One 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 earthquakes of 2015, which killed almost 9,000...
Mar 27, 2022•29 min•Season 4Ep. 5
When 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 differences, noted in my chat with Suresh Pra...
Feb 28, 2022•26 min•Season 4Ep. 4
As 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 various missions. 500 kilometres above E...
Feb 15, 2022•34 min•Season 4Ep. 3
( 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 support of a skilled birth attendant. T...
Jan 26, 2022•14 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Happy 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 another time. Today we are talking wi...
Jan 12, 2022•34 min•Season 4Ep. 1
I 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. Simply put — we need more listeners. So...
Dec 16, 2021•37 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Welcome 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. Surprisingly, you hear very littl...
Nov 30, 2021•42 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Before 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 raped, she didn’t understand. She aske...
Oct 27, 2021•25 min•Season 3Ep. 19
I’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 Museum and the Global Nepali Museum...
Oct 12, 2021•29 min•Season 3Ep. 18
In 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 adapt to the new, dangerous climate realiti...
Oct 04, 2021•31 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Vaccines, 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 people are fully vaccinated and 22% partl...
Sep 22, 2021•28 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Unfortunately, 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 challenges, not only those contained...
Sep 05, 2021•29 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Hi. 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 how civil society in South Asia is le...
Aug 16, 2021•33 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Nepalis 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 Shubha Kayastha of Body & Data. Do p...
Jul 30, 2021•40 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Room 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 react, says Salina Tamang, Girls Education...
Jul 19, 2021•31 min•Season 3Ep. 12
It’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 greater numbers of extreme weather events, i...
Jul 08, 2021•31 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Welcome 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 Mandal’s determination to stop the de...
Jun 16, 2021•34 min•Season 3Ep. 10
As 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 pregnant women, but the trip morphed in...
Jun 01, 2021•19 min•Season 3Ep. 9
I 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: migrant workers from Nepal who were strand...
May 23, 2021•28 min•Season 3Ep. 8
These 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 greater heights, both real — like the women’s...
May 10, 2021•35 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Welcome 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 means that except for food shops and pharm...
Apr 29, 2021•33 min•Season 3Ep. 6
In 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 is already counselling students in 13 Nep...
Apr 11, 2021•32 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Santosh 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 as a whole, would be if they didn’t confo...
Apr 01, 2021•37 min•Season 3Ep. 4
How 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 movement was born after the prime ...
Mar 18, 2021•37 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Building 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 that my daughter and her friends will...
Mar 08, 2021•29 min•Season 3Ep. 3
When 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 phenomenon. Phurwa Dhondup is a nativ...
Feb 24, 2021•36 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Nearly 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 they promised to provide yearly unti...
Feb 09, 2021•36 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Advocates 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 limitations that says a rape charge m...
Jan 28, 2021•21 min•Season 2Ep. 11
I’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 a much louder voice, at least on so...
Jan 08, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 9
To 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 disappearing thousands more. But someho...
Jan 08, 2021•32 min•Season 2Ep. 10
