THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

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...

18/10/2005, Kantipuronline.com Indira actively supports new and old Nepali migrants, giving personal loans, paying rents for those who are fired from work, finding new jobs, accompanying people to hospitals, organizing new festivities and events.

SIU's publication is here: www.siu.no/vev.nsf/o/ SIUs+publications-Global+Knowledge-The+Melting+Glaciers Original unedited article: Sushma Joshi The glaciers of the Himalayas are receding faster than any other glaciers in the world, including those in the Alps, Andes or Rockies. After the two polar caps, the Himalayan glaciers are third in line as fastest melting bodies of ice. So say researchers from a host of respected international organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Integrated Center for Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the International Commission for Snow and Ice. ICIMOD has predicted that glacial dams will burst, triggering wide-scale floods that will affect large populations. The Commission for Snow and Ice also that this will lead to severe water shortage in Northern part of the Indian subcontinent as early as in thirty years time. The melt is thought to be triggered by rising temperature...

I gave a lecture on "Access to Justice During the Civil Conflict," based on the research I had done with a team of six researchers through UNDP, at the Institute for Advanced Study on Asia at  Tokyo University. You can view their website here: http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/project/tobunkenseminar.html

This article was printed in 2005, after King Gyanendra's takeover, in ISIS International, an organization which documents feminist visions and strengthens social movements from the Phillippines. I noted that the cultural songs and dance of the Panchayat period were making a comeback after the King's takeover, and wrote this article as a reflection on the meaning of cultural diversity. You can read the online  version here. http://isisinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=275&Itemid=261 Due to some errors I noted in the website, I am cutting and pasting a copy-edited version below. Culture Is Dead, Long Live Culture by Sushma Joshi Can a country promote cultural diversity through media as a deliberate national policy, or will all such policies eventually end up “Disney-fying” cultures by stripping them down to their most basic, visible symbols? After the Nepalese King’s Proclamation of February 1, 2005, which suspended democratic r...

Posted on kantipuronline.com on: 2005-07-24 23:41:53 The Independent of Bangladesh: http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/aug/02/02082005ed.htm#A5 Scandinavian Business on World News Network: http://archive.wn.com/2005/08/02/1400/scandinaviabusiness A conflict doesn’t end overnight. It’s a long, slow process, in which two parties, once they arrive at the table, go from small negotiations to more contentious ones.By Sushma Joshi Mediation is tough business. UN negotiators more accustomed to the traffic gridlock in Manhattan than the environs of downtown Kathmandu may have found that mediating in a civil war is far from a cocktail party in the Big Apple. Nepal’s polite but firm refusal to the UN’s advances is not the first time a nation has greeted the UN with a firm “No.” Since 1949, India has strenuously refused UN intervention in the long-standing Indo-Pak dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian government sought UN intervention in 1949, accusing Pakistan of interfe...

BUDDHIST NUNNERY AT PEACE VILLAGE China's Maoists destroyed Tibetan Buddhist relics, texts and buildings during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Yet, in the end, that destruction had a boomerang effect. BY SUSHMA JOSHI On July 28, 2005, I attended the consecration of a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery at Lincoln--a small town in rural Vermont, USA. The town is so small that you could miss it, as we did--we drove right past it. The general store, in the middle of the town, had a sign so quaint that we had to drive around several times before we found it. The houses, with sloping gabled roofs, were scattered amongst fields of summer wildflowers. Children's tricycles rested on the overgrown grass outside red, dilapidated barns. The friend who drove me to the event was a young American woman who had experienced the effects of war first-hand: her husband, who she had been married to for eight years, was psychologically traumatized after being posted to Iraq. Their marriage had ended so...