Nepal Now: On the Move

What do you think? Send us a textToday we’re catching up with Aayush Pokharel, a graduate student in Canada who we first talked to in May. This year, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has severely cut the number of temporary residents it allows into the country, including international students. It also chopped the number of temporary work permits for grad students like Aayush, which are usually followed by a chance to apply for PR — permanent residency. Many temporary residents...

What do you think? Send us a textOf all the reasons I’ve heard for Nepalis migrating to work abroad, this one was the most shocking: to fight for the Russian Army in its invasion of Ukraine. The news first reached the mainstream media in mid-2023 but long before that, photos of young Nepali men posing in Russian Army uniforms had been circulating online. For the unemployed, or under-employed, Russia quickly became the newest, fastest way to earn foreign currency, topped up in some cases with ...

What do you think? Send us a textYou might know Nepal as home to the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, as the place where the Buddha was born, or as the location of many sites sacred to the world’s Hindus. This country is also a geopolitical hotspot, encircled by the world’s giants—China and India—eying one another warily over the Himalayan range. I’m Marty Logan. As a Canadian journalist who’s lived here going on 13 years, what astonishes me about Nepal is the ever rising number of p...

What do you think? Send us a textNurses. I don’t know about you but when I think of people migrating for better opportunities one of the first groups that comes to mind is nurses. Not only in Nepal: I know that this is a huge issue for Caribbean countries and I read recently that in Nigeria, midwives too are being recruited to work in countries of the north.Back in Nepal, over a third of nurses have sought documents that would permit them to practise overseas, I read in one media report. I me...

What do you think? Send us a textToday we’re doing something different. We’re devoting this episode to last weekend’s huge rain, the flooding and other disasters it spawned, and the climate migrants who will emerge from these incidents. And here I’d like to give my condolences to the family and friends of the more than 200 people confirmed killed in the devastation. I know: last week I guaranteed we would share the episode about the nurse migrating to Canada but I thought the topic of cl...

What do you think? Send us a textThis is a very short episode, basically to say that we are behind schedule so this week's episode is delayed until next week. We think that it will be worth the wait, as we'll be talking to one of many nurses from Nepal who are leaving the country for better opportunities abroad. In fact, this is not a trend only in Nepal; nurses throughout the global South are moving North for what they see as better working and living conditions. Please watch for t...

What do you think? Send us a textFrom Kathmandu to Kabul is not really that far in this era of daily intercontinental flights. And today’s guest Prem Awasthi is also fortunate in that he gets to make the return trip home at least every six weeks. But still, he already feels that less than a year after migrating to work abroad, his roots in his homeland are somehow shallower. If you missed it, Prem was the first ever guest of the show after we relaunched earlier this year to focus solely ...

What do you think? Send us a textToday’s episode is not a migration story; you could even call it a non-migration story. I’m chatting with someone successful enough in her field that you could easily imagine her skills being in demand in many other countries, and that she could leave Nepal if she wished. But of course she hasn’t. Like many Nepalis, Dr Rojina Shilpakar went to Bangladesh to study medicine, then returned to Nepal. Searching for a niche, she found it quite fast at Sushma Ko...

What do you think? Send us a textUp until now I've been recording most of these episodes speaking into a half-empty clothes cupboard. It's sounded surprisingly good, at least to me, but from next week I will have a slightly more professional setup: a dedicated — though tiny — space, basic soundproofing on the walls, and a new mic. I hope we'll be able to hear the difference.In migration news this week, I came across an article featuring data on students going overseas to study in the past yea...

What do you think? Send us a textMistreatment of migrant workers, especially those forced to work in hot, dangerous conditions, created huge headlines in the run-up to the Qatar World Cup in 2022, thanks in part to the work of today’s guest—journalist Pramod Acharya. Pramod’s subsequent reporting also made the news globally. Also done in collaboration with journalists around the world, it spotlighted the conditions faced by Nepalis and others working in Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia, and ...

What do you think? Send us a textLast week the show reached 80 episodes. It's not a significant number, except that it brings us closer to what will be a milestone—100 episodes. I figure we'll reach that at around the end of the year, and will definitely want to mark it somehow. Maybe with T-shirts, other 'merch', or a Best Of episode? How about an online party? If you have any ideas to celebrate, send them along using the text message link at the top left of these notes. In migration news th...

What do you think? Send us a textIt’s amazing what you can find when curiosity is your guide.I was on a reporting trip in Taplejung district in northeast Nepal, bordering Tibet and India. I had an extra day so I thought I’d look for a school that provides meals to its students. It’s a topic I’ve been following for the past couple of years. I asked a guy I met at the hotel if he knew of a school principal in town— it turned out that he was the head of the committee of a local school. He took m...

What do you think? Send us a textI want to start this week with a shout out to Tanka, who shared our 3 latest episodes on LinkedIn, including his favourite. His top choice was our chat with Raj and Sunita, who met, online, while working in Gulf countries, got married in Nepal and are now living here again, at least temporarily. Although they’re now pregnant, they appear destined to be a migration family, as Raj is now trying to get a work visa for South Korea.Do you have a favourite episode o...

What do you think? Send us a textIf you’ve been listening to this show since we re-launched in March to focus only on migration, I think, like me, you would have started to see that there is no one type of migration story. Yes, there are two large groups of migrants — people going abroad to work and others going to study. But within those are a vast number of sub-groups, for example, people going to work because they cannot imagine any other way to earn money (and then within that group are t...

What do you think? Send us a textThank you to listener Trilok for pointing out a typo that was on the Nepal Now webpage for almost 4 years, from episode #1. I'm embarrassed but grateful to his sharp eyes. Please keep the feedback coming, via LinkedIn, as Trilok did, or at the other social channels listed below. You can also email: nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com, or text the show at the link at the top left. It's a US number so the usual messaging charges would apply. I don't think we have man...

What do you think? Send us a textToday we’re back with another personal story—two in fact: those of Raj and Sunita. I gotta admit, what I like about this story is the romance element, which is something we haven’t heard from other guests so far. What they told us, when we recorded in the ACORAB studio in Chakupat, Patan, was that they were both working in Persian Gulf countries when a colleague suggested that they become Facebook friends. Sunita and Raj then chatted online for three years bef...

What do you think? Send us a textToday we’re taking a step back from the personal stories we’ve been hearing to get some perspective on migration and Nepal. Specifically, we’re talking about women who leave the country to work, including why a ban on them migrating as domestic workers is not a good idea. We’ll also hear – and this is the idea that jolted my brain during the interview – why we need to share positive news about women’s migration. My guest today, in the Himal Media studio i...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone, this is Marty. I got a really interesting and positive email about our last interview with Soham, who first moved to the US when he was 17, a couple of decades ago, and he's been going back and forth ever since. The email was from Jennifer, and I want to read a few excerpts: "I learned so much as it's information which is not easily available. It also validated at a gut level what I thought was happening in Nepal. I appreciate the new perspectives...

What do you think? Send us a textToday we’re speaking with Soham Dhakal, who first travelled to the US when he was 17 and has been back and forth between the two countries so many times he considers himself a nomad. But before we get to Soham’s story I want to correct something I said last week. Our new text messaging service is not limited: it’s for everyone listening to the show, on any app. Sneak a quick look now to confirm: at the top of the description to this episode – and every episode...

What do you think? Send us a textIf you listen to the show on Buzzsprout, which happens to be the platform I use to host the podcast also, you can now send me a text message directly from the website. So what you do is, in the description of each episode, at the very top left, you'll see a link that says, send a text or send me a text. Click on that and your messaging app will open on your phone and you can write me a text message, which I think is pretty cool. Also this week, uh, some ...

What do you think? Send us a textAayush Pokharel will soon be graduating from his diploma programme in Canada, and so his search for a full-time job has already started. He’ll have three years to work in the country before leaving or applying for permanent residency. For now he says he wants to come back to Nepal. Aayush was one of more than 20,000 young Nepalis officially studying in Canada in 2023, according to one report. That’s almost triple the 7,680 students in 2022, making Canada one o...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now: Right Now, a weekly micro-episode where we share news about the show and what's happening in migration as it affects Nepal. First, I want to give a shout out to listener Sikhar for his persistence. He wrote and suggested a guest to me. And somehow I couldn't figure out how I could link that guest and their work with this, podcast on migration. And so I wrote back to him. He wrote back to me and very clearly spelled it out. And so I finall...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. I’m Marty Logan. Thank you for clicking on this episode of Nepal Now: On the Move, where we speak with some of the huge number of people leaving – and occasionally returning – to this country wedged between India and China. Bharat Adhikari is another former migrant worker who returned to live in Nepal, but his story could hardly be more different than Sushma’s, who we heard from in a previous episode. I chatted recently with Bharat at the Himal Me...

What do you think? Send us a textThis is the first episode of our new micro-series: Nepal Now: Right Now. These pieces will fill the gap between regular full episodes of the show, which are published every two weeks. About 5 minutes long, they will be published on alternate weeks and will focus on past and upcoming episodes — including listener feedback — sharing news about migration and Nepal, and anything else relevant to Nepal Now.Let us know what you think of this new addition to the show...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. I’m Marty Logan. Thank you for choosing to listen to Nepal Now: On the Move from the literally millions of podcasts available. This is our third episode since we shifted the show’s focus to migration — to, from, and within Nepal. And, I gotta say: I’m biting my nails waiting for feedback from you listeners — especially long-time fans. Good, bad or indifferent, I want to hear it. Your responses are the best way for me to see how I might improve the...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. I'm Marty Logan. Thank you for listening to Nepal Now: On the Move. Let me know what you think of this episode, and if you have ideas for future guests. My email is nepalnowpod@gmail.com. I’ve done about 10 interviews to date for the show and I can see that it’s going to be much more difficult to find female guests than male ones, so please do send me tips about women who I might speak to. As a bit of a teaser, the people you’re going to hear...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thanks for listening to this first episode of Nepal Now: On the Move. I know there are literally millions of podcasts out there competing for your listening time, so I appreciate that you chose this one.My name is Marty Logan. I’m a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on and off since 2005. You can reach me with feedback on anything you hear on Nepal Now or ideas for guests at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com. If you’re not fami...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Welcome to Nepal Now, whose new title is Nepal Now: On the Move, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Thanks for choosing this show from among the more than 2 million podcasts now competing for your ears. I’m back! And since my last episode was titled Thank you and goodbye! I guess I should explain. But first, if you don’t know me, my name is Marty Logan. I’ve been a journalist for more than 30 years, in my native Canada, Malaysia and Nepal, where my...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thanks for joining me for this new episode of Nepal Now. I’m Marty Logan. You might have noticed that this is an extra short episode. Frankly, that’s because it will be the last one. After 3 years I’m saying goodbye. Why? Put simply, I don’t have the energy to keep the show going any more. I didn’t want to announce this at the end of the last full episode, because then I wouldn’t have had the chance to say this: Thanks to all of you who are listen...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thanks for joining me for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. Thanks to those of you who filled out the poll on our last episode, about Jumli Marsi rice. It’s available if you listen on Spotify, and I post a new poll and a question there with each episode. This poll was tricky: Do you think the growing trend of selling nutritious crops instead of co...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. Here’s something new — did you know you can listen to Nepal Now on your smart speaker? Just ask Siri, Alexa or whoever you’re talking with to ‘play Nepal Now podcast’ and you’ll hear my voice. OK, on with this episode, one I really enjoyed because our initial discussion about why the G...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and actions to move the country forward. I’m Marty Logan. A quick reminder that you can back the work that goes into creating this show, by clicking on the white ‘support’ button at the middle left of our homepage and making a contribution. If you have any questions or suggestions about this, or about the show in general — feedback on what yo...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and ways of moving the country forward. I’m Marty Logan, a journalist and communicator from Canada who’s lived in Nepal for 11 years.Before we get into today’s chat, a follow-up from our recent episode about the satire-writing Ass of Nepali Times newspaper. You’ve probably heard about ChatGPT, the AI programme that has become essay-writing st...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. Thank you for being here for this new episode of Nepal Now, the podcast where we highlight different ideas and ways of moving the country forward. I’m Marty Logan, and I hope you can hear those birds chirping in the background. We just had a light rain so they've come out to celebrate. Before we get into this episode, I want to let you know that you’re now able to support Nepal Now financially — if you wish. Go to our website, nepalnow.buzzsp...

What do you think? Send us a textYou can now support Nepal Now. Hi everyone. This is Marty Logan. Apologies for the long delay between episodes. I finally made it home for the holidays after four years being delayed by Covid and took advantage with a longer than usual break. So, welcome back to Nepal Now, if you’re a return listener; greetings to those of you who are here for the first time. What I’m trying to do with this podcast is highlight some alternatives to the usual routes and ideas a...

What do you think? Send us a textHi everyone. This is Marty Logan. Welcome to Nepal Now.It’s been an up-and-down year for me, and for the podcast, as I’m sure it has for many of you. But thanks to support from you listeners I’ve been motivated to keep it going. So thank you all for that. These will be my last words through the podcast for 2022, but before I say goodbye I want to ask you to do one more thing. I’ve created a very short survey to help me decide if we should tweak Nepal Now ...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we explore new ideas and innovations to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. Thank you for joining me today a in my noisy neighbourhood. It feels like it’s construction season in this part of Kathmandu – but on with the show as they say!Like what seems to be a growing number of Nepalis, Rumee Singh always had an itch to return home and use her abilities to improve her own country. She went overseas to ...

What do you think? Send us a textThank you for joining me today. I think it’s fair to say that the discussion you’re going to hear raises at least as many questions as it answers. We’re talking about domestic abuse and women who leave Nepal to work abroad. Labour migration is a huge part of the country’s economy and, as I think this episode reveals, it has a major impact on many other aspects of life here. Earlier this century the money that migrant workers sent home accounted for close to 1/...

What do you think? Send us a textI reached out to Gyanu Adhikari wondering if I had missed the boat. I wanted to speak to him about co-founding The Record, an online news portal that started publishing in 2014, but the website had stopped posting new information this past July. I probably should have contacted him two years earlier, after I started this podcast, but I think as a media person myself I just took the website for granted as another media portal not as an experiment in providing n...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. Thanks for joining me for this episode, which, if you’re counting, is #52. You might be wondering what happened to the video version of the last episode, my chat with Sanjib Chaudhary. Well, that’s a good question. I received a rough cut and suggested two changes — and weeks later I’m still waiting for the updated version. I promise ...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and approaches to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. I hope you don’t mind a slight digression to start. A few weeks ago I met a friend, someone I see every few months. One of the first things he said to me was, 'I see your podcast is on a break'. We chatted for a while and later I realized that I had no idea he kept up with the show. This has happened to me regularly this year: every ...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now. My name is Marty Logan. I’m back after a long break – thanks for joining me. Today we’re doing something different. On Aug 21st I was at St. Xavier’s College in Kathmandu, talking with journalism students about podcasting. Actually, I tried to keep the talking part to a minimum — our main task was to create this episode that you’re listening to now. The theme of the session was: When you’re a journalist, how will you do journalism differe...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now, the podcast where we discuss new ideas and initiatives to move the country forward. My name is Marty Logan. A lot has happened around menstrual health issues in Nepal in recent years. And it seems that all that work is bearing fruit. In its last budget the government pledged to drastically cut the tax and import duty on menstrual hygiene products, while a toolkit created by a group of organizations will soon be distributed in governm...

What do you think? Send us a textLast Saturday two trucks carrying smuggled fertilizer across the southern border between India and Nepal were seized at Nepal customs. Police took charge and were escorting the trucks to the capital Kathmandu when they were blocked on the highway by desperate farmers in Dhading district, who seized 400 of the 500 bags of fertilizer and vanished, reported the Kathmandu Post. Fertilizer shortages are a perennial issue in Nepal. This year the Russian attack ...

What do you think? Send us a textThis is another episode in our series Nepal Then and Now, where we catch up with former guests. Before we do that, I have a request. We know that the show has some dedicated listeners because they’ve been saying really positive things about us, which have been passed on, and it is very encouraging. But, honestly, we need more subscribers in order for the show to be sustainable and to keep producing these episodes. So please, take a minute — two at most — to gi...

What do you think? Send us a textToday is the second instalment in our series Nepal Then and Now, where we catch up with former guests. We first spoke with Pallavi Payal in mid-2020 about the situation of women in the country during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time she focused on unequal citizenship provisions for women in the country, particularly those living in the southern Madesh region. In today’s chat we’re focused on online violence against women, particular...

What do you think? Send us a textThat is the sound of hundreds of students at Tilingatar High School in Tokha Municipality lining up for their midday meal of rice and veggies. This still unfinished concrete school of 1,100 students on the urban edge of the Kathmandu Valley is one among tens of thousands of government schools country wide that serve hot meals to their students. In two more years the midday meal programme (known here as diya khaja) will feed children in all 77 districts, after ...

What do you think? Send us a textToday is the first episode in our new series, Nepal Then and Now, where we’ll talk with former guests and catch up on their work and lives. We created the series partly in response to feedback we got in our recent survey — that episodes were too long. If you are one of the listeners who felt that way — or even if you’re not! — please let us know what you think about this approach.I’m really happy that our first guest in the series is filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar....

What do you think? Send us a textOne request before we get to today’s episode—we’ve created a short survey to get your feedback on the show. It’s just 4 questions, and according to Survey Monkey the average person takes just 2 minutes to fill it out, so it’s fast. I’ve pasted the link in the episode notes. Thanks to everyone who gives feedback.Ek Ek Paila (which means step by step in Nepali) was one of many initiatives started to provide emergency relief following the devastating earthq...

What do you think? Send us a textWhen I was thinking about the topic of today’s episode, veganism in Nepal, it seemed oddly out of place. It’s not that being vegan is new in Nepal—historically many Hindus and Buddhists have not eaten meat or dairy products—but I was associating veganism with the emerging movement in the west, which probably more than anything else reveals the overwhelming reach of western culture. Of course, the basic diet is the same, but there are similarities and differenc...

What do you think? Send us a textAs SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Jan 13th 2022, a group of friends took up positions on a rooftop in Kathmandu, laptops open, waiting for a signal. Inside Falcon 9 was the satellite they had spent years building, first as students and then working as engineers—Sanosat-1. The size and shape of a Rubik’s Cube, Sanosat was one of 106 satellites shuttled into space on the Falcon 9 then released into orbit to begin their...

What do you think? Send us a text(Listen to the first part of this report.)I’d been wanting to return to Chimling Village in the hills of Sindhupalchowk district since soon after my first visit in March 2021. That’s when I accompanied health workers to find out the status of women who had given birth recently, but had delivered their babies at home. In particular, I was curious about their experiences with misoprostol, a drug that’s given to pregnant women who might deliver without the suppor...

What do you think? Send us a textHappy New Year and welcome to Nepal Now’s first episode of 2022. My name is Marty Logan. Please bear with the nostalgia that accompanies the new year: I still remember when the new millennia was a thing (and we all fretted about the impending cyber doom that would be delivered by the Y2K virus—until 12:01 am on January first 2000, when we sighed with relief after our computers booted up).Actually, my memories reach much further into the past—but that is for an...

What do you think? Send us a textI first thought about interviewing today’s guest soon after I saw her Instagram channel when, I must say, I was shocked by some of its contents. We finally spoke last week, and I was certainly impressed by what I heard. We’ll get to our chat in a minute, but first a quick word about this podcast. The feedback we’ve received about Nepal Now in the past 18 months has all been positive, but frankly we’ve haven’t yet hit a point where this work is sustainable...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now. My name is Marty Logan.Looking back on the early days of my relationship with Nepal, I see that it took me far too long to realise that this is a country of incredible diversity of cultures and peoples. Today I can understand why — the face of Nepal is very much upper-caste, Hindu, male and Nepali speaking. Yet roughly a third of the country’s nearly 30 million people belong to about 100 Indigenous groups, 60 of them officially recognized...

What do you think? Send us a textBefore we start, a warning: This episode discusses rape and might be disturbing for some listeners.Kriti was raped regularly by her father and grandfather from the age of nine. When she was 15 she was finally able to report the violence at the police station in Dhulikhel, near Kathmandu. The legal term for rape in Nepali is a mouthful: ja-bar-jas-ti-ka-ra-ni. When a police officer, a woman, at the police station asked Kriti to recall the first time she was rap...

What do you think? Send us a textI’ve lived in Nepal for over a decade now, and I’m still astonished to see where, and what, Nepalis worship. Temples and shrines are mostly obvious—sometimes because roads or sidewalks will curve sharply to avoid them—but as I’m walking through my neighbourhood I might spot a smudge of auspicious vermillion powder on a tree trunk, a tiny niche in a cement wall, or even on a sidewalk. That is why I was not surprised when today’s guest, Roshan Mishra of Taragaon...

What do you think? Send us a textIn less than a month COP26 will have begun. Because of the shocking and destructive fires, floods, droughts and other climate disasters worldwide in the past year, it’s a good guess that more people than ever will focus on the global climate meeting in the UK. How much will the leaders of the richest and most polluting countries promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, and how much money will they pledge to poorer countries to a...

What do you think? Send us a textVaccines, vaccines, vaccines. This is what I’m talking and reading about these days when the subject is Covid-19. I’ve had my jab, and so has my wife, but my daughter, who’s under 18, has not, because Nepal hasn’t offered them to that age group yet, but she still has to go to school this week to take exams. My parents in Canada, who are over 80, have had two jabs, and now they’re talking about a booster shot. And on it goes. But here in Nepal only 20% of peopl...

What do you think? Send us a textUnfortunately, Nepal’s universities do not, in general, enjoy good reputations. Politicization is a main reason for that. But a new institution, University of Nepal, plans to avoid that pitfall by establishing itself as a public university, governed by a board of trustees. More importantly, says today’s guest and member of the development board, Dovan Rai, UoN will offer a liberal arts education. Graduates will be equipped to deal with a broad range of future ...

What do you think? Send us a textHi. This is Marty Logan. I wanted to let you know that I’m hosting a new podcast for IPS News. It’s called Strive: Toward a more just, sustainable world. It’s about people everywhere who are taking action to address climate change, racism, inequality and many other challenges we all face today. One thing that I think makes Strive different is we’ll be discussing solutions, not just adding to your burden by detailing the problems. Our first episode looked at ho...

What do you think? Send us a textNepalis are online. Full stop. We can no longer say that Nepalis in cities are online, or that educated Nepalis are online. In a 2020 survey, 89% of Nepalis said that they used Facebook. 62% of the mobile phones that people carried around were smartphones, and the figure was growing. The Covid-19 pandemic has surely caused it to rise further. This has huge implications for many aspects of people’s lives. In this episode I talk about a number of those with...

What do you think? Send us a textRoom to Read works with more than 4,400 high school-age girls in three districts in Nepal. During the Covid-19 lockdown from April to July 2020, 53% of those girls were unsure about returning to their school when it reopened. They were scared about the pandemic, their families were feeling the economic crunch, and they had already missed months of school in their final years of education so it would be easy to not return. The organization knew it had to r...

What do you think? Send us a textIt’s monsoon season here in Nepal. And every time it pours rain, as it’s doing now, I start worrying about flooding. It can happen here in Kathmandu but usually the worst occurs in the southern Madhesh region, when swollen rivers spill over their banks and inundate villages, or in Nepal’s hill districts, when incessant rain dislodges fragile slopes and landslides demolish buildings and block roads. Climate change is reshaping the monsoon, resulting in gre...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now. My name is Marty Logan.As we’re recording this, there is news that landslides and flooding have battered some of Nepal’s hill districts. Our hearts go out to the people who have suffered the loss of lives and their homes. This is a bad sign as the monsoon has just started and will continue for months.Today’s episode is also about nature, and also concerns the people-environment link. A much more positive story, it is about Dev Narayan Man...

What do you think? Send us a textAs you've likely heard, Nepal is in the throes of a second wave of Covid-19. This has raised fears that, just like during and after the lockdown of 2020, women will be using reproductive, maternal and child health services much less than usual, or as necessary. One result is likely to be more births taking place in risky home settings.Today, we’re going on the road to visit two such homes. We set out to track what seemed to be a magic pill used to protect preg...

What do you think? Send us a textI just checked two popular online fundraising platforms and very quickly found more than 130 campaigns raising money for Covid-19 relief in Nepal. Nepalis and non-Nepalis alike are rallying to gather donations for oxygen, isolation centres, food and other daily needs, and much more to fight the devastating second wave, which is slowly seeping into villages. Leading the way is a group of people who, one year ago, were better known as victims of Covid-19: m...

What do you think? Send us a textThese are terrible, painful days for many people in Nepal, and so I hesitated to post this episode. But then I thought, in the midst of the devastation and death caused by Covid-19 it is important to hear something positive and, in this case, not something cheery just for the sake of diverting our attention, like cat videos on social media. Rather, in today’s episode we’re talking about a positive, rising trend: the number of Nepalis who are reaching grea...

What do you think? Send us a textWelcome to Nepal Now. I’m Marty Logan.Today is Thursday, April 29th. A few hours ago we started a second lockdown here in the Kathmandu Valley in response to a frightening rise in the number of Covid-19 cases. I’ve read reports that the intensive care units of many hospitals are full and projections that the number of cases in Nepal is growing faster than in neighbouring India, which of course has been devastated in recent days. Lockdown here basically me...

What do you think? Send us a textIn a country where mental health is often talked about in whispers — if it’s discussed at all — I was surprised, and happy, to recently see a photo of a new counselling room set up in a high school. It is one of two rooms established in schools in Melamchi, close to Kathmandu. Other rooms should be completed in coming months in Baglung District, says my guest on today’s episode, Ranjita Maharjan from Sambhavya Foundation. The three-year-old organization i...

What do you think? Send us a textSantosh Shah is a household name in Nepal after finishing runner-up on MasterChef. Sanjog Thakuri’s father was cooking the daily meals for his family decades ago, so it was natural for the son to grow up helping in the kitchen. But as a teenager, when he wanted to talk about cooking while his friends teased local girls he himself became a target for not being macho enough. Today, Sanjog talks to boys and men about how much better their lives, and society ...

What do you think? Send us a textHow do Nepalis put up with this government; they’re too patient! is a statement I’ve repeated regularly in the 15 years that I’ve been linked to this country. In fact, in 1990 and 2006 the people had had enough and launched movements, or revolutions, that contributed to dramatic redesigns of the country: in 1990, the return to democracy and in 2006, the creation of a republic that included Maoist rebels who had just signed a ceasefire.Earlier this year a third...

What do you think? Send us a textBuilding back better. The green recovery. Sustainable transformation. It seems I’ve been reading those phrases time and again during the past pandemic year. And sometimes I wonder if they’re just attempts to find a bright spot amid the devastation of Covid-19. Or are they a sincere recognition that something fundamental must change if we humans want to continue living life on this planet as we’ve known it till now?I must admit that I’m scared for the future th...

What do you think? Send us a textWhen I first moved to Nepal 16 years ago every few years I would read a report in the daily newspaper about the road network reaching a remote village. The driver and passengers would have garlands of marigolds draped around their necks, red tika pressed to their foreheads, and a celebration would follow. The reason was simple: most people were confident that more roads would bring more development.Today’s guest has first-hand knowledge of the road-building ph...

What do you think? Send us a textNearly 200 countries, Nepal included, are scheduled to meet in Scotland in November to discuss how to respond to climate change. One of the items on the agenda will be how much money wealthier countries will commit to transferring to so-called developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to ‘green’ their own economies.Notably, rich countries haven’t come anywhere close to meeting their $100-billion-dollar pledge for 2020, an amount that t...

What do you think? Send us a textAdvocates for women were excited last year when they heard that changes were coming to Nepal’s rape law, which has long been criticized as ineffective. On this show we spoke to youth activists who had met with the attorney general and other lawmakers and were energized and excited by the process. But when the ordinance containing the revisions was signed by the president, not all of the rumoured improvements were there. Left out was removal of the statute of l...

What do you think? Send us a textTo its credit the Nepali media has written regularly about successive governments’ lack of action on transitional justice since the Comprehensive Peace Accord was signed in 2006. Reporting has focused on the legal framework, which in 2015 Nepal’s Supreme Court ruled must be revised because it granted amnesty for the most serious crimes of the conflict. In the civil war, from 1996 to 2006, the state and Maoists combined to kill 17,000 Nepalis, torturing and dis...

What do you think? Send us a textI’ve followed human rights issues for much of my career. I even worked for the UN human rights office in Nepal soon after the civil war ended in the mid-2000s. Back then, Nepal’s own human rights commission was quite insular, focused on overcoming the huge challenges around the conflict using the few resources it had available in a sometimes hostile environment.I left Nepal for 6 years and when I returned in 2016 I was surprised to see that the commission had ...

What do you think? Send us a text‘The rapist is you’. On October 10th a group of about 20 young women dressed in black took over a street in Kathmandu pointed straight ahead accusingly, and performed the anti-rape song ‘A rapist in your path’. The ‘flash mob’ was protesting what feels like an epidemic of rape in the country. In recent months it seems that every week the media is reporting another violent incident, often against adolescent girls, too often ending in murder. ‘Ajhai kati sa...

What do you think? Send us a textIn 2019, 19-year-old girls in Nepal were the third shortest in the world, found a recent study by the journal The Lancet that ranked 200 countries. That’s not simply a genetic thing: ‘Nepalis are short’. A third of adolescent boys and girls in Nepal — 1.8 million — are stunted, or too short for their age. Others are too thin for their age, or wasted. These various forms of undernutrition contribute to 25,000 child deaths in Nepal each year, or 52 per cent...

What do you think? Send us a textThis is a shortened version of our episode with filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar, from Season 1. It was a great interview but, admittedly, quite long. We hope this 'bonus' episode will make Deepak's words more accessible to potential listeners. Important: we did retain the original New York City background sirens :-). The original introduction follows below. Deepak Rauniyar still feels queasy when he remembers the racism he faced growing up in Udaypur district i...

What do you think? Send us a textRukshana Kapali is a firebrand. At 21 she is leading efforts to change Nepal’s laws so they include transgender men and women, and spearheading work to develop terminology in Nepali, and Nepal bhasa (or Newa language), that is inclusive of people who identify anywhere along the gender spectrum. She has led campaigns to protect lands of Kathmandu Valley’s Indigenous Newa people and has joined heritage activists to ensure that an ancient, sacred pond in the cent...

What do you think? Send us a textI liked Mithila painting the very first time that I saw it. The bright colours and village scenes amid lush jungles and bountiful nature really appealed to me, although nostalgically I now realize. So I was shocked the first time I saw paintings done by today’s guest. Although they featured the same vibrant colours and verdant backdrops, one example showed two women kissing under a tree and another depicted a woman standing and bleeding profusely du...

What do you think? Send us a textAnyone who lives in Nepal knows about caste and untouchability — the social rules that slot people into rigid groups from which they can rarely escape. At the bottom of the caste hierarchy are the Dalits, previously known as untouchables. Anyone living in Nepal would be aware of the deadly, violent crimes committed against Dalits, almost always with no legal consequences. (Since I recorded this episode at least two Dalit girls have been raped and murdered...

What do you think? Send us a textI’ve been following the work of Chandan Kumar Mandal carefully during the pandemic. He’s the labour reporter with the Kathmandu Post and has been writing daily about the millions of migrant labourers who leave their families in Nepal — often for years at a time — to work in neighbouring India or overseas. Many of them have undergone horrendous experiences since Covid-19 flipped the world upside down earlier this year, and many remain stuck in some sort of nigh...

What do you think? Send us a text5 to 6 million Nepalis live outside of Nepal today, excluding India and other South Asian countries. That’s according to the non-resident Nepali association. Nepal’s total population is 28 million. Many emigrants leave for a specific period of time, to either work or study, but others embark for what they hope will be a better life in countries including Australia, the US and the UK. It’s normal that some of those emigres return home at some time in thei...

What do you think? Send us a textAs a developing country Nepal has few resources to devote to climate change. But as of late last year it has started to receive money from something called the Green Climate Fund to both reduce its own emissions and adapt to climate change. So far $73 million has been earmarked from the Fund for two projects. But who decides how that money is spent? Today we’re talking with Tunga Rai from the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities, or NEFIN. He thin...

What do you think? Send us a textI obviously don’t know if it’s harder to be a woman in Nepal than in other places, but often it seems like it must be. Around 1,200 women here die each year giving birth, many from a simple post-delivery haemorrhage. (The fact that no one seems to know the exact number speaks volumes about the importance officialdom places on the issue). Tens of thousands of other women endure the condition known as uterine prolapse — where the uterus descends towards or ...

What do you think? Send us a textDeepak Rauniyar still feels queasy when he remembers the racism he faced growing up in Udaypur district in eastern Nepal. As one of few dark-skinned kids in the community, whose mother tongue was not Nepali, he was taunted by children and singled out for beatings by his headmaster. But as a college student looking for part-time work he soon discovered that journalism gave him the power to uncover the discrimination that pervaded life in the southern Madhesh re...

What do you think? Send us a textAccording to one of today’s guests, 1 in 5 working age Nepalis is overseas for employment at any one time. In 2019, the earnings sent home by these workers, known as remittances, totalled about $US8 billion, or 25% of Nepal’s gross domestic product, the economic value of its output. COVID-19 hammered labour migration, and the lives of many Nepalis. Some remain stuck in countries far from home, jobless after being cast aside when local economies tank...

What do you think? Send us a textThere’s no doubt that today COVID-19 is the main issue in Nepal and in most parts of the world, so I decided when I started planning this podcast that it would be the subject of the first episode. But I also knew that I didn’t want to discuss the daily news — case numbers, quarantine centres, equipment shortages, government mismanagement, etc.Instead, because this podcast is all about examining issues in Nepal with an eye to doing things differently and contri...

What do you think? Send us a textCOVID-19 arrived in Nepal at the end of January, 2020, but it was really only in May when it hit, as tens of thousands of migrant workers started arriving home from neighbouring India. As in many other countries, rich and poor, the pandemic has accentuated Nepal’s fault lines, including its health system, inequality and poor governance. And just as in other countries, the time seems ripe to question the direction that Nepal was taking.That’s where this podcast...