? 

Resources 

-       Remittances and farm households’ income

-       Nepali Times – migrants’ deaths in Russia

-       Nepali youth in Hong Kong

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Today we’re back with another personal story—two in fact: those of Raj and Sunita. I gotta admit, what I like about this story is the romance element, which is something we haven’t heard from other guests so far. What they told us, when we recorded in the ACORAB studio in Chakupat, Patan, was that they were both working in Persian Gulf countries when a colleague suggested that they become Facebook friends. Sunita and Raj then chatted online for three years before finally meeting. You’ll have to keep listening to get the full story, but it does include chocolate, flowers and a very large spoon. 

I’m having fun with this story, but I want to be clear about something—it’s not a fairy tale. Yes, Sunita and Raj found one another in what would seem like unusual circumstances to many of us. But there are millions of labour migrants worldwide, so I’m sure that many, many couples come together, like Raj and Sunita, while working abroad. Meanwhile, they experience life as migrant workers — the shock of living in a foreign country, without their language, food  customs, and — especially — family, a family they might not get to see for years. They might face discrimination or mental, physical, and even sexual abuse, and there’s a chance that somewhere along the way, someone will try to cheat them out of their hard-earned money. 

What I’m trying to say is that a migrant worker’s life is difficult, one that few people would choose if they had options. But except in the most extreme, harsh circumstances, their lives are multifaceted, like all of ours, and include pain, joy and yes, romance. And I hope this episode reveals a more fully rounded portrait of two migrants’ lives. 

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Today we’re taking a step back from the personal stories we’ve been hearing to get some perspective on migration and Nepal. Specifically, we’re talking about women who leave the country to work, including why a ban on them migrating as domestic workers is not a good idea. We’ll also hear – and this is the idea that jolted my brain during the interview – why we need to share positive news about women’s migration. 

My guest today, in the Himal Media studio in Patan Dhoka, is Sadikshya Bhattarai, Research Coordinator at the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility, aka CESLAM, at Social Science Baha here in Kathmandu. During our chat, Sadikshya does a great job of sketching the history of women migrating for work until today. She then details how the ban on women working as domestics in Gulf countries has evolved, and why it should end. But this isn’t a single-focus discussion—Sadikshya also notes the many initiatives that the three levels of government and their partners have taken to try and improve the system, but concludes that they’re just not working as intended.

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Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility (CESLAM)

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Hi everyone, this is Marty.

I got a really interesting and positive email about our last interview with Soham, who first moved to the US when he was 17, a couple of decades ago, and he's been going back and forth ever since. The email was from Jennifer, and I want to read a few excerpts:

"I learned so much as it's information which is not easily available. It also validated at a gut level what I thought was happening in Nepal. I appreciate the new perspectives Soham articulated, and which I hadn't considered that Nepal wouldn't have progressed on several areas today if migration hadn't happened."

"I know it isn't clear cut, but essentially I had viewed migration as an unconscious contributor to the breakdown of the essence of what makes Nepal unique, vital, and such a role model in terms of family support, traditions, life outlook, etc.

"I agree absolutely: I think the Nepalese government should have reverse brain drain policies in place. I've never heard this stated publicly before, and I hope it gains momentum, as it's a very empowering perspective. I think this direction would reignite Nepalis own belief in their country."

So, thank you very much, Jennifer. I'd love to be able to read more of this kind of feedback, positive or negative we don't discriminate. So, again, you can email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com or you can send a text message using the link at the top of the show notes for every episode. It is a US number, so if you're not in the US or Canada, there will be some charges.

Also this week, as usual, there's been lots of news about migration. I finally took a look at the World Migration Report 2024, and pulled out a couple of facts about Nepal. For example, Nepal is the number 10 country in terms of remittances or the money that migrants send back home, expressed as a percentage of GDP.  For Nepal, remittances make up 23 percent or almost one quarter of Nepal's gross domestic product. The number one country by the way is Tajikistan at 52 percent.

Another piece of news I want to mention is in the Kathmandu Post. (I'll put links to these items in the notes to this show.} The news comes from Rukum West, a district in the Karnali region, and it quotes a guy named Subhas, who has spent 8. 6 million rupees in the last decade (about 64, 000 US dollars) trying to, himself or his son, get to the US through illegal channels. And this is a phenomenon that's been growing in recent years.

In fact, one reason I switched Nepal Now podcast to focus solely on migration is I heard a story when I was in Rukum West, following the earthquake in Jajarkot late last year. I met a nurse, and she told us that her husband had left a year earlier to make his way to the US through illegal routes and had already spent one crore. One crore is 10 million Nepali rupees, so about 70, 000 dollars.. And that is just a huge amount of money. for people living in rural Nepal or anywhere in Nepal, where some people continue to live on sums as low as two dollars a day, for example.

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Today we’re speaking with Soham Dhakal, who first travelled to the US when he was 17 and has been back and forth between the two countries so many times he considers himself a nomad. But before we get to Soham’s story I want to correct something I said last week. Our new text messaging service is not limited: it’s for everyone listening to the show, on any app. Sneak a quick look now to confirm: at the top of the description to this episode – and every episode –  you’ll see the words ‘Send us a Text Message.’ Click on it now to do just that, wherever you are, including Nepal. (I know because I tried it myself last week). Fyi, the number you’re texting is in the US, so you’ll have to pay the usual rates. Text us about anything you hear on Nepal Now, or to send us ideas for the show. 

OK, on with our story. As you’ll hear me say, Soham was one of the first people I thought of when I decided to start this series of migration. I’ve known him for about 7 years and he’s always been splitting his time between countries. I haven’t been part of his life in the US but I know that when he’s in Nepal he’s also on the move: a very busy, sociable guy. Where some people might think of what they’ll lose when they leave country A for country B, and vice-versa, I imagine Soham thinks about what he gets to add back into his life when he returns to each place. 

It's a cliché that being away from a place gives you more perspective on it, but Soham seems to have actually put that into practice, and offers interesting thoughts on how migration has coloured his own life, the relationship with his family, and Nepal itself, the country that he still considers home. 

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Heard something you really liked, or disliked? You can now let us know by sending  a text message directly from the website. In the description of each episode, at the very top left, you'll see a link that says, What do you think? Send a text. Click on that and your messaging app will open on your phone and you can write us a text message, which I think is pretty cool. Full disclosure: it's a US-based number so you won't pay anything if you're texting from the US or Canada; for other places the usual charges will apply. (That's about 8 rupees from Nepal)

Also this week, uh, some news about migration. There was a really good article, depressing but good article, in The Guardian about the kafala system of labour that's used in the Gulf countries and some neighboring countries. And it's basically a way of employers to control their workforce. And particularly for our purposes, women who go there to work as domestic workers.

And you might have listened to the episode we did last month with Sushma, who went to Kuwait and had to come back early after three months. So this is the type of system that is used to control workers like Sushma, who had a pretty tough time considering the short amount of time that she was there. She, at different times, was locked in rooms without a phone. She was deprived of food. She witnessed another worker being physically abused. This system is apparently being reformed in some countries, but it's happening too slowly.

And this article in The Guardian is linked to an upcoming episode that we're going to have with an expert who's going to be talking about women migrant workers from Nepal going to the Gulf and other countries. So if you haven't yet subscribed or followed the show, you might want to do that right now so you don't miss that episode.

Coming up in our next full interview next week, we're going to be speaking to Soham. Soham first migrated from Nepal to the U. S. when he was 17 to study, and in the last couple decades he's been going back and forth working at various jobs in the U. S. and Nepal also. Has many experiences that he talks about as well as unique opinions about migration personally and about its impact on Nepal as a whole. So stay tuned for that one.

Resources

The Guardian article about the kafala system

Article about migrants from Tanahun District disappearing in Russia

CESLAM website with newsletter sign-up

Sushma episode

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Aayush Pokharel will soon be graduating from his diploma programme in Canada, and so his search for a full-time job has already started. He’ll have three years to work in the country before leaving or applying for permanent residency. For now he says he wants to come back to Nepal.

Aayush was one of more than 20,000 young Nepalis officially studying in Canada in 2023, according to one report. That’s almost triple the 7,680 students in 2022, making Canada one of the most popular destinations for Nepali students. That is changing fast though: word had already got out about Canada’s increasingly expensive housing and scarcity of jobs for students. Then late last year the government announced that it was more than doubling the financial requirement for international students. It has also cut the number of work permits that will be available to graduating students. And this week it announced it is limiting the number of hours that international students can work per week, off campus.

Aayush says he won’t be affected by any of the announced changes. He tells me that he went to Canada, really, to kickstart his career, and thinks he is still on track to do that. Studies are the easy part, he says, making ends meet otherwise is tough. It means, for example, trying to resist the temptations that would leave him financially bound to Canada, like having to make regular payments on a car loan, or a mortgage. After all, Aayush did promise his father that he’d return to Nepal after five years.

A couple of notes before we start. First, if you’re a student thinking of going to Canada please confirm any information that you hear in this conversation – it is opinion only, not verified fact. Second, you might have noticed that most of the interviews in this new season of the show were done in person, which is reflected in the great sound quality. This one was not — we recorded online – so it doesn’t quite match that level, but I don’t think you’ll have any problems hearing us. Let me know if you do.

Please listen now to my conversation with Aayush Pokharel. 

Resources

Rising Nepal article on Nepali students in Canada

Government of Canada press release describing some recent changes

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Welcome to Nepal Now: Right Now, a weekly micro-episode where we share news about the show and what's happening in migration as it affects Nepal.

First, I want to give a shout out to listener Sikhar for his persistence. He wrote and suggested a guest to me. And somehow I couldn't figure out how I could link that guest and their work with this, podcast on migration. And so I wrote back to him. He wrote back to me and very clearly spelled it out. And so I finally got it. So thank you very much again, Sikhar, for, um, for sticking with it and making me understand what you were suggesting.

This week I'll be recording two interviews. The first will be with a migration expert. We'll be talking about women migrant workers. And in particular, we'll be discussing the Sushma case. You might remember Sushma, whose episode we aired a few weeks back. She went to Kuwait and had to come back early.

Also this week, there's  a traveling government consultation that's happening, on the government's draft labor migration policy.  Hopefully some of the proposals that they present will make things better for migrant workers like Sushma.

The second interview I'm doing this week is with a couple who are both applying to go work in South Korea. I met and talked to the husband when he had just finished his first exam. But they're both applying to go, which is quite unusual, I think. And what makes their story even more unique is that they met as migrant workers in Saudi Arabia before COVID.

Also in the news this week and last, there have been protests by family members of migrants  who were recruited to go work in Russia and nearby countries and then taken into the Russian army. And a number of Nepalese now have died while serving in the Russian army and more are there trying to get back and have appealed to the government to help them come back. I even read a report this week that some of those recruits were let go from the army and then stuck in this kind of no man's land near the border with Ukraine and Russia, never made it out and have now been forced to go back into the army and continue serving.

Also in the news this week, in Nepali Times, they're running a series on internal migration from the eastern hills down to the plains, a migration caused by drought and climate change, also. If you're interested, I'll put the links to these stories in the notes to this episode.

Resources

Article on migrants stuck in Russia

Nepali Times reporting on drought and internal migration

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Hi everyone. I’m Marty Logan. Thank you for clicking on this episode of Nepal Now: On the Move, where we speak with some of the huge number of people leaving – and occasionally returning – to this country wedged between India and China.

Bharat Adhikari is another former migrant worker who returned to live in Nepal, but his story could hardly be more different than Sushma’s, who we heard from in a previous episode. I chatted recently with Bharat at the Himal Media studio in Patan Dhoka. 

After more than a decade working in the retail sector in the Persian Gulf countries of Oman and Dubai, Bharat and his family decided it was time to come home. He describes the aha! moment when he returned home from work one day and realized that his mother and daughter had almost everything that money could buy to make them happy living overseas – but not a community. 

Bharat broke the news to his boss in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the man suggested he was crazy. But Bharat insisted that it was the best thing for his ageing mother and young daughter, and finally convinced him (although today he still gets offers from his former employer in Dubai to return). 

Aside from the decision to leave his successful career in exchange for society and culture in Nepal, what I find interesting about Bharat’s story is that his first venture here failed. Well not exactly – he gave up on starting a new business when he realized that he would have to ingratiate himself with government officials. Bharat understood then that having worked only in Gulf countries, he needed to be operating within a disciplined system. Luckily he’s now found it in his new job. 

Please listen now to my conversation with Bharat Adhikari. 

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

This is the first episode of our new micro-series: Nepal Now: Right Now.

These pieces will fill the gap between regular full episodes of the show, which are published every two weeks. About 5 minutes long, they will be published on alternate weeks and will focus on past and upcoming episodes — including listener feedback — sharing news about migration and Nepal, and anything else relevant to Nepal Now.

Let us know what you think of this new addition to the show, and about this first episode in particular.

Resources

Article quoting Nepal's Prime Minister Dahal on youth migration

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Hi everyone. I’m Marty Logan. Thank you for choosing to listen to Nepal Now: On the Move from the literally millions of podcasts available. This is our third episode since we shifted the show’s focus to migration — to, from, and within Nepal. And, I gotta say: I’m biting my nails waiting for feedback from you listeners — especially long-time fans. Good, bad or indifferent, I want to hear it. Your responses are the best way for me to see how I might improve the show. So please take a minute to leave a comment on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn, email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com, or leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

Today we’re speaking with another returnee to Nepal, but one with a much different story than what we heard from baker/entrepreneur Aanchal last week. We’re calling her Sushma, which is not her real name, because she has received threats from people who were involved in sending her to work in Kuwait. Sushma has filed a report with police, but nothing had come of it as of March 31st. The good news is that she is back home with her children, who she was very worried about, and taking medication.

Sushma left her village in Nepal’s Karnali region last November, and within a month was in Dubai, waiting to be taken to a job in Kuwait. She arrived there after a month but stayed only 3 months because she fell ill — but not before being threatened with harm if she didn’t go back to work. She also saw another worker being hit by a house owner, had her phone taken away, and was told by employers in another house that she couldn’t leave because “We bought you.”

Back in Nepal, Sushma, who didn’t attend school as a child and used to earn money in her village by manually breaking stones, is now saddled with a huge debt after her family mortgaged land to pay the agent for her ticket home. But given what she experienced in her brief stay in Kuwait, that seems far better than other possible outcomes.

This is the first episode where I worked with an interpreter, Pranika Koyu, who was in the studio with Sushma and I. She did an amazing job, but occasionally you might hear that I left out a voice when I shouldn’t have. That and any other editing errors are mine. A couple other notes: you’ll hear us talk about lakhs of money: 1 lakh is 100,000 Nepali rupees, which is about $750. Sushma says sometimes that the agent demanded 3 lakhs, 50,000 rupees for her return; other times she says 3 lakhs 20,000. We settled on the last amount. Finally, near the end of our conversation I ask Sushma about something I had heard earlier in the day about her police case. I deliberately deleted the name of the person who told me, for the same security reasons.

Just one more thing: I recently found out that there are two versions of the show on Apple Podcasts. I have no idea how that happened but it means I need to delete one. The choice is easy: one has all the episodes and one has fewer; one has quite a few subscribers – I like to think – and one has only about 20. So that second one I’m going to delete tomorrow. If you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, just be aware of that. And if you notice something has changed, particularly if you can’t listen to the show anymore, I suggest t

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Hi everyone. I'm Marty Logan. Thank you for listening to Nepal Now: On the Move. 

Let me know what you think of this episode, and if you have ideas for future guests. My email is nepalnowpod@gmail.com. I’ve done about 10 interviews to date for the show and I can see that it’s going to be much more difficult to find female guests than male ones, so please do send me tips about women who I might speak to. As a bit of a teaser, the people you’re going to hear from in future episodes have, for example: 

• Gone to study in Canada
• Migrated to work in Kuwait but had to return early and is now taking legal action against the people who sent them there
• Voluntarily left a rising career in Oman to return to Nepal to share the country’s cultural values with their child
• Worked for some months in the US, then some months in Nepal, and continues to go back and forth regularly.

The Covid-19 lockdown in New Delhi forced Aanchal Dutt to develop baking skills in order to satisfy her sweet tooth. Anxieties about her parents living hundreds of kilometres away in her hometown Surkhet, pushed her to give up life in the mega-city she had known from childhood to open a bakery in the small town once the restrictions had passed. 

Aanchal is one of a very small minority of Nepalis who are immigrating to the country instead of emigrating. But her/their story is important to hear if Nepal is to slow the now torrential flow of people leaving the country for what they hear are better opportunities abroad. 

Since I’ve been working on this revamped show, I’m quite sure that Aanchal is the only young Nepali I’ve met who hasn’t wanted to migrate and has actually returned here. The Cake House is now thriving, as a family affair, which I’m happy to say I witnessed when I was in Surkhet. (Btw, if you need a recommendation, the favourite sweet is cheesecake). Aanchal has also fallen in love with an alternative school that practises an holistic approach to learning, and is teaching English there. She says she understands why young people are leaving the country, but passionately urges them to return to help build a better Nepal.

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Hi everyone. Thanks for listening to this first episode of Nepal Now: On the Move. I know there are literally millions of podcasts out there competing for your listening time, so I appreciate that you chose this one.

My name is Marty Logan. I’m a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on and off since 2005. You can reach me with feedback on anything you hear on Nepal Now or ideas for guests at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com.

If you’re not familiar with the show, Nepal Now has been around for a while — I published more than 60 episodes from June 2020 to June 2023. And here we are again.

Why am I back? you might be wondering. You can listen to the new trailer for a full explanation. The short answer is that I think I still have something to contribute to informing people — both Nepalis and foreigners — about this country and I think I’ve found a way to make it more engaging.

To jump right in, today we’re speaking with Prem Awasthi. Prem worked for the United Nations in Nepal for 18 years, dealing with the growing number of humanitarian emergencies in the country. In December 2023 he moved to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I caught up with him just hours before his flight left Kathmandu. We talked about the many practicalities of going as well as why he was leaving, and if it’s a good thing that so many people are migrating from Nepal. 

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Welcome to Nepal Now, whose new title is Nepal Now: On the Move, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Thanks for choosing this show from among the more than 2 million podcasts now competing for your ears.

I’m back! And since my last episode was titled Thank you and goodbye! I guess I should explain. But first, if you don’t know me, my name is Marty Logan. I’ve been a journalist for more than 30 years, in my native Canada, Malaysia and Nepal, where my wife is from. We’ve lived here since 2016 and before that from 2005 to 2010, when I worked with the UN human rights office. Since 2016 I’ve been reporting regularly about health and human rights issues; I started Nepal Now in June 2020 and uploaded my last episode in June 2023.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about reviving the show ever since recording that ‘final’ episode. I even kept paying to host it all this time, although I wasn’t uploading new episodes. I did that partly because I felt like I still had things to say. And also, I know that a small, but steadily growing, number of people were listening. That, I realized, is something special: that some people will devote time in their very full lives to pay attention to what I have to say.

I also thought that with a new format I could share information in a more engaging way. After three decades as a journalist, I believe more strongly than ever that almost everyone wants to hear stories. They’re happy learning something new but happiest if that content is presented in an engaging way – to put it simply, a story about people that has a narrative arc. So in this series I want to talk about migration — which is a mammoth issue in today’s Nepal, with social, cultural, and political impacts that go beyond the economic ones we usually hear about — AND I want to make it more entertaining.

And finally, honestly, I admit that I am happy performing. Hosting a podcast is a type of performance, and I enjoy asking questions and trying to make a connection with a guest in the short amount of time that we have together. Ideally this season I’ll be speaking with people multiple times – as they prepare to leave Nepal (or in some cases return here) and then at least once after they’ve arrived.

Of course, migration is nothing new for Nepal. Gurkha soldiers are one of the country’s best known exports, and have been joining the UK and Indian armies, and other forces, since the early 19th century. But the scale of today’s migration is awe-inspiring, and to many people, troubling. We will talk to the Nepalis making those trips, and others linked to the migration phenomenon, to try and make sense of this mass movement

By the way, we covered migration in the second episode of Nepal Now 1, if you want to check that out. The link will be in the show notes.

I hope you like the new music and the logo. The tune was composed by Jason Shaw, whose website is audionautix.com. The logo is by Sweven Visuals. Finally, thank you to the Association of Commu

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Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me for this new episode of Nepal Now. I’m Marty Logan.

You might have noticed that this is an extra short episode. Frankly, that’s because it will be the last one. After 3 years I’m saying goodbye. Why? Put simply, I don’t have the energy to keep the show going any more.

I didn’t want to announce this at the end of the last full episode, because then I wouldn’t have had the chance to say this: Thanks to all of you who are listening and to everyone who ‘tuned in’ for one or more of the 64 episodes. I hope you took something away from the experience. I certainly did. I ‘met’ a lot of people, most of them online, as you do in this globalized world in the era of Covid-19. I especially appreciate the chats I had with younger guests — which is most of them : -). I think their approach to life rubbed off on me a little, and that’s a good thing.

If I have one regret it’s that I wish Nepal Now had been a little more entertaining, as opposed to informative. My journalism, mainly reporting on women and children’s health and on human rights, often focuses on serious topics but, personally, I appreciate a good laugh. Looking back, I think that I should have included more of them in this work... Next time, I hope.

A very big thank you to all of my guests, young and old, for sharing their time. I will single out the first guest, Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati, who very easily said yes to my invitation — and even loaned me an audio recorder afterwards. Special thanks to Lori, Shayne, Thom and Nicole, for encouraging me to keep going when I got discouraged way too early in this project. And to Suraya for helping me with social media, especially Instagram, where I was a total newbie. My biggest thank you goes to Niku, who was my advisor on all things Nepali, an insightful critic of my first drafts, and my biggest supporter.

This might sound strange given that I’m ending Nepal Now, but I feel like doing this podcast helped to spark my creativity in recent years. I have always enjoyed audio as a medium for journalism and hope to continue using it in my future work. Till then, you can find me on social media and check out my latest work on my Linktree — I’m martydlogan. You will be able to listen to any episodes of the show that you’ve missed on your podcast app until mid-July. After that, they’ll have a home on YouTube — look for @NepalNowPod.

Speaking of chuckles, I want to leave you with an outtake from another podcast I’ve hosted — Strive, by IPS News. 

Bye for now.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan.

Thanks to those of you who filled out the poll on our last episode, about Jumli Marsi rice. It’s available if you listen on Spotify, and I post a new poll and a question there with each episode. This poll was tricky: Do you think the growing trend of selling nutritious crops instead of consuming them is good for farm families? That contradiction was reflected in the poll’s results, with most people choosing they ‘Didn’t know’ if it was a positive or negative development.

If you’re listening on Spotify look for the poll, and a separate question, that you can answer about this episode. No matter where you hear Nepal Now, you can always send me a comment, or question, to martylogancomms@gmail.com.

OK, on with today’s chat... I’ve noticed a huge difference in publicity around the topic of mental health since I returned to Nepal in 2016, compared to when I lived here from 2005 to 2010. The subject is highlighted in the news media more regularly, and certainly on social media. Also, there seem to be many more organizations offering mental health education or treatment, both to individuals and to organizations. For example, a couple years ago I interviewed someone from an NGO that is creating quiet spaces it calls ‘counselling rooms’ in schools in some pilot districts. You can find the link to that episode in the notes to this show.

Growing recognition of the importance of mental health might be one of the few positive results of recent disasters, like the 2014 earthquake and the Covid-19 pandemic, notes today’s guest, consultant psychologist Sneha Agarwal Chaudhary. Still, it is alarming that the suicide rate in the country continues to rise steadily.

Sneha and I also chat about a few popular perceptions / conceptions of mental health counselling, like the cost and confidentiality, then turn to discuss particular groups of people who make up the audience of this podcast. These include young people in general as well as those who leave Nepal temporarily to either work or study. I think the main takeaway from our conversation is: If you’re concerned about your mental health, find someone you can talk to. 

As today’s conversation includes talk of suicide – please take special care while listening.

Resources

Nepal National Suicide Prevention Helpline — Telephone 1166

Previous episode on mental health – Training teens on mental health

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan.

Here’s something new — did you know you can listen to Nepal Now on your smart speaker? Just ask Siri, Alexa or whoever you’re talking with to ‘play Nepal Now podcast’ and you’ll hear my voice.

OK, on with this episode, one I really enjoyed because our initial discussion about why the Government of Nepal invested 13 years into improving a strain of rice – even if it is the famous jumli marsi red rice -  mophed into a broader chat about poor farmers growing crops for export instead of for personal consumption.

As its name suggests, the rice is grown in Jumla, a district of the Karnali region in west Nepal, typically described as one of the country’s most remote and poorest areas. I remember going there 17 years ago with the World Food Programme as it helicoptered in rice during an ‘emergency operation’ because prolonged drought had withered crops. But things are slowly improving. For example, a major hospital, Karnali Academy of Health Sciences, is regularly praised for providing services, rather than for the lack of such, which is often the reason rural health facilities make headlines.

Today’s guest, senior scientist and molecular breeder Resham Babu Amagain of the Nepal Agricultural Research Council, tells us that he thinks the livelihoods of poor farmers are also improving, largely because they are now selling what they grow – to Nepal’s middle class, eager to indulge in what they consider nutritious local food. (A 2018 photo of the current prime minister, and his predecessor, dining on jumli marsi helped to cement the rice’s reputation).

Before we play today’s chat, a quick reminder that you can show your appreciation for the work that goes into making Nepal Now clicking on the white ‘support’ button at the middle left of our homepage and making a contribution. If you have any questions or suggestions about this, or about the show in general — feedback on what you hear, an idea for an episode, or anything at all — you can write to me at martylogancomms@gmail.com.

Please listen now to my chat with Resham Babu Amagain.

Resources

Kathmandu Post story about the improved jumli marsi

Nepali Times article on jumli marsi

Nepal Agricultural Research Council

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. A quick reminder that you can back the work that goes into creating this show, by clicking on the white ‘support’ button at the middle left of our homepage and making a contribution. If you have any questions or suggestions about this, or about the show in general — feedback on what you hear, an idea for an episode, or anything at all — you can write to me at martylogancomms@gmail.com.

If you’re at least in your 20s you’ve probably heard of Tootle. It was the first ride-sharing app to operate in Nepal, starting in 2016. Today there is a multitude of competitors, from Pathao to InDriver, Bolt and more. In this episode, Tootle’s founder, Sixit Bhatta, tells us that he’s happy to see how the marketplace has developed since his project to track a bus on its route evolved into one of the country’s earliest forays into the so-called sharing economy. And he adds that he’s moving onto new things. Hint: They’re about as far away from Kathmandu’s traffic jams as he can get, both literally and figuratively.

But you have to wonder how things might have turned out if the government hadn’t delivered a ‘knockout blow’ to his new, local business via a tax bill that today’s ride-sharing ventures, backed by international resources, do not have to face. Sixit is surprisingly philosophical about this, preferring to focus on the ground that Tootle broke. That includes getting customers used to taking a lift from a motorcycle-riding stranger and — for the drivers — losing the ‘shame’ of accepting money for their work.

I think you’ll be surprised at his answer when I ask Sixit for one piece of advice he would give to entrepreneurs just starting out... I was.

Please listen now to my chat with Sixit Bhatta.

Resources

 Book mentioned by Sixit – Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Tootle Facebook page (not updated)

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and ways of moving the country forward. I’m Marty Logan, a journalist and communicator from Canada who’s lived in Nepal for 11 years.

Before we get into today’s chat, a follow-up from our recent episode about the satire-writing Ass of Nepali Times newspaper. You’ve probably heard about ChatGPT, the AI programme that has become essay-writing students’ new best friend. Well, Nepali Times recently asked ChatGPT to write various types of articles as a demonstration, including an example of Backside, the former column by The Ass. Unlike the straightforward news articles that the AI produced, it is not impressive, illustrating at least one limitation of the software — humour. Check it out at the link in the notes to this episode .

Also, a reminder that you’re now able to support Nepal Now financially — if you wish. Go to our website, nepalnow.buzzsprout.com, then to the black box titled Nepal Now+, where you can click to support the show. I’ve also included the link in the episode notes. If you have any questions or suggestions — about this support, an idea for an episode, or anything at all — you can write to me at martylogancomms@gmail.com. Thank you.

Today we’re speaking with Bala Rai, about the programme One School, One Nurse. I thought it started in 2022 but it was actually 4 years earlier, yet to date it’s reached just 1,100 of the tens of thousands of government schools. Still, providing health support and advice to school students — on things like nutrition, menstrual hygiene and mental health — seems like a great use of limited resources. Bala, who is Chief of the Nursing Section, in the Nursing and Social Security Division of the Department of Health, says that expansion will depend on provincial and local governments also footing some of the bills.

I also hope that the three levels of government find ways to adequately compensate the nurses — who are contract, not permanent, employees — so they don’t leave the country for overseas opportunities.

Finally, thank you to Anita Shrestha, who wrote about the One School, One Nurse programme for Himal magazine and suggested I contact Bela Rai for this episode. I’ve linked also to Anita’s article (translated) in the notes.

Resources

Chat GPT’s version of Backside

Anita Shrestha’s article translated in Nepali Times

Support Nepal Now

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and ways of moving the country forward. I’m Marty Logan, and I hope you can hear those birds chirping in the background. We just had a light rain so they've come out to celebrate. 

Before we get into this episode, I want to let you know that you’re now able to support Nepal Now financially — if you wish. Go to our website, nepalnow.buzzsprout.com, then to the narrow black box titled Nepal Now +, where you can click to support the show. I’ve also included the link in the notes to this episode. This is strictly voluntary; we will not restrict new episodes to people who support us, but it will help pay for the time that we put into the show. And, I must say, for me it is also a vote of confidence in our work. If you have any questions or suggestions you can write to me at martylogancomms@gmail.com. Thank you.

Today we’re speaking with Dr Mandira Sharma, a human rights activist, founder of the NGO Advocacy Forum, and senior international legal advisor at the International Commission of Jurists. She was involved in the very first exhumation of a body in a conflict-related case in Nepal, in 2007, and has been training in the process since then as a non-medical expert.

Mandira says that Nepal has been slow to undertake exhumations to try to find some of the more than 3,000 people said to be ‘disappeared’ during the conflict, from 1996 to 2006. It has also neglected to develop technical expertise and policies and guidelines to undertake the work.

We also chat about how exhumation fits into the four pillars of transitional justice and if Nepal is neglecting most of those pillars. Finally, Mandira argues that the state of the country today, including economic under-development and political instability can be traced back to the impunity that has reigned over Nepal since before the conflict.

Importantly, in the days following our recording, a case was filed in Nepal’s Supreme Court against Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Known as Prachanda when he led the Maoist uprising, in 2020 Dahal admitted that the Maoists were responsible for 5,000 of the 17,000 people estimated killed during the conflict. Starting on Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear if the prime minister should be investigated for that crime.

And a warning before we start: This episode discusses exhumation of the bodies of victims of conflict. Please take care while listening.

Resources

-       Mandira Sharma on Twitter

-       Ongoing news about the case against Prime Minister Dahal

-       Support Nepal Now

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You can now support Nepal Now.

Hi everyone. This is Marty Logan. Apologies for the long delay between episodes. I finally made it home for the holidays after four years being delayed by Covid and took advantage with a longer than usual break. So, welcome back to Nepal Now, if you’re a return listener; greetings to those of you who are here for the first time. What I’m trying to do with this podcast is highlight some alternatives to the usual routes and ideas about so-called development in Nepal. If you have any suggestions for future episodes please write to me at martydlogan@proton.me.

We’ve all made asses of ourselves at one time or another. Unfortunately for me, it seems that those are some of my most enduring memories. But today’s guest actually made a career out of it — not of messing up but of being The Ass, the author of a satirical column that ran on the back page of the Nepali Times newspaper for more than two decades.

As full-time publisher and editor of the weekly paper he says that writing the column went way beyond horsing around. In fact, more than once during our chat he describes satire as serious business — it’s a way to hint at what is really going on in the halls of power without playing by the regular rules of journalism, but if you cross a line and hit too hard — or too low — you could find yourself in a heap of — well, you know what.

The Ass says that after decades of poking fun at Nepal’s leaders he started to repeat himself — which isn’t surprising as the politicians themselves have been revolving in and out of the top posts for just as long. At some point he also realized that the reality of party politics was actually more ridiculous than anything he could dream up. So, The Ass is out to pasture and today says he is sleeping like a foal once again.

We also discuss the birth and evolution of Nepali Times, which started off as a cash cow — apologies for the mixed animal metaphors in this episode — but soon became known as a media that reported on life in Nepal beyond the Kathmandu bubble, particularly during the Maoist insurgency, from 1996 to 2006.

A quick note: early in the episode The Ass talks about the panchayat, which was the party-less system of government that reigned in Nepal before democracy was restored in 1990.

Resources

The Ass' column, Backside

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Hi everyone. This is Marty Logan. Welcome to Nepal Now.

It’s been an up-and-down year for me, and for the podcast, as I’m sure it has for many of you. But thanks to support from you listeners I’ve been motivated to keep it going. So thank you all for that. 

These will be my last words through the podcast for 2022, but before I say goodbye I want to ask you to do one more thing. I’ve created a very short survey to help me decide if we should tweak Nepal Now in 2023 and I need your input. I’ve pasted the link in the notes to this episode. Filling it out should take you no more than 2 minutes — no exaggeration, it took me under 1 minute.

Besides doing the survey, you can always contact me with ideas for guests or any other feedback at my new email address: martyloganstuff@proton.me.

Thank you in advance. And special thank you's to Thom, Nicole and Lori for their encouragement, to all the guests who shared their time and ideas with me in 2022, and especially to Niku, whose support goes way beyond Nepal Now.

Bye for now. I’ll talk to you again next year!

Resources

Please fill out the survey

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we explore new ideas and innovations to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan.

Thank you for joining me today a in my noisy neighbourhood. It feels like it’s construction season in this part of Kathmandu – but on with the show as they say!

Like what seems to  be a growing number of Nepalis, Rumee Singh always had an itch to return home and use her abilities to improve her own country. She went overseas to finish her education and then scored a “cushy” job in the corporate world in New York, but when a year-long stint in Dubai ended, she and her Nepali husband chose to return east instead of west.

The move paid off. Her work has been recognized with an investment from something called the UNICEF Innovation Fund, which puts money into development solutions based on blockchain technology. (Don’t worry – Rumee and I describe blockchain in simple terms in our chat coming up).

Rumee’s innovation, Rahat (‘relief’ in Nepali) is a digital payment system for humanitarian emergencies, such as following natural disasters like flooding. It’s a way to get money, or even goods, to affected people using mobile phones. Rahat’s advantage is that every transaction is tracked and because it uses blockchain, anyone anywhere can go online and see all those dealings — creating a huge barrier to corruption.

It's simple, but also complicated in some ways, explains Rumee. For example, not everyone post-disaster has access to a phone, so those people might actually receive physical cards that they can exchange for money or goods. Another wrinkle is that even people who do have phones don’t always know how to use them — even for simple things like receiving a text message — so Rahat has to do digital literacy sessions in some areas.

But overall, results from early tests have been positive and now Rahat is doing a pilot project with the UNICEF country office here. If all goes well, Rumee thinks that her innovation could succeed beyond Nepal, especially because Rahat is based on blockchain, which is borderless. She encourages her countrywomen and men overseas who are considering a move home to take the plunge. It can be frustrating, she says, but it’s also cheaper to set up a business, the talent pool is deep, and it’s familiar territory.

If you have any thoughts about this episode, or ideas for future ones, let me know. My email is marty@martylogan.net.

Resources

Rahat

UNICEF Innovation Fund

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Thank you for joining me today. I think it’s fair to say that the discussion you’re going to hear raises at least as many questions as it answers. We’re talking about domestic abuse and women who leave Nepal to work abroad. Labour migration is a huge part of the country’s economy and, as I think this episode reveals, it has a major impact on many other aspects of life here. Earlier this century the money that migrant workers sent home accounted for close to 1/3 of Nepal’s entire economy; today it is closer to a quarter – still a major chunk of what keeps this country going.

Today I’m speaking with Dr Arjun Kharel, assistant professor of sociology at Tribhuvan University and a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility. He and co-author Amrita Gurung recently published a paper that looks at spousal abuse experienced by 148 Nepali women who worked in various countries overseas. Much has been reported about women migrant workers who are abused in their working countries but this research focuses on domestic abuse faced by women in Nepal before and after they worked overseas, mostly in Persian Gulf countries or Malaysia. These are – aside from Nepal’s neighbour India – the main destination countries for Nepali workers, women and men.

One of the main findings of the research, which surprised the academics, is that women migrant workers did not face higher levels of abuse after they returned home. Researchers expected that because there is such a stigma about women who go abroad alone, specifically that they will hook up with other men that female migrants would be ‘punished’ after returning home. Another surprising finding was that the women surveyed believed that it was OK for men to beat women in certain circumstances, for example if they were not caring for children properly. In that sense, their opinions matched those of Nepali women in general, whereas researchers thought that exposure to another culture might affect the migrants’ thinking about abuse.

Other questions that I think the research raises include: how many Nepali women who leave for overseas work are abused and how big a factor is that abuse in their decision to leave? Arjun does have answers based on his research, as you’ll hear, but I think this needs to be examined further. Also, why isn’t more being done to prevent domestic abuse in general, which in turn might reduce the number of women who feel they have to leave the country?

I could go on, but instead please listen now to my chat with Dr Arjun Kharel to learn more.

Resources

Research paper — Women's Participation in Foreign Labour Migration and Spousal Violence: A Study on Returnee Women Migrant Workers in Nepal

Our earlier episode – The Labour Migration Trap

Nepal Now social links

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

I reached out to Gyanu Adhikari wondering if I had missed the boat. I wanted to speak to him about co-founding The Record, an online news portal that started publishing in 2014, but the website had stopped posting new information this past July. I probably should have contacted him two years earlier, after I started this podcast, but I think as a media person myself I just took the website for granted as another media portal not as an experiment in providing news without advertising and in multiple formats.

So I was happily surprised when Gyanu agreed to an interview – but startled when he said that what he really wanted to discuss was his optimism about Nepal’s future. It’s rare to hear that view. Instead, what many people seem to want to talk about are government failures: the lack of action on air pollution and to combat health crises like Covid-19 and the ongoing dengue outbreak. Myself, I can easily get fixated on the glacial progress toward solving long-standing issues, like lack of healthcare in rural areas and the mind-boggling neglect of preparations for the inevitable disasters that occur during the monsoon. So it was really good to hear from someone who can see beyond the obvious problems.

Back to The Record, and journalism in Nepal more broadly. Here I think Gyanu was hopeful rather than optimistic. Hopeful that some young, entrepreneurial media people would build on The Record’s record, in particular counting on subscribers instead of advertisers to generate the resources to keep the portal running, and with an eye to maintaining its independence. That would be easier today than when the site was launched thanks to huge advances in online payment services, Gyanu pointed out. Perhaps the new operation could be bilingual too, he suggested.

This conversation reminded me of my chat with Shailee Basnet, who has climbed Mt Everest and is now a stand-up comic, motivational speaker and mentor to young women. When I asked her in 2021 why so many Nepalis were reaching global heights, as climbers, chefs, performers, etc, she made it sound like a natural evolution, part of the country’s so-called development if you like. I still feel that it is largely the people of Nepal who are leading the country forward rather than its leaders. As you’ll hear, Gyanu disagrees with me. Listen to our chat now to learn more.

Resources

Website of The Record

Gyanu Adhikari on Twitter

Nepal Now social links

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Twitter

LinkedIn

Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan.

Thanks for joining me for this episode, which, if you’re counting, is #52. You might be wondering what happened to the video version of the last episode, my chat with Sanjib Chaudhary. Well, that’s a good question. I received a rough cut and suggested two changes — and weeks later I’m still waiting for the updated version. I promise to let you know if it ever appears.

If you’ve been listening to Nepal Now for a while you’ll know that I sometimes switch up the usual 1-1 interview format. A couple episodes back I was at a college collecting opinions from journalism students, and before that I twice visited a village in Sindhupalchowk district, to see the state of maternal health.

Today is also different. This episode is based on an interview I first recorded for Strive, a podcast I host for Inter Press Service – or IPS – News. We talked so much about Nepal, as an example, that I thought you might be interested in hearing it too. The focus is human rights, specifically a new approach to assessing countries’ human rights performance.

I’ve been reporting about human rights for many years and I know that more often than not governments will respond to articles about serious violations, including killings, by saying that it didn’t happen that way or even if it did, it was a one-time incident that doesn’t represent a pattern. I think those types of reactions might be happening more often in this age of misinformation and disinformation.

Too often the issue ends there, with no consequences. The great thing about today’s topic, the Human Rights Measurement Initiative’s Rights Tracker, is that it quantifies governments’ performances, based on objective data, in some cases, and on in-depth interviews in others. It’s not a perfect system, as you’ll hear, but combined with the existing ‘naming and shaming’ approach, it could be a better way to ensure that human rights are respected.

Please listen now to my chat with Stephen Bagwell from HRMI and the University of Missouri, St Louis.

Resources

Human Rights Measurement Initiative

Nepal page on HRMI's Rights Tracker

Nepal Now social links

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Twitter

LinkedIn

Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan.

I hope you don’t mind a slight digression to start. A few weeks ago I met a friend, someone I see every few months. One of the first things he said to me was, 'I see your podcast is on a break'. We chatted for a while and later I realized that I had no idea he kept up with the show. This has happened to me regularly this year: every so often I meet someone who says they've been listening or that they met someone who mentioned Nepal Now.

When I started the show more than two years ago I imagined it becoming a viable piece of journalism, one that might generate a buzz, or at least a mention, among people interested in development and positive change. From what I can tell, that has not happened. I think we've gathered a small audience, like my friend above, which is relatively stable but not evidently growing. This has discouraged me – and I will admit, after musing over the future of Nepal Now regularly during the past couple of years, that I might discourage too easily. But now I wonder if I've failed to communicate clearly to you, dear listeners, my vision for the podcast.

So I will say very clearly now — I'm not doing this as a hobby, but as a journalism initiative. And frankly speaking, I think that we could have, and should have, more listeners, but I need your help to spread the word and attract more fans. That’s how we will make Nepal Now a sustainable venture. So please, share this episode with at least one other person you think would like it . You can click on the share icon (the one with the up-pointing arrow) in your podcast app, which is probably where you’re listening now. On social media it's even easier — just share one of our posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Thanks very much. Now on with the episode.

Today we’re chatting with Sanjib Chaudhary.

He’s a communicator I got to know through his Twitter account, where he posts about the food, flora and fauna of Nepal’s tarai or plains region. Many of his Tweets are about the culture of the Tharu indigenous people, who are native to the tarai, or Madhesh region. Sanjib himself is Tharu.

And now, since it seems to be a day for speaking frankly, I have to tell you. When I invited Sanjib on the show I assumed that his social media activity was driven by Tharu nationalism, or Madhesi nationalism. But after you listen to our conversation I think you’ll agree that’s probably not the case—Sanjib just wants to share the new things that he discovers on his travels.

And one other confession: I put Sanjib through the nerve-wracking experience of recording this episode in visual as well as audio format. Sure he works in communications, so putting on a lapel mic, posing for cameras, and being told you can move your hands here but not there was nothing new to him. But it’s still something he didn’t sign up for when I invited him on the show.

This episode will be available on the Nepal Now YouTube channel as soon as I work up the nerve to see how funny I looked on video.

Resources

Support the show

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Welcome to Nepal Now. My name is Marty Logan. I’m back after a long break – thanks for joining me. Today we’re doing something different. On Aug 21st I was at St. Xavier’s College in Kathmandu, talking with journalism students about podcasting. Actually, I tried to keep the talking part to a minimum — our main task was to create this episode that you’re listening to now. The theme of the session was: When you’re a journalist, how will you do journalism differently?  

I was impressed with the ideas expressed by the students, who are between 18 and 22 years old, and still have three years of studies to complete. On the positive side, one noted the growing accessibility of global news, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. But others pointed out faults of Nepal’s media, including the lack of female talk show hosts and the concentration of media in the capital, Kathmandu.   

 They also offered many suggestions for improving the industry. One shared her passion for becoming a voice for the voiceless, another of covering stories about minority communities, and a third would aim to tackle fake news and misinformation. More than one student believes it’s important to divert the current focus of Nepal’s journalism from politics to other aspects of society. Other approaches, like storytelling and citizen journalism, were also offered as new directions.

 A quick note to say that the sound is more echo-y than usual today because we recorded in a classroom at the college. I forgot to record the questions during the session so I added them afterwards.

Resources

St. Xavier's College

Nepal Now social links

Facebook

Instagram

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Welcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and initiatives to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. 

A lot has happened around menstrual health issues in Nepal in recent years. And it seems that all that work is bearing fruit. In its last budget the government pledged to drastically cut the tax and import duty on menstrual hygiene products, while a toolkit created by a group of organizations will soon be distributed in government schools. 

Today’s guests have taken very different routes to contribute to better menstrual health. Working with 80 young Nepali illustrators, Sophie Maliphant  has just published the book Kumari’s Adventure with her Moon Cycle to help young girls, and others, to understand the changes in their bodies with menstruation. Gyan Maharjan has been called Nepal’s Pad man for his efforts to create chemical-free, climate-friendly pads and make them available country wide. And Neeta Timsina has introduced menstrual leave for employees in her company. 

Of course much more remains to be done. As Gyan points out, only one-third of the bathrooms in government schools have reliable running water, a prerequisite for good hygiene. While chhaupadi, the practice of segregating women — usually in small, unsafe sheds outdoors — after giving birth or when having their periods, happens mostly in Far Western Nepal, women in every type of household in all parts of the country face discrimination when menstruating. And, as we all know, government budget pledges are only the first step to seeing changes made on the ground. 

Finally, we people living in the capital Kathmandu – particularly those of us who spend much of our days online – have a skewed understanding of life in Nepal. Awareness-raising efforts need to focus on the country’s villages. Here, recently elected local governments, which have proven to be effective in other health and education ventures, should be enlisted as partners. 

Please listen now to my chat with Neeta Timsina, Gyan Maharjan and Sophie Maliphant.

This is episode #50 of Nepal Now. Thank you to everyone who’s helped us reach this mark, and to you for listening. After two years we’re going to take a break and will be back in September.  Meanwhile, if you haven’t been with us from Day 1, please take the time to check out our 49 previous episodes.

Resources

Kumari’s Adventure with her Moon Cycle — Book by Sophie Maliphant and others

X-pose Nepal — Gyan Maharjan’s organization

Zendatum — Neeta Timsina’s company 

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Last Saturday two trucks carrying smuggled fertilizer across the southern border between India and Nepal were seized at Nepal customs. Police took charge and were escorting the trucks to the capital Kathmandu when they were blocked on the highway by desperate farmers in Dhading district, who seized 400 of the 500 bags of fertilizer and vanished, reported the Kathmandu Post. 

Fertilizer shortages are a perennial issue in Nepal. This year the Russian attack on Ukraine has caused a global shortage, possibly worsening the situation here. Also, the monsoon came early, so the fertilizer was needed sooner than usual because farmers were ready to plant rice in their waterlogged fields earlier than in most years. A day after the truck hijacking some farmers started planting without the fertilizers, hoping for the best, again reported the Post. 

Those events symbolize the state of agriculture in Nepal today. Dependent on external input, the country’s food supply is at the whim of events outside of its border so when calamities hit, like the invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic, alarm bells ring. On top of that, much agriculture land is unused as hundreds of thousands potential farmers seek greener pastures working as migrant labourers in India, Malaysia and Persian Gulf countries. Finally, climate change is scrambling weather patterns and generating many more extreme weather events, like drought and torrential rainfall, which endanger crops. Once a rice exporter, today Nepal depends on imports to feed its nearly 30 million people. 

In its recent budget the government, like many before it, pledged to revive agriculture. Led by mechanization and improved seeds the country will boost rice production three times and cut overfall food imports by one-third, it promised. 

Today’s guest, development policy expert Jagannath Adhikari, is sceptical of the promises. He says that Nepal should be focusing on rebooting traditional family farming, in part so it generates enough food to feed the growing number of urban dwellers, but also so growers can earn the increased amount of cash required by today’s farming families.  

Resources

Fertilizer truck hijacking — report in the Kathmandu Post

Climate change and agriculture — op-ed article

UN Food System Summit meeting, Kathmandu, September 2021

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

This is another episode in our series Nepal Then and Now, where we catch up with former guests. Before we do that, I have a request. We know that the show has some dedicated listeners because they’ve been saying really positive things about us, which have been passed on, and it is very encouraging. But, honestly, we need more subscribers in order for the show to be sustainable and to keep producing these episodes. So please, take a minute — two at most — to give us a rating on Apple podcasts. That will help more potential subscribers find us. 

Karma Tamang gave up a solid career in Germany to enter politics in Nepal. That’s not a path many of her fellow Nepalis have followed, or are likely to tread, given the reputation of politics here as a dirty and corrupt practice. 

When we spoke to Karma in 2020, she explained what motivated her to take such a unique path. Not only did she leave her job, she began to study politics, and is currently working on a PhD. Karma told us that that she feels all Nepalis have a duty to dedicate themselves to the country — even temporarily — especially privileged ones like herself. She chose politics because from abroad she learned quickly how it played a role in everything that happened — or didn’t happen — in the country. 

More than a year later, and after just completed municipal elections, Karma — who is now the leader of Nepal Bibeksheel Party — sounds more upbeat. She is positive about some of the outcomes of the polls, including the elections to high-profile positions of independent candidates. None of those who ran from her party were elected but as she repeated, Bibeksheel has always described its approach as similar to running a marathon not a sprint. 

One note before we start: near the end of our chat Karma says that the party hasn’t decided yet if she will run in November. Well, I have an update — which I will share at the end of this episode. Please listen now to my conversation with Karma Tamang.   

Let us know your thoughts on this episode. We are on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as @nepalnow or @nepalbnowpod. If you haven’t already subscribed, do so by clicking like, follow, or subscribe on your favourite podcast app. I’m Marty Logan. I produce Nepal Now and I’ll talk to you again soon.

 Resources 

Coming home to give back — Our first chat with Karma, in 2020

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Today is the second instalment in our series Nepal Then and Now, where we catch up with former guests. We first spoke with Pallavi Payal in mid-2020 about the situation of women in the country during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time she focused on unequal citizenship provisions for women in the country, particularly those living in the southern Madesh region. 

In today’s chat we’re focused on online violence against women, particularly the torrent of threats of rape and other violence made against women, including Pallavi, following the Women’s March, a women’s rights rally held in Kathmandu in February 2021. She describes the frustrating process of trying to lodge a report with the cyber bureau of Nepal Police, which includes that office’s inability to accept online violence as a threat that should be investigated. 

Pallavi explains why the women activists didn’t try to pursue their complaint further up the Police chain of command but also how today she is more determined than ever to speak up about patriarchy in Nepali society, including in religion.

Let us know what you thought of this episode – and how you’re finding this series, Nepal Then and Now. We’re @nepalnow or @nepalnowpod on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you loved it, and don’t want to miss a future episode, make sure you follow the show on your usual podcast app. We’re on Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Google and Apple Podcasts as well as Pocket Casts and many more. 

Resources 

Media coverage of the women’s march, 12 February 2021 – Kathmandu Post

Media coverage of online threats and attempts to register a police case following the women’s march – Record Nepal

2020 episode with Pallavi – Women in the Age of Covid-19

Website of Body & Data, a Nepal-based NGO that works on online access for women and sexual minorities

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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That is the sound of hundreds of students at Tilingatar High School in Tokha Municipality lining up for their midday meal of rice and veggies. This still unfinished concrete school of 1,100 students on the urban edge of the Kathmandu Valley is one among tens of thousands of government schools country wide that serve hot meals to their students. In two more years the midday meal programme (known here as diya khaja) will feed children in all 77 districts, after the remaining 6 districts transition from meals provided by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). This is no small feat, nor cheap. From 2017 to 2020 the diya khaja budget almost quadrupled (from $20 million to nearly $70 million). After teachers’ salaries, this is the largest education expense in Nepal.

In March I travelled to the Far West region and visited five schools in both the hills and the Tarai plains. Unanimously I found that officials and parents liked the government’s school feeding. It made students excited about going to class and provided some of them with their most healthy meal of the day.

I'm not saying there are no challenges: some schools and the municipal governments that transfer the money to them to run the programme — budgeted by the central government — say that providing 15 rupees per child per meal just isn’t enough, when they also have to pay for cooks, utensils and transportation. And media reports appear regularly about low quality food in a certain school or of officials substituting processed food for the nutrition-based menu created by the ministry of education and WFP. Surprisingly, neither the government nor the UN agency has analysed the impact of school feeding on child nutrition in Nepal, a country where malnutrition remains a major health problem.

That said, schools and municipalities are forging ahead with diya khaja. In the fertile outskirts of Kailali district — with the help of the WFP — schools are contracting local women farmers to provide rice, lentils, milk, yogurt and almost every other ingredient needed for their menus fresh from their fields. And here in Tokha, the municipality has itself expanded school feeding beyond grade 5, the last year of the government programme, to grade 10.

Resources

Article and video on school feeding in Nepal

Article on school meals in Nepal and Canada

World Food Programme global report, with Nepal case study

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Today is the first episode in our new series, Nepal Then and Now, where we’ll talk with former guests and catch up on their work and lives. We created the series partly in response to feedback we got in our recent survey — that episodes were too long. If you are one of the listeners who felt that way — or even if you’re not! — please let us know what you think about this approach.

I’m really happy that our first guest in the series is filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar. Yes, I consider him a friend but it’s also because I’m impressed by how deeply he thinks about his craft and how quickly he’s become a world-class director. Deepak’s films to date include Chaukat (Threshold in English), Highway, the first Nepali movie to be screened at a major international festival, and White Sun, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2016, where it was nominated as Best Film. 

Like many of us, Deepak got sidelined by Covid-19, particularly his project to make his next Nepal-based feature film, The Sky is Mine. There is now a new tentative date for shooting to start, as you’ll hear in our conversation. But unlike some of us, Deepak didn’t use the pandemic as an excuse to spend more time on Netflix. Instead, he made another movie. He and his collaborator and wife, Asha Magrati, created the short film Four Nights, which debuted at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival in February, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear Award. 

Slightly more challenging, Deepak explains, is his new gig teaching film studies full-time at a US university. 

Please listen to my Nepal Then and Now chat with Deepak Rauniyar. You’ll find a link to our earlier interview in the episode notes.  

Resources

-       Deepak Rauniyar’s website

-       Interview with Deepak Rauniyar, 2020

-       Short version of 2020 interview with Deepak Rauniyar

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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One request  before we get to today’s episode—we’ve created a short survey to get your feedback on the show. It’s just 4 questions, and according to Survey Monkey the average person takes just 2 minutes to fill it out, so it’s fast. I’ve pasted the link in the episode notes. Thanks to everyone who gives feedback.

Ek Ek Paila (which means step by step in Nepali) was one of many initiatives started to provide emergency relief following the devastating earthquakes of 2015, which killed almost 9,000 people and destroyed 600,000 homes and 20,000 schools. Unlike some other responses, the non-profit has continued, delivering nearly two dozen health camps in remote, mountainous parts of the country.

But about 1 year ago the Nepali-led NGO opened a community health centre in the heart of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. I visited recently and was pleasantly surprised to see it is equipped like a small hospital, including a space for minor surgeries, a dental room and an eyeglass shop. That shop is perhaps not so startling because the president of the Ek Ek Paila Foundation, Dr Suman Thapa, is an opthamologist, with links to Tilganga Eye Hospital.

In our chat today he explains his very personal connection to the clinic’s location and the vision for it as a care centre for the urban poor, including a squatter community living on the banks of the nearby Bagmati River. We also discuss how Ek Ek Paila is expanding, in partnership with the Government of Nepal, to provide permanent health care services in rural areas. At the same time it is using tele-medicine to maintain links with the remote communities where it has already held health camps.

Resources

Ek Ek Paila website

Give your feedback—Nepal Now survey

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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When I was thinking about the topic of today’s episode, veganism in Nepal, it seemed oddly out of place. It’s not that being vegan is new in Nepal—historically many Hindus and Buddhists have not eaten meat or dairy products—but I was associating veganism with the emerging movement in the west, which probably more than anything else reveals the overwhelming reach of western culture. Of course, the basic diet is the same, but there are similarities and differences, noted in my chat with Suresh Prasad Sharma, Chair of the World Vegan Organisation—Nepal.

Both here and abroad the new wave of veganism is being led by young people, and shared and promoted on social media. It has various motivations globally: to eat more healthily, to reduce the impact on the planet of a diet that includes meat and dairy, and to prevent cruelty to animals. For Suresh, this last point is what transformed him from being a vegetarian into a vegan: the treatment of dairy cows. Somehow I naively thought that in Nepal the cow—which is worshipped by Hindus and protected in law—was always pampered by loving farmers on small family farms. According to Suresh that’s far from the truth.

One major difference between being vegan in Nepal and say in my home country, Canada, is that made-for-vegan products are hard to find. The ones that do exist can be out of the price range of many people who are contemplating giving up meat and dairy. Suresh says that work has begun to start making products like non-dairy milk and cheese, along with mock meat, in Nepal. Perhaps the project will have progressed so that these vegan substitutes will be on display at the Himalayan Vegan Festival , scheduled for September in Kathmandu and Bhutan. In any case, one thing that I like about this episode is that it contains lots of practical information about being, or becoming, vegan in Nepal.

A couple of notes before we start:

-Suresh mentions the word ‘ahimsa’ near the end of the episode, when discussing the Buddha and tourism. It is the Nepali word for non-violence.
-Also, earlier in our chat we discuss the number of Nepali vegans who are not getting vaccinated for Covid-19. Animal testing of vaccines is one reason for that opposition, says Suresh. Afterwards I confirmed that animal testing of vaccines did occur. I’ve put a few links to that info in the Resources section.

What do you think? Are you vegan, or thinking about making the move? Let us know if this chat was helpful and if you have any follow-up questions. You can find Nepal Now, or Nepal Now pod, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

My name is Marty Logan. I’m a long-time vegetarian but now thinking again about going vegan. I produce Nepal Now and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Resources

World Vegan Organisation—Nepal

Online Khabar article on veganism in Nepal

Animal testing of Covid-19 vaccines

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As SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Jan 13th 2022, a group of friends took up positions on a rooftop in Kathmandu, laptops open, waiting for a signal. Inside Falcon 9 was the satellite they had spent years building, first as students and then working as engineers—Sanosat-1. 

The size and shape of a Rubik’s Cube, Sanosat was one of 106 satellites shuttled into space on the Falcon 9 then released into orbit to begin their various missions. 500 kilometres above Earth, the first made-in-Nepal satellite is measuring radiation levels, relaying signals that can be used by amateur radio operators, and proving that Nepal has the resources to dive into space research. 

“We were really really nervous that day,” says Saurav Paudel, one of Sanosat’s creators and today’s guest. “We had been waiting for the launch for 1 ½ years—there had been delays due to Covid, and a couple of scheduled launch dates had already come and gone.” The group sat on the roof, next to warming fires on the cold winter night, watching the launch online. They knew that there would be a delay after all the satellites were released from the rocket and Sanosat started orbiting. “We finally caught the signal at about 3 am. That was a really exciting moment for us,” Saurav says.

Sanosat-1 will revolve in space for as long as two years, relaying data to earth. Its makers are already working on Sanosat-2, which will be designed to carry out more complicated missions that might also include external customers who will pay to use the satellite. Saurav dreams of a day when hundreds of Nepal-made satellites will orbit above Earth gathering important information exclusively for the country.

Thanks again to Saurav Poudel for sharing the story of Sanosat with us today. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow, like or favourite Nepal Now on your podcast app so you don’t miss a conversation. Let us know your thoughts about what you hear via our social media accounts. We’re Nepal Now or Nepal Now Pod on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Resources

YouTube video

Orion Space

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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(Listen to the first part of this report.)

I’d been wanting to return to Chimling Village in the hills of Sindhupalchowk district since soon after my first visit in March 2021. That’s when I accompanied health workers to find out the status of women who had given birth recently, but had delivered their babies at home. In particular, I was curious about their experiences with misoprostol, a drug that’s given to pregnant women who might deliver without the support of a skilled birth attendant. The main cause of death in home deliveries in Nepal, and elsewhere, is excessive bleeding after the birth; misoprostol is meant to stop that.

The visit was a real eye-opener. I found out that of 10 women who had recently given birth at home, only one, Dilmaya Tamang, had received the pills. And she got them only because a visiting health worker had spoken to the female community health volunteer responsible for the village, who happened to be Dilmaya’s   sister-in-law and neighbour, before Dilmaya gave birth.

That specific incident was troubling, but I think what bothered me most as I returned from my trip was the casual attitudes I found in many people involved in providing health services. In some cases the health care given to mother and child could easily mean the difference between life and death.

So, I was happy to see that Dilmaya and her neighbour Priya were healthy, as were their nine-month-old babies. The one woman in the village currently pregnant told us that she was planning to deliver in the birthing centre—another piece of good news. When we visited the centre in March the building was complete but equipment and drugs were not on hand and essential staff had gone for training.

But then we heard about a home delivery that had taken place nearby a few days earlier. We could get few details from the birthing centre, so we went to speak with the new mother and her family, a conversation that brought back my earlier fears about health care in the hills of Nepal. 

Resources

One Heart Worldwide 

Location of Chimling village, Balephi Municipality

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Happy New Year and welcome to Nepal Now’s first episode of 2022. My name is Marty Logan. Please bear with the nostalgia that accompanies the new year: I still remember when the new millennia was a thing (and we all fretted about the impending cyber doom that would be delivered by the Y2K virus—until 12:01 am on January first 2000, when we sighed with relief after our computers booted up).

Actually, my memories reach much further into the past—but that is for another time. Today we are talking with epidemiologist Dr Lhamo Sherpa. Our chat also delves into the past, as far back as her mother’s childhood in Jiri, Dolakha district, but our focus is current. In particular, we’re discussing what barriers—if any—constrain what a doctor can or should say publicly beyond her specialization. To Dr Sherpa, an avid Twitter user, the lines are clear: see the world through a feminist lens, be compassionate, but bold at the same time.

Embracing that vision doesn’t mean that she has not been intimidated by online trolls in recent times. She singles out the violent reaction against herself and many others who protested authorities’ failed attempts to swiftly and effectively investigate the 2018 rape and murder of 14-year-old Nirmala Pant. They were labelled as foreign agents, fuelled by dollars. (Dr Sherpa doesn’t say this but I know that some women who spoke out on this issue were threatened with brutal sexual assault).

She says that she is more careful now with her online advocacy but the detailed daily posts she uploaded during the recent 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence demonstrate that she takes her tweeting as seriously as her paid work. Still, more must be done to ensure that women’s rights are tangible, she insists, particularly the right to make decisions about their bodies. Development actors need to revise their approaches, especially to see issues through the eyes of the people they’re meant to  be supporting. Wryly, she notes that both men and women in the villages she works with are very receptive to the message of women’s empowerment—it’s the so-called educated  people in Kathmandu who are slow to accept the need for change.

Resources

Dr Lhamo Sherpa on Twitter

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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I first thought about interviewing today’s guest soon after I saw her Instagram channel when, I must say, I was shocked by some of its contents. We finally spoke last week, and I was certainly impressed by what I heard. 

We’ll get to our chat in a minute, but first a quick word about this podcast. The feedback we’ve received about Nepal Now in the past 18 months has all been positive, but frankly we’ve haven’t yet hit a point where this work is sustainable. Simply put — we need more listeners. So if you enjoy the show, and haven’t already done so, could you let your friends know about us? Alternatively, you can rate and review us on Apple podcasts. I know that many of you — more than half in fact — do not listen to the show on Apple, but because it’s such a popular platform, it apparently does give us a boost throughout the podcast world if we’re well-known there. To make it easier, I’ve pasted the Apple podcasts link to the show. Thank you for doing what you can. Now on to today’s episode. 

There is a saying that I like a lot: change is the only constant in life. Undoubtedly, change is not always easy, especially if it entails you giving up something — be it power, prestige, money, or all of those — but in general I think it’s healthier to adapt than to resist.  

These days, however, it seems that resistance to change is hardening. Perhaps that’s because change is happening faster than ever. Or maybe it’s affecting a group of people who are not used to giving up their advantages. In any case, I’m sure there are many people studying change currently who can enlighten you further. 

Today’s guest experienced one of life’s major changes — getting married — and began to wonder why, as a Nepali woman married into a Nepali family, various things were done in certain ways. Speaking to friends, she learned that they were also questioning some traditions they were expected to follow as new brides (or buhari in Nepali). Thinking there must be even more women living similar experiences, she started the Instagram account Tales of a Modern Buhari. Today, after just over one year, she has an impressive 20,000 followers — and some influence on many lives, more than half of them unmarried women (and a few guys as well). 

We spoke about her desire to expand this work, but also the burden that it delivers, both as an investment of time and also on her emotional well-being. I was glad to hear that most opposition to the ideas expressed in her posts and discussions is delivered respectfully, not in hateful diatribes. Perhaps that’s because young people are more open to change? 

Please listen now to my chat with Modern Buhari. To preserve her anonymity we’ve disguised her voice. 

Resources

Tales of a Modern Buhari Instagram page

Nepal Now on Apple Podcasts

Nepal Now social links

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Welcome to Nepal Now. My name is Marty Logan.

Looking back on the early days of my relationship with Nepal, I see that it took me far too long to realise that this is a country of incredible diversity of cultures and peoples. Today I can understand why — the face of Nepal is very much upper-caste, Hindu, male and Nepali speaking. Yet roughly a third of the country’s nearly 30 million people belong to about 100 Indigenous groups, 60 of them officially recognized. Surprisingly, you hear very little about those groups on a day-to-day basis here, especially compared to countries like Canada or Australia, where the proportion of Indigenous people is much lower, but Indigenous rights is a major talking point and issue.

When I moved to Nepal just before the end of the 10-year Maoist conflict in 2005, a lot of heat was being generated in discussions over the rebels’ proposal to divide the country based on the territories of the major Indigenous groups. In the end, that vision was not realised and people like today’s guest, Indigenous rights activist Prabin Shakya, argue that the Maoists were playing with the aspirations of many marginalized people in the country simply to attain their political ends.

Since the peace process ended, Indigenous rights is a topic that is highlighted in mainstream media annually on Indigenous Peoples Day, then fades away. Those of us living in Kathmandu do hear regularly about disputes over development projects that threaten the lands of the Newa (or Newar) Indigenous people of the Kathmandu Valley, but these are rarely framed as Indigenous rights issues.

Shakya tells me that a lot of activism is happening. Yes, much of it is in reaction to government plans to take over Indigenous people’s lands in the name of development. But some proactive initiatives to recognize Indigenous rights are taking place at local levels.

Resources

Community Empowerment and Social Justice Network (NGO led by Prabin Shakya)

Nepal Now social links

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Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for advice and inspiration.

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Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Before we start, a warning: This episode discusses rape and might be disturbing for some listeners.

Kriti was raped regularly by her father and grandfather from the age of nine. When she was 15 she was finally able to report the violence at the police station in Dhulikhel, near Kathmandu. The legal term for rape in Nepali is a mouthful: ja-bar-jas-ti-ka-ra-ni. When a police officer, a woman, at the police station asked Kriti to recall the first time she was raped, she didn’t understand. She asked the officer what ‘jabarjasti karani’ meant. The woman in uniform scoffed, “If you don’t know what that means, why are you here?”

This shocking anecdote is told in an excellent article by Bhrikuti Rai about how the Nepal Police deals with rape cases. If you haven’t already read it, it provides painful insight into how victim-blaming adds insult to the injury suffered by rape survivors. The article was published in the Kathmandu Post on July 17, 2019. 

I referred to it because in today’s episode we discuss in detail recent updates to Nepal’s rape law. I think it’s important when we’re delving into such minutiae that we don’t forget the people whose lives are shattered by this horrendous crime. 

In the second half of 2020 numerous media reported about a disturbing rise in rape cases in the country. Activists hit the street to protest the violent crimes, and we devoted an episode to one such group. Early in 2021 the rape law was amended by a government ordinance, bypassing Parliament. We discussed its changes, and omissions, in an episode with lawyer Anita Thapaliya. And then last month, the ordinance lapsed because it hadn’t been approved by Parliament within the stipulated timeframe. The rape law reverted to the earlier version. 

What happens now? Please listen to my chat with Indu Tuladhar, Advocate and Executive Chair of Himal Innovative Development and Research, to find out. 

Let us know what you thought of this episode by connecting with the show on social media. We’re Nepal Now or Nepal Now pod, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. 

If you’re listening to us on your website browser, did you know that you can subscribe to the show on most podcast apps, so you don’t miss an episode? These apps include Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Spotify, PocketCasts, Player FM, and more. 

I’m Marty Logan. I produced this show, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Resources

Bhrikuti Rai article in the Kathmandu Post

Himal Innovative Development and Research (Facebook page)

Nepal Now social links

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

Thanks as always to Nikunja Nepal for a

Support the show

Show your love by sending this episode to someone who you think might be interested or by sharing it on social media:

LinkedIn

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BlueSky

Facebook

Music by audionautix.com.

Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.