Policies for reducing horizontal inequalities in post-conflict Nepal

The research method adopted here is to present various socio-economic and political participation indicators across caste and ethnic groups to find out how unequal the groups, based on the concept of horizontal inequalities (HIs). HI is inequality between culturally defined groups with shared identities that are formed by religion, ethnicities, racial affiliations, or other salient features which bind groups of people together. To study the inequalities, secondary data has been used from the following surveys: Population census 1991 and 2001, Nepal living standards survey (NLSS) 1995/96 and 2003/04, and Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2006. Additionally, political participation is compared for 1999 and 2005 extracting data from two sources. The reason for choosing different base and reference years for various indicators is a lack of required data for a single year. The paper discusses current government efforts to reduce inequality and presents several policy recommendations for effectively reducing HIs.