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
A 30-year study of Chitwan's people reveals migration trends
If I told you about a 30-year study that has already resulted in 261 research publications, you’d be impressed right?
And if I added that the study is based in Chitwan, and co-led by a Nepali, Prof. Dirgha Ghimire? I think you’d be even more enthusiastic. At least I was when I learned about the Chitwan Valley Family Study just a month ago. I’m not sure how I missed it over the past two decades that I’ve lived here but I’m a firm believer in the adage ‘better late than never’.
Before we get to today’s episode, did you know that we now have an e-newsletter? If you’re curious about what we’re working on for future shows, the latest news about migration and Nepal, or you want to share feedback and ideas, I encourage you to sign up now.
Researchers at the Chitwan Valley study, based at the University of Michigan in the US, have been contacting members of the same 152 communities for the past three decades to collect key details of their lives: births, deaths, how they’re aging, how their children are growing and much, much more. Especially key for our purposes is what happens to them—and their family members—when they migrate.
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Thank you to PEI in Bankhundole and Himal Media in Patan Dhoka for the use of their studios.
Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.
The most dangerous thing here is, it is a mindset. Young people have now a mindset if they cannot go outside (Nepal), they are worthless.
Marty:Hi everyone. If I told you about a 30- year study that generated 261 research publications, you'd be impressed, right? If I added that this study is based in Chitwan and co-led by a Nepali, you might even be enthusiastic. I certainly was when I learned about the Chitwan Valley Family Study just about a month ago. I'm not sure how I had missed it over the past two decades that I've lived here, but better late than never, as the saying goes. Welcome to Nepal Now: On the Move, the podcast that talks to some of the hundreds of thousands of people leaving, and occasionally returning, to this small country encircled by global giants, China and India, every year. Occasionally we'll call on an expert like today's guest, professor Dirgha Ghimire of the University of Michigan, home to the Chitwan study. Before we get to today's episode, did you know that we have a monthly e-newsletter? If you're curious about what we're working on for future episodes, the latest news about migration and Nepal, or you just want to share feedback and ideas, I encourage you to sign up now. The link is in the notes to this episode. Okay, back to today. For three decades, researchers at the Chitwan Valley Family Study have been contacting people in 152 communities to collect key details of their lives: who was born, who died, how they're aging, how their children are growing, and much, much more. Especially key for us: what's been learned about what happens to community members, and their families, when they migrate. To get answers to these questions, and a taste of the massive undertaking that is the Chitwan Valley Family Study, please listen now to my chat with Dirgha Ghimire. Professor Dirgha Ghimire, welcome to Nepal Now: On the Move podcast.
Dirgha Ghimire:I am very happy to be with you today.
Marty:Great. We're here today to talk about a project that I've surprised myself by just learning about. It's called the Chitwan Valley Family Project. It's been running for a couple of decades, more than a couple of decades now, and generating some really interesting data, and we're definitely going to get into that and what it might tell us about migration. Before we do that though, I'd like to ask you to tell me a little about yourself. Just where you were born and where you went to school, that kind of thing.
Dirgha Ghimire:I was born in remote village of Lamjung, called Sri Manjhang, and then I had my middle school education in Manjhang. And there was no high school, so I have to go to another district, Tanahu, for my high school. From high school then I went to agriculture college, first year in Lamjung again. And then second year I went to Rampur. Then I went to work with Integrated Hill Development Project in Dolakha and Sindhupalchowk for a couple years. Come back again and completed my graduate or bachelor's degree in agriculture science with agriculture economics in as a major. Then I joined a organization called Care International in Nepal, which is a development organization, INGO. And I had an opportunity to work in very remote areas in Nepal, like Mustang, Manang, Sindhupalchowk, or Kavre, from very mountainous region to even in Tarai. So I had a good grasp of how Nepal looked like. I started as a agriculture technician and as I progressed I was a long range strategic planning coordinator, when I quit the job there. That job was responsible to come up with a strategic plan for the development of the poorest of the poor. But by that time I realized the development model that all the partner organizations and the government of Nepal were adapting did not make much sense to me because some people from outside would go, some people from US would come and say, 'oh, let's do this in Nepal'. And that approach did not work, and I realized that I should not be spending my time that way. I quit that job, which was very lucrative. And then I joined hands with a assistant professor at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, then started a project, research project, learning how the changes going around you, around the people, impacted their life. That was our initial project. I came to US for internship, learned research methods in University of Michigan, and returned back to Nepal and we started that project from 1995. This project is based in western Chitwan. We have 152 sample communities, and we have been following community change, household change, and individual change in terms of demographic events such as birth, death, migration, in-migration, out-migration, marriage. We update our record in a monthly basis. So we know who has given birth, who died, or who has been going where, living where, why they went there.
Marty:You have quite a migration story yourself, which is also always really interesting to hear. And then you get into the work that you're doing now with the Chitwan Valley Family Project.
Dirgha Ghimire:Family Study.
Marty:Okay, okay. And you gave a kind of short introduction there. This project now is 30 years old, right?
Dirgha Ghimire:Yep. We are going to celebrate 30th anniversary in November.
Marty:How unusual, or usual, is it to have a research study like this that lasts 30 years? That seems incredibly long.
Dirgha Ghimire:You are right. It is very unusual to have such a long study, especially in low and middle income setting. There are none, in fact, 30 years long, studies in South Asia or in other parts of low income settings. For US, yes, we have 60 years; for UK we have more than 60 year-old studies continuing, but in low income setting, it is very, very challenging to generate resource and continue with this. At the time, when, we started this project, Nepal's, population problem were high fertility rate, so our studies were focused on child marriage, like timing of marriage, contraceptive use, and birth. Next thing that Nepalese population experience is this 10 years of armed conflict. That impacted the population in a hugely different way. We collected data and we started studying, learning, how this armed conflict impact people's life, not only in economic term, but now we are studying like how that exposure to the, this, armed conflict impacted their mental health. And how that is different for young people at that time versus the old people at that time. Then we started studying migration right after armed conflict there is a huge surge of out migration. We think migration in multiple ways. Number one is there are theories and literature on why people migrate. What are the predictors of migration? What pushes them to go out. Second part is who migrates and where they go. And third part is how is that impacting the life of people living in Nepal, back home? One of my project was looking at how the international out-migration impacted agriculture productivity in Chitwan. So our research approach is based on the local problem that people in Nepal are facing. We identify those problems and then we look for resources to do those research, and then we conduct a research, we publish them, and then we also just do dissemination, back to the population. And that's how we work. So that was migration. Then we moved (on). Like in the early nineties, the fertility rate was high. Now the fertility rate has gone down almost like replacement level. And then the health of the children become very important because if people are going to have only two children, it is very important for them to survive, both of them. Now we have a study on child health. And at the same time, the next issue that Nepal will be facing, in coming years, is the growing number of elderly people. Life expectancy has increased, young people have left the country, and (there are) fewer children and more of the elderly people. Currently, we are collecting data on, we we call it cognitive assessment. Using those data we are hopeful that we would be able to learn little more about dementia and Alzheimer related diseases. That is our current, project we are running. In addition to that, there are other population and environment related studies. We are also now, getting into the area of disaster. How the flooding in Chitwan affect both the mental health as well as physical, property of people around those rivers.
Marty:If I didn't say it before, I just find this fascinating. And although I'm not a researcher (or) academic, exciting because I just think that with all of this information, you must have so many possibilities of study topics, right? Although as you say, you try to keep it limited to what can help the community.
Dirgha Ghimire:Absolutely, yes! The resource data resource is so valuable. We have only picked up some of the fruit that came on the top, but as I said: consequences of migration. How the same parental migration affect children's social-emotional development, how that affect their school education. Yeah, we have papers on those issues, but you can keep going on. From the aging study we are looking at how the exposure to armed conflict affected their cognition in the long run. So those who were in Nepal, in Chitwan at that time, and exposed to that armed conflict affected their cognition now. Same way we are looking at how is the migration experience outside of Nepal. I can give an example. Nepalese people go to (Persian) Gulf and work in a very, hard, harrassed condition, including temperature, living condition. How that experience, how that exposure to this different environment affect that cognition when they come back in Nepal. So those are the two main thing we are looking, but there are hundreds of other areas that you can look at with the same data.
Marty:Okay. Yeah, the questions are just multiplying in my head, but. So the last one you mentioned for workers going overseas you would be in touch with them again once they return; you're not surveying them when they're overseas, are you?
Dirgha Ghimire:We do, we do. We have a survey center, telephone survey center in our office in Chitwan. And we call them wherever they go, and we ask them, 'how you are doing, when you are coming back, how things are there'.
Marty:You mentioned the Maoist conflict, right? And obviously how people left the country soon after that started, and I know that continued long after the conflict itself ended. Before that, because Chitwan is in (the) Tarai, there was obviously migration across the open border with India. Did you look into that migration with India as well?
Dirgha Ghimire:We don't need official visa to go to India, so it is very difficult to document how many people go to India. That has been a huge issue in our migration studies. The census gives us some idea, but not very accurate. During the conflict, there were two stream of migration to India. One was the regular seasonal worker who goes and earns some money and come back. That has been for a long time. And the second one is people go to India as a, deplaced person because if they stay in Chitwan they are scared with the Maoist, or the government, so they go to India. But we have not looked at that in a fine-grained way. Before the Gulf area was opening, I think about 40% of migrants go only to India. But now that number has gone down and other countries are coming up like Malaysia and Japan and Gulf, definitely.
Marty:With the conflict, post-conflict, that was a huge driver of migration. Did it actually serve to open up some countries to people from Chitwan? Were they going places that they hadn't been before, at this time?
Dirgha Ghimire:Yep. Japan is definitely one. There were very few at the beginning. You know, you don't always see it in a linear way. It is like circular. Once you go to some destination country, then you started bringing social capital back, and that helps more migration. Now, even in our study area, there are toles, like this is a Japanese tole, that is simply because many of those people have been in Japan for work.
Marty:Are there more people in Chitwan going to Japan than say the national average? Or it's just one of many destinations?
Dirgha Ghimire:One of many.
Marty:People migrating from Chitwan, are they known for possessing certain skills? Do they do certain types of work that is more specific to Chitwan district for some reason, or not really?
Dirgha Ghimire:Not really. I mean it's so diverse. Those who goes to Gulf, they are doing slightly lower paying jobs. Japan is different, Indonesia, Malaysia is different. Korea is another country...
Marty:And overall, the percentage of people who are going abroad to work must be increasing.
Dirgha Ghimire:Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We did a survey with 12th graders and their parents. And 40% of them want to go to abroad for study, and another 40% want to go for work because they have no aspiration to go for study. We can now deduct: less than 20% will stay in Nepal, which is a huge, huge issue at the moment. Aspiration does not always translate to behavior, but that is a huge predictor. If you want to, you'll find a way to go.
Marty:Let me ask you a very specific question. I was speaking to a woman the other day. She had migrated to Kuwait. She worked there for a few years in low skilled work. Came back and she was telling me the stigma that she faced when she returned. She had lived abroad alone as a woman and, from her own community and the broader community, people in her district she was very much stigmatized because of being there alone. And there were lots of rumours going around about she must have done this, and she must have done that, in terms of sexual activity. And even people were saying to her husband, 'you should divorce this woman because she went overseas and did this'. Is your community in Chitwan more accepting of migration of women? Do you know? Have you looked into that particular issue?
Dirgha Ghimire:It has a historical background because any female migration was considered to go to Bombay for prostitution. That was the historical mindset of people. And for any female who migrate herself in some other areas, there is that conception, which is completely wrong. It is getting more acceptable. In Chitwan there are also some variation in terms of like, for Gurung women, their husbands were in British Army and Indian Army, so it was well accepted for them to send their husband (abroad). And then, that community is relatively open for travel and migration. So yes, there is that sentiment, in Chitwan too, but it is getting more open, especially for two reasons. One was young kids are going even girls are going abroad for study that is bringing some positive vibe on this: it is not only women who goes for low-paying jobs, for Qatar, or Kuwait, other girls also are going abroad for study and it is getting more open.
Marty:Going back to what you were saying about the 40% who answered the survey saying they wanted to study abroad, 40% saying they wanted to work abroad. Are schools doing any kind of education of these young people about what they can face when they go abroad, either to study or to work? Because we hear so many stories, especially the negative stories, about what happens to people when they're abroad, and I would think that some sort of pre-departure education would be useful.
Dirgha Ghimire:Definitely not as we would like to have. Especially private schools, they advertise themselves like, 'oh, we have a good education and you learn good English in our school, so you will be better prepared to go for abroad. That is kind of common wisdom. So peoples are putting their kids in a private school hoping that they will have a better English language skill and would be admitted in schools abroad. Some of the school, they are connected with consulting companies and same team or same group of people are running both the private school as well as the consulting agency. I didn't see that they include in their course curriculum or they have that kind of activity in the school. Because they are so closely associated, the company and the school, sometime these people come to school and give some kind of orientation, introduction, like, 'Oh, if you come to our company, we'll send you UK. We have 70%, 80% success rate, sending people', that kind of advertisement.
Marty:Of the work that you've done that's related to migration over the years now, is there anything that you've discovered that really surprised you?
Dirgha Ghimire:A number of things. Number one, I was really surprised that 40% of students would respond like they would go they want to go to school abroad. And another 40% even if they cannot go for education, they want to go to work. I don't think anyone in Nepal has realized the consequences of this momentum. This is going to be a huge issue, have huge consequences to Nepalese population in the long run, because those who goes to Qatar or Saudi Arabia or UAE, those countries, they have some chances of coming back. But those who goes to Australia, Canada, US, UK, or other European country, the chances of coming back is very small. And even those who goes to Qatar, once they come back with some money, their next goal would be to go some European or North American countries. It's kind of like one thing leading to other things. Rather than surprised, I'm seeing that big ball falling on the Nepalese population.
Marty:Are there any officials at the district level in Chitwan I know this should happen at national level, but I'm just curious are there local initiatives to bring people back to make sure that they don't lose this population forever or for decades?
Dirgha Ghimire:In paper, yes. Every time I saw the graph, how the population in Chitwan had changed, you see the skewed pyramid, with a very low fertility rate at the bottom. If you talk to the people in metropolitan office, they would say, 'yeah, we have this program. We have this much budget for starting new activities for youth'. But I don't think that that is really effective. The most dangerous thing here is, it is a mindset. Young people have now a mindset if they cannot go outside, they are worthless. That is the most dangerous thing. It is not the money, it is not how many months you are here or how many months you are there. It is that mindset. No matter how poor situation they are in Qatar, they still would like to go.
Marty:I don't want to sound completely negative about migration because obviously migration has had many benefits for Nepal. And I wonder if you can describe how migration, assuming it has made some positive changes in Chitwan, what would some of those be?
Dirgha Ghimire:The first project I did was how the out migration impacted agricultural productivity in Chitwan. My conclusion was even though loss of labour, farm labour, has created a problem, because that can be substituted either by hiring Indian labour or by purchasing farm equipment, such as tractor, it has not significantly impacted, negatively impacted, agricultural productivity. So we are fine there. Second study we have not published yet, but based on the analysis we see is, if the father is migrated, the birth weight of the child is higher. That means maybe he's sending money and his wife is well fed when she is pregnant, and, the child was healthy. Likewise when they grew up, they are also less likely to be stunted compared to those who do not migrate. There are some health consequences from the very beginning and then goes to school. Migrant parents were more likely to send their kids to private school, although they don't gain as much as the non-migrant parent. That could be because the loss of supervision, parental supervision. So it is not as simple as we think in one way they are now in a better school but because, they are losing the parental supervision, they don't do as well in the school. It's a kind of mixed bag but I think it has a positive, impact on the life of people who are left there. It could be their parents are getting better treatment, kids are getting nutritional food, better school. Usually they invest on a better living condition, I would say. Because usually if they have some surplus money, they start building houses. Some of them even have better means of transportation buy motorcycle or even car. So yeah, there is a lot of positive part too.
Marty:Yeah, certainly sounds like it. To me this is such a big interesting project, but of course funding is tight everywhere around the world and seems to be getting tighter as time goes on. Are the challenges increasing or decreasing for you to get funding?
Dirgha Ghimire:Every morning when I wake up, that is my challenge. Keep it up. It is not only me doing it, I have more than two dozen collaborators with whom I work together. So yes, it is a huge challenge and with the current changes in US, everything is uncertain. It's tough, but our view is it will get tougher and we'll have to be better.
Marty:Can you go to the government of Nepal and say, 'look, based on what we've learned here in this district, you maybe could be doing that, or, you know, it would be useful to study this in another district'. How do you sell the benefits of this?
Dirgha Ghimire:You know, we have this practice. After each project and each project cycle ends, we do a dissemination workshop with what we call the stakeholders. We do disseminate or share our research finding, as well as we say, 'these data are publicly available for researcher and if government needs to study any topic or any issues within that'. So we do that very regularly with line agencies. And now because of federalism, we are mostly focused on Bharatpur Metropolitan City because that's our study area.
Marty:Does the average person in this village over here, do they know that they're part of this 30 year study? And how do they feel about it? Do they see benefits of it or?
Dirgha Ghimire:Definitely they know it because they have been participating it the last 30 years, answering our questions. We have been very clear from the very beginning. We are not a development project like making irrigation canal or building a school building or health service. 'What we do is we take your views and analyze them and put it in front of the policy makers'. That's our answer, but not everybody is happy with that. Some people say, 'oh, why don't you do this? This organization came in and build this, you know, building. Why don't you put some bench here and there'?
Marty:Would you ever say that these communities in your study area are better off now than they would've been if you had not done the study?
Dirgha Ghimire:That is a very hard question. I don't have any measure of that. We do science, that is useful for all, all humanities. We look for causal relationship. For example, if you take an example of how education impact timing of marriage. What we found in Chitwan was school enrollment delay your marriage. Whereas once you drop out of school, you are more likely to marry. And that finding was very similar to what we saw here in Detroit. That means if you want to reduce child marriage, keep your girl in school.
Marty:Okay. Last question for now. Is there one study that, or one particular area, that you really, really want to do research in but haven't done it yet?
Dirgha Ghimire:In the beginning when we started this study, the common notion of population and environmental relationship was, 'oh, there is high population growth. The population growth is impacting environment on a negative way'. That's the way that it was theorized at that moment. And what we come up with is, no it is not always like that. It should be reciprocal. If a higher population degrades the, environment, then degraded environment might encourage a higher population, right. We had a project, we call it population and environmental relationship. At that time we did such a wonderful job. We have the social studies counting the number of people, and we also have a ecological study that counted the biodiversity of the area. So now the time has come (to see), like how the population change has impacted the biodiversity in Chitwan, and how the changes in biodiversity might have impacted people's life. So that would be one area I would like to continue.
Marty:Okay. Well, I must say I envy you sitting in that chair and I'm of course very happy to learn about this project. Thank you very much for giving me so much time.
Dirgha Ghimire:You are most welcome and thank you very much.
Marty:Okay. Bye-bye.
Dirgha Ghimire:Bye-bye.
Marty:Thanks again to Professor Dirgha Ghimire for sharing his time with me today. Tell us what you thought of our chat via social media we're (at)nepalnowpod. If you have comments or questions, you can email me at nepalnowpod(at)gmail.com. I'll talk to you next time.
