Social Inclusion of Madheshi Community in Nation Building

Social Inclusion of Madheshi Community in Nation Building

Presented by

Shree Govind Shah, Ph.D.

Civil Society Forum Workshop

for

Research Programme on Social Inclusion and National

Building in Nepal

Organised by

Social Inclusion Research Fund

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Madheshi community in spite of having a long history of origin and habitat within the present day Nepal is practically considered outsiders and they have been mostly marginalized and face exclusion in active political participation, administration and governance, decisionmaking and policy planning, and moreover, they face serious humanitarian problem i.e. of their true identity in their own native land. The Madheshi people feel highly discriminated and has almost lost ‘the sense of belongingness to this nation’. Since the early 1990s, Madheshi people have organized community groups and formed societies or organizations for the cause of Madheshi community. The issues of Madhesh and Madheshi community have been time and again raised by Jha (1997), Lawoti (2001), Shah (2002) Yadav (2003), Gupta (2004) and few others. Many Madheshi people feel that the entire Madhesh region and its inhabitants do not practically exist in
Nepal’s consciousness and certainly in the consciousness of much of the outside world. Lawoti (2001) reported a very low level of Madheshi people (11.2%) in the integrated index of governance with none in culture, academic and professional leadership.

The exclusion of Madheshi community from the national mainstream, which shares 32% of the country’s total human resources, has been the negative factor for the sound economic development in the country. Moreover, the spirit of harmonious partnership between the two groups of Pahadi and Madheshi community has never been developed. Socio-political and economic inclusion of Madhesh, initially considered as ‘bread basket’ and the major source of revenue generation, and the Madheshi people is what the country needs for building a more inclusive nation based on democratic norms and processes. This paper analyses the current status of Madhesh and Madheshi community, the emerging socio-political and economic issues, and recommends relevant research agenda on the issues of social inclusion and nation building. All the issues discussed here are data based; there are many minor issues talked very often but data and information related to those issues are not available.  

 

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