Surendra Lawoti Blog: August 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Few Nepali Landscapes

Bagmati River, Sundarijal

Kathmandu from Swyambhu

Thapathali

Deers, International Convention Centre

Bagmati River, Gokarna

Shivapuri

Mai Than, Bandipur

Bandipur

Afternoon Showers Over Swayambhu

Sinamangal

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Valley Homes in Pictures and Kathmandu's Housing Bubble

The other day I spent few hours photographing at Terraces, property owned by Valley Homes in Sunakothi. My deepest gratitude to Dr. Maya Battachan and Dr. Saroj Baidya for arranging my access to the housing colony. Terraces is smaller in size compared to Civil Homes, but catered for higher end market (see my earlier blog entry on Kathmandu's Housing Colony Experience).

View from Dr. Baidya's rooftop

Unfinished property in Terraces

Bal Krishna Joshi on Kathmandu's Housing Bubble

I recently met my friend Bal Krishna Joshi, who is an innovative and an successful young entrepreneur based in Kathmandu. Thamel.com is his primary business, which caters to Nepalese in the diasporas. Below you will find an excerpt as he explains to me Kathmandu's failing housing economy, over lunch.

Bal K Joshi

More than 40% of the Nepal's GDP is sustained by remittance. That’s a shit load of freaking money. If you look at the official numbers, they say it is 20%. But another 20% is coming through the informal channels. So 40% of the total GDP, which amounts to little bit over to four billion dollars per year is coming to this country as remittance. And there is not productive use of it. One sector of the remittance directly goes into daal bhat tarkari (typical Nepali staple of rice lentils and curry, in other words for feeding families). These are generally people who have gone abroad from the villages. But more than 40% of the incoming money is going into real estate. One is, we have a cultural stigma of buying a house and buying property.

And also during the insurgency (Maoist), everything but Kathmandu was not safe to live. So people started migrating here. There are two interesting shifts in this migration. In that migration, the early adopters were the people with money from the villages. These are the people who had houses and businesses outside of Kathmandu. But they wanted to something easy to manage, like apartments (condominiums). Once these people came from outside came, it became a very exaggerated economy. Believe it or not in this place (Durbar Marg) the market price for one anna (1 anna = 342.42 sq. feet, 16 annas = 1 ropani = 5,476 sq. feet) is Rs, 10 Karod (approximately US $ 1,130,000). It is not sustainable economy. It is completely exaggerated. That means it’s more expensive than freaking Manhattan. Doesn’t make sense.

And also during the insurgency, industries got closed and shut down. The core competent export industries got reduced. People did not have jobs. So what to do? So the thought of real estate was an easy option. So everybody starting investing in real estate. In the first lot, they started catering to the upper echelon, which is just a very small segment of Nepali society. But there was a whole different need that probably wanted to spend not more than Rs 20 lakhs (US $ 22,598). These are the middle class Nepalese people who wanted a Kathmandu gig. But that sector has been ignored. So most of the apartments that you see are catered to people with money. There are very few ones that are catered to the real market. So the issue now is, those who constructed properties early on, they got cheap loans. And they constructed a lot of housing properties.

Three housing colonies sold well. Three housing colonies mean we are talking about less than 100 people. 100 consumers are not going to set precedence for the entire economy. The three colonies that did well were Lazimpat 1 by Comfort Homes, which got sold out within one or two hours. That was around 30 or 40 houses. They did Lazimpat 2, which sold within 3 or 4 hours. And they did Budhanilkantha, which sold in a month. So everybody thought OH WOW this is a great business idea. So basically, now the government decided they wouldn’t give any more loans for real estate. As soon as that happened, financing got stopped; there was cash crunch because all the money that was going into real estate, its interest rate went up to 16 to 18%. How can one buy home and pay off the loan with 16 or 18% interest rate? These people stopped making payments. Now we have this shit load of buildings that are not complete and probably will not be completed for the longest fucking time. So that is the situation.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

My New Hero: Sapana Malla Pradhan

Sapana Malla Pradhan is regarded as one of the leading figures of Nepal’s Women’s movement. She is the Founding President of Centre for Women, Law and Development, an NGO dedicated to advocating for the removal of discriminatory laws against Nepali women. She was also a member of the Constituent Assembly representing Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist). The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation awarded her the Gruber International Women’s Right Award for advancing gender equality in 2008. Below is my interview with her, originally in Nepali.

What are some of the laws that discriminate against women in Nepal?

The reason we started Forum for Women, Law and Development (FWLD) is because, although we always worked for women’s rights, but the law itself was an obstruction. The justice system had many discriminatory laws. For example daughters did not have the right to parental property. Women did not have abortion rights. There was not an understanding of the concept that married women could be raped and abused. Even though polygamy was prohibited, its indictment was minimal. Child marriage laws were not effective. In divorce laws, women’s rights were not respected. Women were not allowed to go abroad as migrant workers. There were a lot of discriminatory laws against women, and we challenged each one of these in the court. Looking at the results, there are still three main discriminatory issues against women today. One is in regards to citizenship. Another is regarding inheritance of parental property. Married daughters may not own property, whereas unmarried daughters may, but must return it once married. Laws regarding marriage are still discriminatory. And there are still certain cases and circumstances in which polygamy is still allowed. Besides this, we identified 174 laws that were discriminatory to women and more than 100 of these laws have been rectified.

What is the issue regarding citizenship?

The law says that one can acquire citizenship via mother’s citizenship. However if a women is married to a foreigner, she has to be living in Nepal, her children have to be born in Nepal and the children have to be permanently living in Nepal in order for the children to get citizenship. In other words there is a big difference between being a male and female parent with regards to citizenship. Children of a male parent can be born anywhere. They can get married to anyone and they can live permanently anywhere. Hence the citizenship right of the children of Nepali mothers is highly circumscribed. With matrimonial law, if a Nepali woman is married to a foreigner, the husband cannot acquire Nepali citizenship. On the other hand, if a Nepali man is married to a foreigner, then she can acquire Nepali citizenship. Hence in regards to citizenship rights for Nepali women’s dependents, we have strayed away from the correct path.

What is the overall status of the Women’s rights movement in Nepal?

Well there is never an end to a movement. There is never complete fulfillment of rights. When one says movement, it does not have to be a Sadak (street) movement. A movement can take place inside one’s heart and it can also take place by speaking up. Our main movement (FWLD) works to change the system of discriminatory laws in Nepal by filing cases against the state in the court. We furthered our movement by presenting alternative wording when the state came up with policies. When discussing issues in parliament, we collaborate with political leaders and members of the parliament. We have also started social initiatives. I feel that there has been effective work done in Nepal. But definitely it is not enough. Yesterday we fought for the creation of legal rights. Today we need to fight to implement these legal rights in people’s day-to-day lives.

There are a lot of movements in Nepal such as the Janajati movement, Madesh movement and others. How do they affect the Women’s movement?

There is definitely a struggle for the recognition of identity in Nepal. In fact, this struggle exists throughout the world, and Nepal is not alone in this. Here the struggle of Madeshi and Janajati is also a struggle of identity due to marginalization, and the lack of political recognition. But the good news is with the issues related to women; women from different castes, women who speak different languages, women from different regions and women from different political parties are united and standing together. That is our strength.

How did you get involved in the Women’s movement? Were there any personal reasons or specific influences?

My educational background is in Corporate Law. I did my Masters in Comparative Law (MCL) in Delhi. I went to Italy to train in Corporate and Development Law. I also started working on Corporate Law, but many women would approach me for help with their difficulties. I would not be able to help most of these women due to biased and discriminatory laws. According to what I had understood and learned in law school, the law is the basis for justice, inclusion and equality. But in Nepal this was not possible. The law was itself a hindrance for justice and equality, in many instances. Therefore instead of staying in Corporate Law and making money, I decided to challenge the judicial system of Nepal. I felt like I needed to fight for equality. For these reasons, I decided to partake in this movement.