It is urgent that water, which remains Nepal's strongest resource, not fall in the hands of decision-makers who will exclude the majority of users. Sushma Joshi explores the politics of water and development in rural Nepal. This piece originally appeared in Samar 21, published online October 30th, 2005, and Znet, the online portal of Z magazine, in November 2005. As a child growing up in Kathmandu, I became familiar with the splutter of a pipe trying to pull water and coming up with empty air. Kathmandu is a paradox—it is a Valley surrounded by the Himalayas, the mountain range which fulfills the water needs of an entire subcontinent, and yet it is unable to satisfy its own demands. Kathmandu used to be filled with rivers and ponds, until the eighties, when I was growing up. Today, tankers go through the city, selling people their quota of drinking water for the week. My childhood training in using minimal amounts of water led to spats with eco-concious but high consumption hippie...
The civil wars of the twenty-first century: Sushma Joshi's slightly twisted perspective of the universe.