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CAUTION: The following links and
accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation
in Nepal in the early years of the 21st Century. Some of these links
may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated,
misleading or even false. No attempt has been made to validate
their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of poverty are of particular interest to
you. You might be interested in
exploring the relationship between distribution of labor and per-capita GDP,
for example. Perhaps your paper could
focus on life expectancy or infant mortality.
Other factors of interest might be unemployment, literacy, access to
basic services, etc. On the other
hand, you might choose to include some of the possible outgrowths of poverty
such as Human Trafficking,
Street Children,
or even Prostitution. There is a lot to the subject of
Poverty. Scan other countries as well
as this one. Draw comparisons between
activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. *** Extreme Weather *** In
Nepal, extreme weather events have become more frequent in recent years.
Nepal is particularly vulnerable to climate change, water-induced disasters,
and hydro-meteorological extreme events such as storms, floods, landslides,
and soil erosion. These events can have significant impacts on communities,
ecosystems, and infrastructure. – adapted
from Microsoft BING Copilot World
Bank Climate & Develoment Reports Nepal Country Climate and Development Report, World Bank Group, Sept 2022 [accessed 11 Dec 2024] This
Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) identifies ways that Nepal can
achieve its overall development objectives while fostering its strategic
ambition to transition to a greener, more resilient, and inclusive
development pathway. *** ARCHIVES *** The World Factbook - Nepal U.S. Central Intelligence Agency CIA www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/np.html [accessed 28
December 2020] World Factbook
website has moved to ---> www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/nepal/ [accessed 6 January 2021] Nepal
is among the least developed countries in the world, with about one-quarter
of its population living below the poverty line. Nepal is heavily dependent
on remittances, which amount to as much as 30% of GDP. Agriculture is the
mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for almost two-thirds of the
population but accounting for less than a third of GDP. Industrial activity
mainly involves the processing of agricultural products, including pulses,
jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain. GDP - per capita (PPP): $2,700 (2017 est.) Labor force - by
occupation: agriculture: 69% industry: 12% services: 19% (2015 est.) Unemployment rate: 3% (2017 est.) Population below
poverty line: 25.2% (2011 est.) Maternal mortality
rate: 186 deaths/100,000 live births (2017 est.) Infant mortality
rate: total: 25.1 deaths/1,000 live births Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 71.8 years Drinking water
source: improved: total: 91.5% of population Physicians
density: 0.91 physicians/1,000 population (2017) Sanitation facility
access: improved: total: 75.7% of population Electricity access:
electrification - total population: 90.7%
(2016) The
Borgen Project - Nepal borgenproject.org/category/nepal/ [accessed 22 February 2021] The Borgen Project works with U.S. leaders to utilize the United
States’ platform behind efforts toward improving living conditions for the
world’s poor. It is an innovative,
national campaign that is working to make poverty a focus of U.S. foreign
policy. It believes that leaders of
the most powerful nation on earth should be doing more to address global
poverty. From ending segregation to providing women with the right to vote,
nearly every wrong ever righted in history was achieved through advocacy. The
Borgen Project addresses the big picture, operating
at the political level advancing policies and programs that improve living
conditions for those living on less than $1 per day. ~
“Paani”: How The Villagers Of India And Nepal
Are Saving Their Water borgenproject.org/water-in-india-and-nepal/ ~
The Suaahara Ii Project: Improving Health In
Nepal borgenproject.org/the-suaahara-ii-project/ ~
3 Organizations Fighting Hunger In Nepal borgenproject.org/3-organizations-fighting-hunger-in-nepal/ ~
Data Literacy Is Changing Nepal’s Future borgenproject.org/data-literacy/ ~
Access To Inclusive Education In Nepal borgenproject.org/inclusive-education-in-nepal/ ~
The Movement Against Casteism In Nepal borgenproject.org/casteism-in-nepal/ ~
Poverty’s Contribution To Child Marriage In Nepal borgenproject.org/povertys-contribution-to-child-marriage-in-nepal/ ~
Covid-19’s Impact On Nepal’s Rural Communities borgenproject.org/challenges-nepals-rural-communities-face-during-covid-19/ Nepal’s epidemic of hunger - Malnutrition among Nepali children pre-dates Covid-19, but the pandemic has made it worse Anita Bhetwal in Mahottari, Nepali Times, 14 June 2021 www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-epidemic-of-hunger/ [accessed 15 June 2021] There
are 34 households in Mohattarai’s Anaita neighbourhood, most of them have at least four children each. In the
last three years, three children in the community have died due to
complications from the lack of food. Raju
Devi Sada first lost her three-year-old daughter,
already weakened by malnutrition, who died a week after she caught pneumonia
and diarrhoea. Hunger
has always stalked the land here in the backwaters of the eastern plains of
Nepal. State neglect, inequality and injustice have unleashed a vicious cycle
where families are too poor to eat enough, which makes them sick, and having
to spend on medical treatment drives them deeper into poverty and that means
they can afford less food. Nepal: Following hydro deal, what’s next? IFC Insights, International Finance Corporation IFC, World Bank Group, 31 May 2021 [Long
URL] [accessed 31 May 2021] A
majority-owned Korean subsidiary company earlier this month signed a
financing agreement with nine co-lenders, including IFC, to build a
216-megawatt hydropower plant that will provide power to up to 9 million
people by 2024. The project, developed by Nepal Water and Energy Development
Company, represents one of Nepal’s largest-ever foreign direct investments. Barshaman Pun, Nepal’s Minister of Energy, called
the UT-1 hydro project a “game-changer” for his country. “Not only will it
power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, but it will also serve
as an of example of how private companies can help Nepal expand its
hydropower sector and attract much needed foreign direct investment.” Safety First Sabita Nakarmi, myRepublica, 27 May 2021 myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/safety-first-2/ [accessed 28 May 2021] The
global threat has most severely and disproportionately disrupted the social,
economic and health infrastructure system, particularly of
structurally-constrained Least Developed Countries (LDCs) like Nepal that
have been inherently suffering long from the crises including poverty,
hunger, illiteracy, unemployment and trade deficit. The pandemic has exposed
and aggravated the vulnerabilities and inequalities vehemently in developing
countries by deepening poverty and exclusion, crumbling the economies,
increasing unemployment and pushing the most vulnerable ones even further
behind. The
story of the poorest village of the poorest district in Nepal Prakash Singh, Onlinekhabar, 15 March 2021 english.onlinekhabar.com/the-story-of-the-poorest-village-of-the-poorest-district-in-nepal.html [accessed 15 March 2021] EXTREME
POVERTY AND HUNGER -- Muktikot, an old Dalit settlement
on the hill, has very little arable land. Moreover, this village is affected
by drought almost every year. Even in the year when no drought occurs, the
harvested crops only last for some months only, says Aaujani
BK. Muktikot village is always in a food crisis. The
villagers here struggle to make the ends meet. Neither is there any employment
nor any production. “It’s
been hard to survive from hunger this year,” says Bal Bahadur BK, “Due to the
drought, the seedlings have not been able to
germinate.” According
to Bal Bahadur, there are only four government employees in the entire village:
one is the Nepal Police constable, one is a Nepal Army staffer and the other
two are non-gazetted technical staff. Except for
these four families having a regular source of income, most of the other
villagers are starving. Pandemic
of poverty -- Nepal’s children bear the brunt of the falling household income
during the Covid-19 crisis Editorial, Nepali Times, 28 December 2020 www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/pandemic-of-poverty/ accessed 28 December 2020] Results
from a recent nationwide survey show that more than half of Nepali households
are at risk of falling back into poverty because of loss of jobs and income
during 2020 due to the pandemic. And it is the children who are affected the
most. The
most striking finding was that 42% of households in Nepal have no earnings at
all, and a further 19% have a combined monthly family income of less than
Rs10,000. This means the official figure for Nepal’s
population living below the poverty line will need to be drastically revised. The
coping mechanism for most of those slipping into poverty was to borrow, dig
into savings, cut household expenditure, migrate, or rely on remittances.
Disaggregated data showed that 61% of Dalit families were forced to borrow to
survive, while only 48% of non-Dalit families had to borrow money to run the
household, revealing that caste differences can also mean a class gap. Nepal’s
children bore the brunt of falling household incomes by being deprived of
adequate food, health care and education. Revolving
funds under Poverty Alleviation Fund to be transformed into cooperatives Prithvi Man Shrestha, Kathmandu Post, 2 January 2021 [Long
URL] [accessed 3 January 2021] The government
is preparing to transform revolving funds created by the Poverty Alleviation
Fund into cooperatives. As provisioned in the budget for the current fiscal
year 2020-21, the government is preparing to transform the funds, which were
created to finance income-generating activities for the impoverished, into
600 cooperatives across the country. “The
Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF)’s activities were run in 551 municipalities
and rural municipalities. Preparation is underway to establish 600
cooperatives with at least one cooperative in one local government and two in
some local governments,” said Nirmal Kumar Bhattarai, vice-president of PAF. “Currently, each revolving fund has funds of
a few lakhs. Cooperatives will be formed by merging them. After the merger,
each cooperative will have enough resources that they can invest in
activities that boost rural economy,” said Bhattarai. As per
the proposed regulation, as many as 900,000 households, which are associated
with 32,276 community organisations running the
revolving funds, will be shareholders of the would-be cooperatives. Action
Against Hunger - Nepal www.actionagainsthunger.org/countries/asia/nepal [accessed 21 March 2021] After a
decade of unstable governments and armed conflicts, law and order are still
tenuous at best in Nepal, where a culture of impunity persists. One-third of
the Nepalese population lives below the poverty line. Agriculture, the
backbone of the Nepalese economy, is the main source of livelihood for 80% of
the population. Nepal
is also among the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters: due to its
geographical location in the Himalayas, within a high-risk earthquake zone,
more than 80% of the country's population is frequently threatened by floods,
landslides, storms or earthquakes. In addition, field surveys have revealed
alarming malnutrition rates. The
World Bank in Nepal www.worldbank.org/en/country/nepal/overview [accessed 21 April 2021] Nepal
is undergoing a historic transition toward a federal and secular republic.
This represents a window of opportunity for the country to further reduce
poverty, increase the income of the bottom 40 percent, and pursue its
ambitious agenda of inclusive growth and accountable
service delivery. Looking
back a few years … Advameg, Inc., Encyclopedia of the Nations www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Asia-and-Oceania/Nepal-ECONOMY.html [accessed 28 December 2020] Despite
social and economic reforms begun in the 1950s, Nepal's per capita income was
only $1,100 (PPP) in 1998, and general living standards are low. The economy
is based on subsistence agriculture, which engages about 80% of the labor
force but is inefficiently organized and limited by a shortage of arable land
in relation to population. The
principal challenge for the Nepalese is to provide for a rising and unequally
distributed population and to achieve material progress without irrevocably
depleting the environmental resource base. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT
COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Prof. Martin
Patt, "Poverty - Nepal", http://gvnet.com/poverty/Nepal.htm,
[accessed <date>] |
