CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 2015 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 2015 Established 2000 The papers contained in this volume were presented at the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya, 22 to 24 July, 2015, organised by Social Science Baha, the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, Britain-Nepal Academic Council, and Centre for Himalayan Studies - CNRS. Not all the papers presented at the conference were submitted for publication; some were published in other platforms while others remain unpublished. The conference schedule ir provided in the appendix of this volume. The full list of presentations made at the conference along with the abstracts submitted can be viewed at www.annualconference.soscbaha.org. This volume was edited by a team at Social Science Baha consisting of Khem Shreesh, Manesh Shrestha and Wayne Redpath. Preferred citation Social Science Baha. 2019. Conference Proceedings 2015: The Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya. Kathmandu: Social Science Baha. First published, 2019 © Individual authors Published for Social Science Baha by Himal Books ISBN: 978 9937 597 46 3 Social Science Baha 345 Ramchandra Marg, Battisputali, Kathmandu – 9, Nepal Tel: +977-1-4472807, 4480091 • Fax: +977-1-4475215 [email protected] • www.soscbaha.org Himal Books Himal Kitab Pvt. Ltd. 521 Narayan Gopal Sadak, Lazimpat Kathmandu – 2, Nepal Tel: +977-1-4422794 [email protected] • www.himalbooks.com Printed in Nepal Price: Rs 700/- Contents 1 Interactions between Customary Institutions and Local Elections in Dolpo Tashi Tsering Ghale 26 Water Catchments and Water Users Negotiations and Other Mechanisms for Water Security in the Urbanising Himalaya Tikeshwari Joshi, Chetan Agarwal & Kaustuv Raj Neupane 42 Climate Change, Crops, Livestock, and Human Relations to Food Sovereignty among the Loba of Nepal Man Bahadur Khattri 63 The Issues and Impacts of Social Security Benefits Programme and Citizenship on Elderly People Prapanna Maskey 74 Bullet vs ‘Bullet’ An Ethnographic Study of the Perceptions of Youths in Transition in Nepal Ravindra Chandrasiri Palliyaguruge 88 Participatory Democracy and Federalisation in Nepal What Does It Mean for the Feminist Political Agenda? Binda Pandey 101 Being in the Shadow of Death Existential Reflections on Mortality as a Modality of Being-in-the-World in the Sinja Valley of Western Nepal Samuele Poletti 119 Music for Peace A Study of a Music Education Programme in Udayapur District of Nepal Prabin Nanicha Shrestha 141 Breaking the Silence Shrouding Violence against Women & Girls Political Accountability towards Women’s Human Rights Madhuri R. Singh 157 Mediating the Migrant Experience Dukha, Viraha, and Nostalgia in Nepali Lok Dohorī Songs Anna Stirr 181 Culture as Patrimony and Heritage A Preliminary Study of Ethnographic Museums in Nepal Gérard Toffin 188 The Role of Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support from NGOs Reflections from Post-Conflict Nepal Nawaraj Upadhaya, Nagendra P. Luitel, Suraj Koirala, Ramesh P. Adhikari, Dristy Gurung, Pragya Shrestha, Wietse A. Tol, Brandon A. Kohrt & Mark J.D. Jordans 208 From Mystification to the Marketplace The Changing Contours of the Māita in Nepali Tij Songs Balram Uprety 244 A Hitherto Undiscovered and Unstudied Newari Manuscript of a Maithili Bārahamāsā Song by King Jagatprakāśamalla of Bhaktapur A Preliminary Analysis Ramawatar Yadav 266 The Contributors 273 Appendix Interactions between Customary Institutions and Local Elections in Dolpo TASHI TSERING GHALE Introduction This paper analyses the interactions between local elections and customary Dolpo institutions, such as chikyab (regional leader) and gā-pu (senior headman), which inevitably involves contestations. To understand the contestation of local elections, the politics of social exclusion and gender in terms of women’s experiences will be analysed while historicising both the conflicts and the development of local elections in the Dolpo community in the context of Maoist insurgency, the Janajati movement, and contemporary local and national partisan politics. As the plans for the local elections have yet to be drawn, members of the Dolpo community, mainly in the Chharka and Mukot VDCs, are imagining things very differently. This paper will describe the ways that different people of Dolpo imagine and position themselves in terms of both past and future elections and their experiences based on data collected through interviews. In this context, it will be easier to analyse how the transformation of Dolpo’s political relations with the central state has changed since the 1950s due to the interaction, and the challenges to legitimacy that the traditional local governance system of Dolpo has faced over time. For this, the researcher carried out his fieldwork in two VDCs: Chharka and Mukot during the months of May-June in 2014. From each VDC, two wards were selected. Compared to other wards, in these wards from both the Chharka and Mukot VDCs, the variance regarding age, gender, and the people’s experiences was also found to be pertinent for the research. These four wards also have some of their customary governance institutions still functioning while others are extinct. This paper will also show the changing influence of customary institutions and the state’s penetration into the lives of the Dolpo people. 2 Proceedings 2015: Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya Theoretical Background Contested Election Elections have always remained spaces of contestation, both literally and figuratively, though it is pivotal for the proper functioning of democracy. There are several scholars who demonstrate the inevitable tensions it entails (Baral 1993; Dahl 1971, 1998; Baral 2005; Hua 2007; Lawoti 2007; Gellner and Hachhethu 2008; Collier 2009). According to Dahl (1971), there is still something missing in practice to implement an ideal democracy. Some of them are: gross inequalities, challenge of a monarch, proper representatives of the whole people, and the lack of favourable conditions to foster the process of democratisation with few people having an idea about democratic ideas and beliefs. There are ‘ups and downs, resistance movements, rebellions, civil wars, revolutions’ whenever one has tried to implement democratic practices’ (Dahl 2007, 25). Moreover, in a representative democracy, bargaining between political and bureaucratic elites takes place. In addition, no constitution can preserve democracy if the conditions are highly unfavourable. One of the unfavourable conditions for Dahl (1971) is also the vertically stratified society of a country. This could even invite cultural conflicts and may even lead to the rise of authoritarian regimes to suppress these conflicts and differences. Moreover, consociational democracy, the grand coalition of political leaders after the proportional representational (PR) elections, might also fail in culturally diverse societies. Therefore, he also believes that democracy is not deficit-free. Similarly, Hua (2007) critiques elections as rational affairs. He argues that in reality elections should be more realistically seen as cultural events in which candidates’ campaigns are shaped, consciously or unconsciously, to appeal to the cultural understanding and practices of the electorate, whether in First World democracies or in the various governmental systems present in Asia. This also shows how culture interacts with the electoral processes and how elections can be a cultural event, intermingled with the everyday lives of the locals. Customary Governance Institutions According to the functionalist approach, ‘informal’ institutions could be understood as ‘socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels’ (Helmke and Levitsky 2003, 9) [emphasis added]. They also specifically examining the emergence of customary institutions, and argue that Ghale: Interactions between Customary Institutions 3 these institutions emerge independently and predate formal institutional structures. With the formation of formal institutional structures, these indigenous or ‘traditional’ institutions, such as customary laws and kinship-based norms coexist and interact with formal rules created by new electoral and market institutions [emphasis added]. These customary institutions are also changing with the tradition hereditary leadership no longer in practice, and instead its members become representatives of the local population and interact with the local government (IDEA 2006). While examining the traditional institutions of Jharkhand, India, Shah (2008) states that they promote the idea of sacral polity and the values of egalitarianism through its democratic values. She also maintains that these institutions could be seen as democratic institutions although the state’s agencies have tried to force its legitimacy and affects these local institutions. Bhattachan (2008) argues that customary governance institutions comprise an ideal way of assisting in the fulfilment of the everyday community needs. Nonetheless, while customary institutions are involved in traditional activities, mainly dispute resolution and organising the religious life of the village, they also play other roles, such as social welfare by helping destitute or widowed women and by informal resource mobilisation (IDEA 2006). From a functionalist approach, according to Blocher (2012), the customary governance system is the institution which operates as a social order but outside the state; customary and social norms are a