Our Glocal Village

Dipesh Dulal's views on global and local perspectives

Whatever the paradigm prevail about economies : The Marxism or Chicago School of Thought cannot truly interprete the baseline of practising political economy. All, it is full of fantasies.

The author felt to explore his locality and present the baseline in bigger picture. Evidently, not putting some new hypotheses forward. This time, the working women of Kathmandu.

The growing trend of exploitation of land all over the world has modeled Kathmandu – the Nepalese capital city on its own. Each year tens of thousands of people come to Kathmandu aspiring the better lives. But the quality of life in Kathmandu? Till the date in 2009, the story makes us ashamed that our locality is nasty. Many people from rural Nepal or from backward population of India feel difficult to return back to home towns or villages as the centre-periphery disparity is very high here. Somehow, women and their families are residing in Kathmandu.

In this article, I illustrate different stories with figurative pictures; not the same characters.

Nira Thapa, 22, is a security personnel. She came to Kathmandu when she was 18 and joined the service right after that. She has been enjoying her job as traffic police. She has a boyfriend, a retailer. Both of them are not getting spare time to get married.
Leaving Kathmandu?
** She says : No, I will settle here at any cost.
Why do you like Kathmandu despite a lot of smoke and dust?
** Sometimes these things smell pleasant. (smiling)

Devimaya Khatri,37, sells fresh corn, servicing hot from her charcoal oven at Kirtipur, Kathmandu. The university students are her key customers. She has a husband and a son of 20 years age. Husband is an independent mason and son wanders for a job, who has completed high school. With income of husband and her own, her family is semi-happy in Kathmandu which she feels like impossible elsewhere in Nepal.

image source : http://advocacynet.org/blogs/media/users/nicole/doko.jpg

Shanti Adhikari, a widow of age 35, has a small family delling on the locality with settlements of farmsteads; being just 12 KM away from Ring Road of Kathmandu. The unmanaged and extending urbanisation has been touching her village too. The increasing sales of her farm products esp. fresh organic green vegetables makes her happy. She doesn’t deal with retailers, but sells her products directly with customers whom she meet in the mornings. She takes her products in ‘doko’ – traditional bamboo basket to the city centre. The seasons of crop plantation and harvest makes her busy bee. She has a daghter and a son. She is a bit worried about her daughter’s future as she is not getting a job in the city and is growing having just reached the marriage age-18.

However, this article couldn’t include mini-stories of working women. The occupations that account the low percentage of women, still though that prevail in Kathmandu will be included in other articles.

by Yashoda Aryal

How would we feel if we come to strike with the news that everyone of the village —all men, women, children even new bornes are infected with HIV!!!!!! I was really stunned by knowing the condition in 3rd National AIDS conference that was held in Kathmandu, Nepal.

It is the real scenario of one VDC of Achham district in Nepal. Achham is rural district of Nepal of which every men go to India for employment. Because of their ignorance they have unsafe sex with sex workers, result–HIV infection. When they come back home, they transmit infection to their wives. The issue is cross border migration. There are lots of organisations working together but the condition remains the same.

In Nepal, National Centre for AIDS & STD Control is the organisation which maintains the records about HIV & AIDS. The reported cases in october 2008 were 12,547. According to UNAIDS report there are more than 70,000 (The total population of Nepal is about 27,500,000 in an area of 147,181 sq.m2). Lets brain storm the difference in the detected case and undiagnosed cases, nearly 48,453 HIV infected are freely roaming around leaving their partners and peers to be infected with HIV & AIDS.

The main reasons for HIV transmission in Nepal are poverty(around 40% are below poverty line), illiteracy( more than 40% are illiterate), high unemployment rate, lack of proper legislation for sex workers, lack of proper recording and reporting system, stigma and discrimination and many more.

The highly risk groups are sex housewives, clients of sex workers, sex workers, intravenous drug users, LGBTI groups,organ reciepient, children and others.

Nepal contibutes 0.5% of total infection in the world but it has a concentrated epidemic that HIV infection is very high in Intravenous drug users(around 40%), sex workers (around 28%) and clients of sex workers( about 20% ).

The situation is in vicious cirlce. Lets take a simple example, a village girl comes to kathmandu to persue her higher studies. Her parents cannot afford the expenses and she doesnt want to return to village because she has to fulfill her parents dreams. She doesnt get part time job, the easiest way to earn money—-be a sex worker. Then she starts visiting clients on regular basis, the vulnerability to be infected with HIV being 100%.

Lets think the real scenario, if the condition remains the same then the goals of MDGS seems be changed that is “All people infected with HIV by 2015″. I believe there is the same condition in developing countries where infection is overwhelming day by day. Lets hope the condition becomes simpler from complex and easier from difficult. Lets shoulder our obligations to protect human kind by being safe and encouraging others to be safe.