Fourth Annual Himalayan Policy Research Conference (2009)

In this paper we estimate the benefits of improving water quality in the Bagmati River in Kathmandu using Choice Experiments. Water quality of the Bagmati has direct impact on health, environment, ecology and development of the Kathmandu valley. Only a few known studies have been conducted focusing exclusively on the benefits of improvements in quality of water in the Bagmati River. We identify and use important attributes of river water quality including cost under different management scenario to estimate willingness to pay and willingness to contribute for river water quality improvements. We also calculate compensating surplus for different level of water quality improvements.

This research investigates circumstances that force people to abandon their homes during civilian conflicts. Every year millions of people leave their homes and become either refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of conflict. At the same time, millions of others choose to stay put and risk their lives. Existing literature on international politics tends to conclude that displacement is an obvious consequence of conflict and focuses exclusively on explaining the causes of conflict at the macro level. However, little is known at the individual level about why some people choose to stay while others choose to leave. My research is motivated by this puzzle. Specifically, I ask why some people, even when faced with extreme violence, stay put and risk their lives while others flee?

Policymakers must learn from the past, not blindly imitate it in order to arrive at workable solutions for the country as a whole. With these considerations, taking place in part in small regions of the plateau already, economic development stands to move forward in an organic manner, accounting for the needs of the local ecology, the local people, and the burgeoning Chinese economy. If not, further development will most likely falter at best, and at worst it will present a rapidly growing China with seemingly insurmountable problems.

This research study aims to find how women are used by men in this society in the form of prostitution, not through the typical medium of the “Red Light Area” but through the modern way of the internet. The sample for this study consists of college and university students who are much more aware of the internet medium. Also, this study tries to find out the possible causes for this menace and suggests remedial measures to curb the growing illness.

Papers, abstracts and proceedings of the Fourth Annual Himalayan Policy Research Conference, Thursday, October 22, 2009, Madison Concourse Hotel and Governors' Club, Preconference Venue of the 38th South Asian Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Since the 1970s, it has become increasingly clear that geography plays a significant role in determining individuals’ access to needed health services. However, this work has been conducted on population served by private sectors in developed countries. The extent to which geographic disparities exist among the poor in developing countries constrained by economic decline, and the factors that contribute to such disparities are currently unknown. The purpose of this study is to quantify the magnitude and predictors of geographic disparities in health service use among a national sample of women in Nepal.

The paper intends to open a discourse on how we can be effective on mitigating such environmental problems of the historic core. The paper proposes few greening methods which would help mitigate most of the environmental problems and improve overall physical as well as cultural environment of the historic core. The greening methods will include, but are not limited to, a) plantation in public urban spaces including big public squares and local “bahals”“chowks” and “nanis”, b) encouragement, introduction and implementation of green pavement techniques on public open spaces, c) revamping of “saga” with alternative uses, and d) encouragement to urban agriculture techniques.

Our study is an effort to assess the role of the Indo-Nepal border in the development of areas around it in the two states.

The role played by the nation-states of India and Pakistan in the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) echoes the animosity created during the Partition of 1947. The political and social upheaval that followed upon the creation of the two nation-states in 1947 has left legacies that continue to haunt the two countries.

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.

This paper is derived from an empirical study carried out in 2007 to assess the programs that aim to strengthen community resilience to disasters in three districts of Nepal, viz. Rupandehi, Makwanpur and Sarlahi The overall objective of the evaluation was to reflect on the role of INGOs and their accountability, to document the learnings for future initiatives, to use the findings in promoting good practices in disaster risk reduction (DRR), and finally to assess the value of these initiatives in formulating a long term strategy of integrating DRR in national development.

This paper examines the criteria for identification of indigenous peoples in Nepal and their concerns. It goes one step further to include voices of those not actively participating nor represented in indigenous movements.

Using data from the 1995/96 and 2003/2004 waves of the Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS), this paper examines how large a role remittance is playing in the household economy nationwide, how different socioeconomic and demographic groups have benefitted from it, and how it is changing over time. The analysis will be both horizontal across groups and temporal over time.

Our field studies during last one decade in Uttarakhand Himalayas have observed that ongoing transition from subsistence to cash economy is contributing to a marginalization of female labor. Our study also observes that new economic trends like increasing remittances of money seem to have inflated demands for dowry, resulting in very high costs for marrying off daughters.

This ethnographic study based on the socio-economic survey of every Bhoxa householder (N=7000) in Garhwal region was undertaken in 2005 and 2007. We explore a variety of problems this tribal group is facing such as subsistence, education, health and hygiene, land alienation, and demands on tribal land for industrial production and commercial agriculture resulting from skewed developmental priorities of government policy. This paper analyzes the causes of growing economic and political marginalization of our tribal group and strives to find some solutions to the problem.

The income from microfinance and remittances helps poor people address their basic needs. This research focuses on how microfinance and remittances are affecting the lives of people in Nepal. Some specific questions for this research are: 1) How do people use income generated by migration and microfinance for their livelihood? 2) Are they using money mainly for consumption or investing it to generate more income? 3) What are the characteristics of those who use the funds they receive? 4) What is the proportion of such people? 5) What factors help them to make decisions about spending on consumption and production?

This paper previews the general issues related to the road construction in the ACAP region, particularly focusing on the character and extent of the adaptation of commercial activity in ACAP to the anticipated environment of greater ease of access, reduced costs, fresh competition, the shifting of population demographics, and changing visitor profiles resulting from the completion of the road links to Jomsom and Chame. It proposes a structural framework for the analysis of commercial change.

This project is an examination of the ecological and political relations in South Asia regarding the Indus River Basin in 21st century.

My paper empirically assesses suitability of the South Asian common currency by testing for symmetry of underlying shocks. Following Mundell’s (1961) seminal work, a key precondition for the formation of a successful monetary union is that member countries face similar types of shocks for coordinated macroeconomic policy response, which paves the way for a currency union. I apply structural vector auto regression (SVAR) approach to determine the nature of shocks affecting the South Asian nations and to find out whether the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) forms an optimal currency area (OCA).