Political Appeal of an Ambiguous Idea Explaining the Institutionalisation of Food Sovereignty in Nepal

Political appeal of an ambiguous idea Explaining the institutionalisation of food sovereignty in Nepal Puspa Sharma Crawford School of Public Policy February 2019 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National University © Copyright by Puspa Sharma 2019 All Rights Reserved Declaration This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. To the best of the author’s knowledge, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text. Puspa Sharma 15 February 2019 i Acknowledgements This thesis bears my name as the author, but the thesis is not the outcome of an individual effort. Many people, directly and indirectly, have contributed to my project. I would like to thank all of them. I might not be able to specify the names of everyone and I apologise at the outset. First of all, I express my deepest gratitude to Professor Carsten Daugbjerg, who provided excellent guidance throughout the project. His encouragement and inspiration have been phenomenal in the shaping of my thesis in its current form. Although Carsten returned to the University of Copenhagen when I had one more year to finish my thesis, he continued to supervise my work. He was available at any time through email or Skype when needed, and the guidance he provided through long distance was in no way less than what he had provided while at Crawford. Thank you so much Carsten! Thank you also for accepting me as your PhD student when I had to find a new primary supervisor a few months after my PhD enrolment. Your acceptance made the change much smoother than I had expected. I would also like to thank Professor Prema-chandra Athukorala for accepting my research proposal in the beginning and for providing guidance just prior to and soon after commencing my PhD journey. Similarly, I would like to thank Associate Professor Fiona Yap who readily accepted the mantle of primary supervisor and chair of the supervisory panel when Carsten decided to leave the Crawford School. Thanks, Fiona, for ensuring a smooth transition. I also thank and highly appreciate the guidance and feedback I received from my associate supervisors Associate Professor John McCarthy and Professor Adrian Kay. My special thanks to John for thoroughly reading all my chapters. My thanks are also due to Dr. Megan Poore for her research and academic support and for reading all the chapters of my thesis and providing editorial comments. Similarly, I would like ii to thank Karin Hosking for excellently editing my thesis. Also, my thanks to Tracy McRae for her wonderful administrative support. My sincere thanks to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the Australia Awards Scholarship (AAS), without which it might have been impossible for me to embark on my PhD journey. I would also like to thank the Scope Global team in Kathmandu, which oversees the scholarship programme in Nepal, and the AAS Crawford School Team for providing all the support I needed to successfully complete my research. I highly appreciate and thank the interviewees who kindly spared their valuable time to talk to me and provide their insights, without which I might not have been able to write this thesis. Also, I presented some findings of my research at the 3rd International Conference on Public Policy at the University of Singapore in 2017 and at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research at the University of Hamburg in 2018. I thank the participants of these conferences who attended my sessions and provided useful comments on my papers. My sincere appreciation also to the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Crawford School of Public Policy, and the ANU Vice-Chancellor’s HDR Travel Grants for providing funds to support my participation in these conferences, my attendance in the 2016 Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research at Syracuse University, and my two- week visit to the University of Copenhagen in 2018. I would also like to thank my fellow PhD colleagues Ahmad Dhiaulhaq, Vijetta Bachraz, Isi Uniwoski, Sue Reagan, Timothy Crotty and others for the valuable discussions we used to have and the various direct and indirect support they provided. I received great support from Dr. Kamalesh Adhikari (who was then a PhD candidate at the ANU and is now a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland) and his family in the initial phases of my PhD journey. I highly appreciate and thank them for their help. I also iii thank the many Nepali friends in Canberra who provided me and my wife various support in ways that family members do. I also thank my colleagues at South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) for the direct and indirect support and encouragement they provided to pursue this journey. I also thank the SAWTEE management for providing me a working space in the organisation during my field work. My wife Sarita Adhikari and sons Sushant Adhikari and Shubham Adhikari deserve huge appreciation for the support and encouragement they have provided. My wife chose to accompany me, leaving the boys back home on their own, so that I could get the necessary support. I thank my wife and sons for being so understanding. I also thank my sons for being such good children that I could focus on my work without having to worry about them. My family members, relatives, friends and teachers have always bestowed their confidence on me and encouraged me. I thank them all. Finally, I thank my barely literate parents for making me the person I am. I have learned a lot from them, especially from my mother, as to how to live a graceful life despite several odds in life. I hope I have made them proud, and I dedicate this thesis to them. iv Abstract The idea of food sovereignty lacks clarity and is imprecise. Yet, some countries have accepted the idea and included it in their constitutions and legislation. Existing literature on food sovereignty tends to argue that the reason for the institutionalisation of the idea of food sovereignty by some countries is that these countries have accepted the demands made by social movements on food sovereignty and are willing to make changes in the food and agriculture sector accordingly. I argue that this explanation regarding the institutionalisation of the idea of food sovereignty does not hold much ground. Rather, the institutionalisation of the idea of food sovereignty can be better explained by the “coalition magnet” thesis. A coalition magnet is an idea with political appeal that attracts a diversity of individuals and groups, and is used strategically by policy entrepreneurs to frame their interests, mobilise supporters and build coalitions. For an idea to be called a coalition magnet, three things are essential: 1) effective manipulation of the idea by policy entrepreneurs, 2) embracing or promotion of the idea by key actors in the policy process, and 3) coming together of actors who previously seemed to be at odds. I find that the idea of food sovereignty possesses these three attributes, and this helps explain the institutionalisation of food sovereignty by Nepal. In Nepal, there were policy entrepreneurs who propagated the idea of food sovereignty, and other actors also found the idea appealing, more so because they could interpret and accept the idea of food sovereignty in their own particular ways. This facilitated agenda setting as can be seen in the inclusion of “food sovereignty” in Nepal’s Constitution, and also in relevant policy and planning documents. However, the incorporation of the idea of food sovereignty in these official documents has been vague and imprecise. In terms of operationalising the idea of food sovereignty, there has not been much progress. This shows that ideas that are coalition magnets could be useful for agenda setting. But the nature of a coalition magnet also explains why the idea might be difficult to implement. v List of abbreviations ADB Asian Development Bank ADS Agriculture Development Strategy AIC Agriculture Inputs Corporation ANPA All Nepal Peasants’ Association ANPFa All Nepal Peasants’ Federation ANPFa-R All Nepal Peasants’ Federation (Revolutionary) AoA Agreement on Agriculture APP Agriculture Perspective Plan ARF Agriculture Reform Fee ASC Agriculture Supply Corporation AWRC-LP Agriculture and Water Resources Committee of the Legislature Parliament BIMSTEC Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation BNP Basic Needs Programme CFI Chronic Food Insecurity CPN (Maoist) Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) CPN (UML) Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) CPO Causal Process Observation EU European Union FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FDI Foreign Direct Investment FTA Free Trade Agreement GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade vi GDP Gross Domestic Product GHI Global Hunger Index GMO Genetically Modified Organism ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute IGC Inter-governmental Committee IMF International Monetary Fund IPC Integrated Food Security Phase Classification IPR Intellectual Property Right LDC Least-developed Country MDG Millennium Development Goal MoAD Ministry of Agricultural Development NAP National Agricultural Policy NASDP National Agriculture Sector Development Priority NFC Nepal Food Corporation NFGFN National Farmer Group Federation Nepal NFIDCs Net-Food-Importing

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