Nepal Now: On the Move
We're talking with the people migrating from, to, and within this Himalayan country located between China and India. You'll hear from a wide range of Nepali men and women who have chosen to leave the country for better work or education opportunities. Their stories will help you understand what drives people — in Nepal and worldwide — to mortgage their property or borrow huge sums of money to go abroad, often leaving their loved ones behind.
Despite many predictions, migration from Nepal has not slowed in recent years, except briefly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 1 million Nepalis leave every year to work at jobs outside the country. Tens of thousands go abroad to study. Far fewer return to Nepal to settle. The money ('remittances') that workers send home to their families accounts for 25% of the country's GDP, but migration impacts Nepal in many other ways. We'll be learning from migrants, experts and others about the many cultural, social, economic and political impacts of migration.
Your host is Marty Logan, a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal's capital Kathmandu off and on since 2005. Marty started the show in 2020 as Nepal Now.
Nepal Now: On the Move
Feedback: 'Nepal wouldn’t have progressed if migration hadn’t happened'
What do you think? Send us a text
Hi 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 Soham articulated, and which I hadn't considered that Nepal wouldn't have progressed on several areas today if migration hadn't happened."
"I know it isn't clear cut, but essentially I had viewed migration as an unconscious contributor to the breakdown of the essence of what makes Nepal unique, vital, and such a role model in terms of family support, traditions, life outlook, etc.
"I agree absolutely: I think the Nepalese government should have reverse brain drain policies in place. I've never heard this stated publicly before, and I hope it gains momentum, as it's a very empowering perspective. I think this direction would reignite Nepalis own belief in their country."
So, thank you very much, Jennifer. I'd love to be able to read more of this kind of feedback, positive or negative we don't discriminate. So, again, you can email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com or you can send a text message using the link at the top of the show notes for every episode. It is a US number, so if you're not in the US or Canada, there will be some charges.
Also this week, as usual, there's been lots of news about migration. I finally took a look at the World Migration Report 2024, and pulled out a couple of facts about Nepal. For example, Nepal is the number 10 country in terms of remittances or the money that migrants send back home, expressed as a percentage of GDP. For Nepal, remittances make up 23 percent or almost one quarter of Nepal's gross domestic product. The number one country by the way is Tajikistan at 52 percent.
Another piece of news I want to mention is in the Kathmandu Post. (I'll put links to these items in the notes to this show.} The news comes from Rukum West, a district in the Karnali region, and it quotes a guy named Subhas, who has spent 8. 6 million rupees in the last decade (about 64, 000 US dollars) trying to, himself or his son, get to the US through illegal channels. And this is a phenomenon that's been growing in recent years.
In fact, one reason I switched Nepal Now podcast to focus solely on migration is I heard a story when I was in Rukum West, following the earthquake in Jajarkot late last year. I met a nurse, and she told us that her husband had left a year earlier to make his way to the US through illegal routes and had already spent one crore. One crore is 10 million Nepali rupees, so about 70, 000 dollars.. And that is just a huge amount of money. for people living in rural Nepal or anywhere in Nepal, where some people continue to live on sums as low as two dollars a day, for example.
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Kathmandu post article on illegal migration from Rukum We
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Music by audionautix.com.
Thank you to Himal Media in Patan Dhoka for the use of their studio.
Hi everyone, this is Marty. I got a really interesting and positive email about our last interview with Soham. Soham 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. I want to read a few excerpts from that. She starts,"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 Soham articulated, and which I hadn't considered that Nepal wouldn't have progressed on several areas today if migration hadn't happened."I know it isn't clear cut, but essentially I had viewed migration as an unconscious contributor to the breakdown of the essence of what makes Nepal unique, vital, and such a role model in terms of family support, traditions, life outlook, etc. I agree absolutely: I think the Nepalese government should have reverse brain drain policies in place. I've never heard this stated publicly before, and I hope it gains momentum, as it's a very empowering perspective. I think this direction would reignite Nepalis own belief in their country. So, thank you very much, Jennifer. I'd love to be able to read more of this kind of feedback, positive or negative we don't discriminate. So, again, you can email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com or you can send a text message using the link at the top of the show notes for every episode. It is a US number, so if you're not in the US or Canada, there will be some charges. Also this week, as usual, there's been lots of news about migration. I finally took a look at the World Migration Report 2024, which is a huge UN document with a massive amount of information, but I just pulled out a couple of facts about Nepal. For example, Nepal is the number 10 country in terms of remittances or the money that migrants send back home, expressed as a percentage of GDP. So for Nepal remittances make up 23 percent or almost one quarter of Nepal's gross domestic product The number one country by the way is Tajikistan at 52 percent. On a related note, there is a Sustainable Development Goal target to reduce the cost of sending remittances so that it costs senders no more than 3 percent of the total amount sent. And this target has not been achieved yet. The SDG's date, final date, end date, is 2030. But the South Asia region, which of course includes Nepal, is leading. It's at 4. 6%. So, getting close to that 3% target. The World Migration Report also, not surprisingly, talks about climate change, and it makes the point that households in Nepal that receive remittances are more likely than others to invest some of that money in preparing for floods. Floods are quite common during the monsoon season, particularly in the southern plains or Madash region, and also sometimes in the hills. The women the report says women, although it's not always women the women who remain behind when a family member goes out to work, if they've had access to capacity-building training on how to prepare, then they were likely to use some of that money sent back from foreign countries to in fact be prepared for flooding. Another piece of news I want to mention is in today's Kathmandu Post. And I'll put links to these items in the notes to this show. The news comes from Rukum West, a district in the Karnali region, and it quotes a guy named Subhas, who has spent 8. 6 million rupees in the last decade so that's about 64, 000 US dollars trying to, himself or his son, get to the US through illegal channels. And this is a phenomenon that's been growing in recent years. In fact, one reason I switched Nepal Now podcast to focus solely on migration is I heard a story when I was in Rukum West, following the earthquake in Jajarkot late last year. I met a nurse, and she told us that her husband had left a year earlier to make his way to the US through illegal routes and had already spent one crore. One crore is 10 million Nepali rupees, so about 70, 000 dollars.. And that is just a huge amount of money. for people living in rural Nepal or anywhere in Nepal where some people continue to live on sums as low as two dollars a day, for example. If you happen to know someone in the Karnali, who is planning to go, someone who has already left the Karnali, or someone involved in this whole migration industry, which is really what it is now. It's become so large, let me know. I'd love to talk to people and get a better understanding of what's happening and why it's happening, what's driving people out of the country. So coming up next week, we're talking to Sadikshya Bhattarai from the Centre for Studies on Labour and Migration, or CESLAM, of Social Science, Baha. We'll be talking about women migrating out of Nepal, particularly to Persian Gulf countries. And you might remember the episode we did with Sushma, uh, one, two, two months back now, I guess. She went to Kuwait and experienced some of the problems that many, many women who go from Nepal and other countries to the Gulf also experience. After that interview, in a future episode, we'll be talking to a couple who met while they were working in Gulf countries. They got married, and now one of them is planning to migrate again for work. Let me know if you have any thoughts about what you've heard today or in any of our recent episodes. You can message us on social. We're on all the platforms except for X. That's all for this week from Nepal Now: Right Now!. I'll talk to you again next week.
