Role of Mother’s Group on Women Empowerment: A Case Study of Godawari Municipality, Lalitpur

Mother’s Group is one of the basic groups for women empowerment. It has been functioning for women’s empowerment and social development. Mothers group has managed many skill development programs, income generating programs, literacy programs etc which helped them to make independent. Mother’s group, self-help groups (SHG) and community-based organizations (CBO) play a vital role towards women empowerment by providing vocational trainings, training for self-employment, protection for women and self-awareness programs. Thus, they are mainly concerned with the upliftment of the women in the society. Empowerment of women has been a topic discussed at length in recent times and many strategies have been implemented to address enhance women’s condition. This paper seeks to explore some measure that should be adopted in order to position rural women as equal players in entrepreneurship and economic development. This paper discusses upon the empowerment of rural women by means of self-help group or mother’s group and the advantages of such groups among the rural women.

Sustainable Development Practices in Developing Countries: Major Drivers and Future Discourse

The objective of this article is to discuss the practices of sustainable development and its challenges in Nepal. Secondary data has been used such as library and documentation materials, and secondary information available. For the proper implementation of sustainable development corruption, free society is essential and the monitoring from people’s side in the development programmesis warranted. Publications of articles related to local governments and Journals published from different research institutes were used. The paper concludes that lack of proper human resources and utilization of natural resources in Nepal is not getting progress in for sustainable development. Nepal government should give emphasis on environment education and awareness programs should be organized in order to preserve natural resources. People’s participation, equity and utilization of indigenous knowledge is vital for the development. At last civil society should have crucial roleto control corruption.Active participation of local bodies and nongovernmental organization also can play vital role for its development with a coordination of ministry of environment and some international organizations.

Rural Revitalisation Process of Nation-Building in Nepal

Government of Nepal has been trying to revitalize rural areas after 1950s as a strategy of nation-building. The demands of ethnic groups are basically inclined with quest for ethnic identity, equality, and greater representation in the political structure. Among the ethnic groups, the largest groups are Janajati, Madhesi and Dalits. In this stance, this library based study tried to look at problems and prospects of balance development as an outcomes of revitalization process of nation-building. At the same time the study also tried to identify essential driver of rural revitalization in Nepali context. The study found that equal distribution of development is difficult in terms of its social, regional and cultural diversity. Poverty, unemployment, landlessness, rapid population is major push factor in Nepal to overcome from this problem. Besides these problems there are some prospects through which rural setting can be revitalized economically, socially, politically such as agriculture. One essential driver of rural revitalization is rurbanomics, an approach that emphasizes the linkages between rural and urban economies. Growing urbanization in most countries enhances the importance of rural areas—by boosting demand for food, diverse diets, and goods and services that the rural economy can meet. Rurbanomics, therefore, frames rural and urban economies as equal partners.Ending hunger and malnutrition to achieve both the Sustainable Development Goals and climate goals requires us to initiate a range of evidence-based actions to advance rural revitalization in all regions of the world. Rural revitalization represents the most realistic way to achieve such a dramatic transformation to ensure that rural people and rural areas can thrive for generations to come.

Interface between Tourism and Rural Development in Panchmul, Nepal

This study explores interfaces between tourism and rural development outcomes (constructs) in Panchmul located in Aandhikhola rural municipality of Syangja District. A comprehensive researcher strategy has been applied in this study. The necessary information was collected from 21 participants selected purposively from tourism and rural development programs. This study found functional interfaces or two ways contributions between tourism and rural development outcomes. Similarly, tourism related activities are building social capital, developing rural infrastructures, maintaining community well-being, and conserving biodiversity which are learning platforms to the neighboring villagers and others people. Panchmul can be a model village for rural development if skillful local youths are mobilized in the activities of tourism development, promotional, and management. That’s why there must be transformative interfaces between constructs thus better to apply the strategic interface model developed from this study by the local development stakeholders.

Assessing Household’s Food Security in Patarasi Rural Municipality of Jumla District of Karnali Province, Nepal

Food security in mountain areas has always been a matter of concern. The purpose of this study is to examine the food security situation and coping strategies in rural households in a mountain area. Following the descriptive research approach, data is collected through implying household survey, semi-structured interview, and observation method. The food security situation is analyzed through four dimensions of food security: food availability, access to food, utilization of food, and stability. The result shows households depend mainly on markets as their main source of household food and households follow inadequate food consumption and the majority of households' food consumption patterns constitute either borderline or poor. Households apply short-term food consumption coping strategies such as lending money from friends or buying food on credit. The study recommends that farming households be supported in terms of both short-term and long-term strategies to improve food production and supply.

Media Framing of COVID-19: A Content Analysis of Nepali Newspapers

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the globe, posing a major and alarming public health concern. This has been due, in part, to the increasing number of infected population day by day. Also, media coverage appeared to be one of the influencing factors to the opinion formation of COVID-19 issues. Since the whole world is still reeling under the effect of COVID-19 pandemic. At this juncture, the content and tone of the newspaper is still unknown. Therefore, the paper tries to assess critically about the media effect in reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study has a significant practical relevance during this period. Furthermore, the study contributes to scientific knowledge about the use of frames and tones in media coverage with regard to pandemic. For this purpose and use of a content analysis, two popular Nepalese English language newspapers; The Kathmandu Post (privately owned media) and The Rising Nepal (state-owned media) has been selected purposively. The content and tone of the media coverage with regard to the pandemic from May 2020 until the end of July 2020 was investigated. The results showed that the media coverage was most frequently done in terms of economic crisis rather than covering the pandemic as a health crisis. Furthermore, the tone of the media coverage of the pandemic is more negative in the privately owned media than the state-owned media. However, both the newspapers have covered the majority of articles through the economic framing rather than health.

Women Participation in School Governance in Lalitpur, Nepal: A Participatory Development Practice

Participation is an important dimension of good governance. In Nepal, there seem positive changes in women's participation in School Management Committees (SMC), Parent Teachers Association (PTA), and school administration but the participation of women has become a far-reaching goalin public school governance. This article is about exploring how women's participation could contribute to promoting good governance practices in community schools. Authors have applied an interpretative inquiry and participation and feminist standpoint theories to make out the meaning in this study which was carried in two public schools in Lalitpur, Nepal. The finding reveals that his meaningful representation of women in school governance is likely to minimize the governance challenges such as absenteeism, low parents’ participation, poor resource mobilization, transparency, and accountability.These positive transformations contribute to the community development process. However, enabling environment for women is needed to ensure their meaningful representation in school governance structures. This study is beneficial to educationists, planners, and development workers in Nepal.

Status of Women in Nepal: A Critical Analysis of Transformational Trajectories

Gender equations in any society are more or less anchored to cultural legacies. Nepali cosmologies constructed based on Hindu religious tradition, manifests the provision of Vedic societies in its present-day social structure, especially in gender. In the ancient times, women enjoyed equal rights and privileges as men, but with the rise of nation states, incidents of wars and conflicts multiplied for territorial expanse and security. This put male on the preference as martial and warring gender, and women started being confined to domestic responsibilities. This slowly crept into the social structure, and women have been suffering since then for lack of basic rights. The status is, however, changing because of recent political developments, that not only educated women vis-à-vis their rights, but also empowered them for various economic and social activities that contributed to their self-reliance. This article critically analyses changing value systems in the Nepalese society and the corresponding social and political transformation that has greatly altered the status of women. Much is yet to be done to bring the two genders in an equitable footing, but the gradual changes are a welcome sign towards gender equality and self-reliance.

Peer Review Process in Scholarly Communication and Scientific Publishing

Peer review in scholarly communication and scientific publishing, in one form or another, has always been regarded as crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research. In the growing interest of scholarly research and publication, this paper tries to discuss about peer review process and its different types to communicate the early career researchers and academics.This paper has used the published and unpublished documents for information collection. It reveals that peer review places the reviewer, with the author, at the heart of scientific publishing. It is the system used to assess the quality of scientific research before it is published. Therefore, it concludes that peer review is used to advancing and testing scientific knowledgeas a quality control mechanism forscientists, publishers and the public.

Extracting Trading Locus: Where we are in Indo-Nepal Trade?

Nepal and India have had trade relations since time immemorial. Nepal was known as an exporting nation in the ancient times. Before the trade agreement between Nepal-Britain Treaty in1923, Nepal's trade with India was more than 95 percent. Despite various treaties and agreements between Nepal and India, Nepal's trade with India now accounts for around 65 percent of total trade. Despite the trade and mutual relations between Nepal and India, India has been treating Nepal on the basis of benefits. In different time periods, India has been creating problems in trade and transit, contrary to international norms and trade and transit treaties, under various pretexts. The objective of this paper is to review of Indo-Nepal trade and transit treaties and analyzing the present status. Descritptive and analytical research design is applied and simple statistical tools are used to analyze the growth and direction of foreign trade of Nepal. Linear regression model is applied to measure the total trade with India and total volume of foreign trade of Nepal. This study has found that there has been significant contribution of total trade with India to the total volume of foreign trade of Nepal. The import trade of Nepal with India is extremely high in comparison to export trade and total trade balance and trade balance with India has been increasing with a huge deficit.