ABSTRACT

Despite seven decades of interventions, development’s promise to end global poverty remains unfulfilled – and instead faces growing inequalities. Its market-based logic to address poverty has failed as inequalities within and amongst nation states continues to grow. While gender and development saw different forms of experimentation and resistance, development’s selected framing approach have feminists tackle new challenges while staying politically relevant to development. Finally, owing to its ‘anti-racialism’ stance, development is silent on racism. Despite its criticism, development, inspired by neoliberal values, continues its interventions in the developing world. To legitimise its practice, it shares ‘success stories’ such as that of empowered women entrepreneurs, productive farmers, and resilient communities. This paper asks who these ‘success stories’ are, and explores how they subscribe to the views of development agencies. What becomes of their agency in the process? 

Conducting an ethnographic study of World Bank’s Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), this paper provides a social reading of CSA’s three tenets – productivity as patriarchy, adaptation as class reconfiguration, and mitigation as a racial logic. The ethnographic study focuses on two communities within Bhagwanpur Rural Municipality, Siraha, Nepal. One is a small-scale land holding community who along with climate change, faces the violence of a past development project, the ‘green revolution’; second a landless Dalit community who have been incorporated under the climate agenda through the provision of ‘contract farming’. As I experience, enquire and examine the community and its members, I enjoy several cups of tea with my participants. Upon leaving, I reflect on the several cups of tea I enjoyed in the community, to make an argument for a ‘post-marginalisation’ sensibility. 

INTODUCTION

“Sir, have you ever felt poor?” asked Sada (last name) abruptly as I showed her pictures of London on my phone. The question caught me by surprise, for our conversation had since moved away from our earlier themes of climate change, development and progress. Fumbling for a response, I told her “Of course, I have”. My mind raced through the many instances I had felt poor, ‘or lacking something’ (Rahnema, 1991, p.4). “But how can you be poor? Surely, your father must own property”, she probed further. This conversation intrigued me as a guiding theme to explore ‘empowerment’, for Sada hails a from historically landless community, and is the first in her community to own a plot of land – the success of which is attributed to the development interventions. However, I later realised it also revolved around the ‘objective condition and subjective experience of marginality’ (Varghese and Kumar, 2022, p.24). 

This paper is therefore an attempt to understand the concept of marginality – drawing from its historical roots in colonial practices to its contemporary manifestations in development (and humanitarian) discourse and practices. It begins with a brief history of poverty in the context of development, largely shaped following the formation of supranational institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1945. The history of development, which has been analysed critically as we will see in our literature review, moves from early infrastructure developments to include peasants, gender, and the environment. Correlating the poor’s powerlessness with their weak economic positions, the World Bank sees the solution to global poverty via economic empowerment (Batliwala, 1993, p.24). Subsequent discourses have framed marginalisation as a lack of access to markets – of farmers, of women, and sometimes both. To legitimise its work, development organisation and its humanitarian allies share ‘case studies’ focusing on ‘empowerment’, ‘agency’ and ‘community’ (Taylor, 2018). It therefore champions selected stories of female entrepreneurship, increased production by farmers, and climate resilient communities to legitimise its work in the community, and its numerous stakeholders. The opportunity cost of such narratives of individual success is of course the depoliticisation of communities, however, it also begs the question of sustained, and at times exacerbated marginalisation – the very inequality it assumed and undertook to eradicate. Did it perhaps fail to account for the intersectional nature of marginality? 

Acker (2006, p.443) while introducing the concept of ‘inequality regimes’ as an analytic approach to understanding the creation of inequalities in work organisations states that ‘all organisations have inequality regimes, defined as loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender, and racial inequalities within organisations’.  While stating that inequality regimes ‘tend to be fluid and changing, these regimes are linked to inequality in the surrounding society, its politics, history, and culture’ (Acker, 2006, p.443). This paper is therefore an attempt to do the same – to study development (and humanitarian) interventions on marginalised communities at the intersection of gender, class and race/ethnicity, to understand how marginality is sustained.

It also attempts to understand the changing meanings and nature of marginalisation.  The endeavour of course is fraught with challenges, and I am conscious I could fail in my undertaking on multiple fronts. For example, a major concern is my choice of method as a participant observation and the extent of time I could spend in the community. I shall approach this uncertainty in my limitations of the study. On the theoretical aspect, a strong hurdle remains in the ‘profound silence of race and racism in development studies’ (Wilson, 2012, p.3). Does this mean, racism is dead? Or does development adopt a ‘post-racial’ outlook where ‘racisms disappear behind the formal deletion of racial classification, state regulation, and legal refusal of racial definition’ (Goldberg, 2015, p. 152). What does this post-racial outlook mean in the context of development? This relation, I shall draw in my argument as I advance my findings. And finally, a major challenge remains in my choice of community, or the field where I base my study, for I find myself studying hierarchy yet again. This, and my choice of two participants as informants, both female, one a Madhesi woman, and another a Dalit Madhesi woman risks Appadurai’s (1988, p.41) argument of ‘essentialising, exoticising, and totalising’ a community. My reasons for choosing this specific community, I explain in Madhes, a personal journey.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The Concept of Global Poverty: 

Considering the vast number of discourses necessitating the end of global poverty in development literature, it perhaps would be befitting to start this paper’s literature review from the emergence of the concept of ‘global poverty’ itself. Rahnema (1991, p.15), who tracks the conceptualisation of global poverty draws on the difference between perceptions of poverty before and after the advancement of modern industrial societies, and states ‘earlier the poor’s fear wasn’t losing their material resources rather being abandoned’. For Rahnema (1991, p.16), ‘the advent of modernised societies marked the movement of solicitude from charity to assistance’. Subsequently assistance led to the ‘establishment of hierarchies and corresponding discourses, attitudes and practices’ (Rahnema, 1991, p.16) – ‘most prominent amongst them were the concept of development, emerging out of the ashes of colonialism’ (Rahnema, 1991, p.24). Therefore, ‘In 1948, when the World Bank, in one of its first report correlated the “problem” of global poverty with countries’ national product, for the first time in history, entire nations and countries come to be considered (and consider themselves) as poor’ (Rahnema, 1991, p.24). 

Today, the institutions formed in the wake of the Second World War, the United Nations and the establishment of the World Bank following the Bretton Woods Conference continue to shape global discourse about development (King and McGrath, 2004). It’s consequence according to Escobar (1984, p.382) is ‘that new types of power and knowledge are being deployed in the Third World which try to insure the conformity of its people to a certain type of economic and cultural behaviour’. Applying Michel Foucault’s work in power and knowledge to the Third World, (Escobar, 1984, pp. 387-392) studies the systematic structures within development discourse to state that ‘progressive incorporation of problems of the third world, professionalisation of development to produce a regime of truth, and the institutionalisation of development’ allowed developed nations to replace old forms of colonial practices with a ‘carefully controlled definition of science and truth’.  

This hegemonic nature of the discourse in development along the strand of renewed colonialism has been explored by Gupta (1998) while researching the impact of the green revolution in farmers of Alipur, India, Edkin’s (2000) study of the Ethiopian famine, and Alberto Arce’s (1999) study of coca farmers in Chapare Region of Bolivia. In his study, Gupta (1998, p.11) discusses how development discourse ‘not only has served to subject the Third World to Western control through a phalanx of institutions and treaties but has also created the “underdeveloped” as a subject and “underdevelopment” as a form of identity in the postcolonial world’. Similarly, Arce (2003, p.43) while studying the criminalisation of coca in Chapare region of Bolivia by the development sector studies how ‘the language of development aims to transform Chapare farmers into the objects of development instead of seeing them as co-participants in the process of social change’. Furthermore, Arce (2003, p.45) highlights how Chapare farmers don’t see themselves as accountable or dependent on the narcotic industry, and more interestingly, see the narcotic problem as a Western responsibility. Similarly, Edkins (2000, p.70) notes how development, adopting a Malthusian view, framed the Ethiopian famine as a ‘technological problem which could be solved via agricultural modernisation’. 

Pigg’s (1992) wonderful observation of development’s social mapping in Nepal offers an interesting insight into the hegemonic and postcolonial nature of development. Here, she notes ‘Nepali’s associated development (bikas) not as something culturally foreign, but through social relationships’ (Pigg, 1992, p.495). Her example of people identifying places in relation to the amount of development that has occurred, shows how development is a social construct and can be adjusted to local contexts. Nonetheless, modernity is the end goal of development, and is a long and arduous journey for those living in the villages of Nepal (Pigg, 1992). 

Mosse (2005, p.10) through an ethnography of aid practices in India notes how development stakeholders create ‘everyday spheres of action autonomous from the organising policy models, but at the same time sustain them because it is in their interest to do so’. His study shows how ‘for organisations as well as local communities, empowerment or simply survival comes not through validation of their own knowledge, processes or cultures, but through orientation to the knowledge and narratives of more powerful players’ (Mosse, 2005, p.233).

Asking this question right now would be getting ahead of ourselves, however, the relationship between Pigg’s (1992) and Mosse’s (2005) study is important to bring forth, as it later unravels a strand for this paper’s theoretical inquiry. The question therefore is, how did the inhabitants of Nepal as shown by Pigg’s (1992) study ‘orient to the knowledge and narratives of more powerful players?’ (Mosse, 2005, p. 233).

Women, Gender and Empowerment

For the World Bank, while its ‘objective’ may be to eradicate global poverty, its path hasn’t been straightforward. Its policies and subsequent attention have changed from infrastructure and large capital projects to attacking poverty from the 1950s to 1970s (King and McGrath, 2004; O’Brien et al, 2009). Similarly, ‘from the 1970s until 1990, the bank’s policies are influenced by neoliberal thinking in OECD countries, and in mid-1990s, the focus is again on attacking poverty’ (King and McGrath, 2004, p. 22). ‘The shift in policy isn’t however due to changing circumstances in the South, rather due to economic cycles and political thinking in the North’ (King and McGrath, 2004, p.18). For example, around the same time the World Bank began to adopt neoliberal values, the developing world (US and the UK) after a serious period of stagflation, were adopting neoliberalism in their own economies. (Harvey, 2005, p.13). Therefore, when poverty took centre stage for a second time, and development had failed to bring forth the promise of modernity in the developing world ‘it was argued that Southern countries largely had themselves to blame for their development failings, and that they required a radical restructuring of their economic systems so as to make them more globally competitive’ (King and McGrath, 2004, p. 21). ‘The government’s role was to create a good business climate rather than looking at the welfare of its people’ (Harvey, 2005, p.48). Many developing countries were forced or coerced to accept the neoliberal policies (Gibbon, 1993; Gupta, 1998; Harvey, 2005). Thus, post Washington consensus, development discourse began to enshrine neoliberalism as the solution to end global poverty. 

The adoption of neoliberal values also coincided with the addition of other satellite challenges such as gender, climate, water, education, and health, and so on. For example, the recognition of peasants paved way for the World Bank to include Integrated Rural Development in its policies (Escobar, 2012; O’Brien et al., 2009). Subsequent efforts to modernise agriculture to remove them from poverty spawned ambitious development projects such as the green revolution in India (Gupta, 1998; Shiva, 2016). Similarly, ‘in the 1970s, women were discovered to have been “bypassed” by development organisations’ (Escobar, 2012, p. 13). And just like in the 1940s the ‘myth of development’ (Rahnema, 1997, p. ix) was created, a gender myth which cast women as simultaneously heroic and victims in development discourse lent development actors the political persuasion to initiate action’ (Cornwall et al., 2007, p. 3). ‘To bring people into discourse – as in the case of development – is similarly to consign them to fields of vision’ (Escobar, 2012, p.156). The vision of Third World women perhaps is made glaringly clear in Mohanty’s (2003, p.48) words: ‘defining Third World women in terms of their “problems” or their “achievements” in relation to an imagined free white liberal democracy’. It’s consequence, according to Mohanty (2003, p.48) ‘freezes them in time and space’. 

The representations of women and gender in development, supported by its underlying myth did not go unchallenged though. Batliwala and Dhanraj (2004) break two myths, namely the relations between increased access to economic resources such as credit will lead to their empowerment and given access to political power women, they will promote social and gender equality. Staging their research in India, they debunk both myths stating that the myths ‘underestimated the power of existing modes of power and politics to corrupt, co-opt, or marginalise women” (Batliwala and Dhanraj, 2004, p.17). In this case, empowerment meant the opposite in many instances. 

Similarly, scholars have criticised the increased use of words such as ‘empowerment’, ‘agency’ and ‘community’ (Calvès, 2009; Wong, 2003; Wilson, 2012). Cornwall et al (2007, p.5) argue that such repackaging of ideas ‘have emphasized some aspects of feminist agendas and pushed other out of the frame’.  Although used originally in the context of feminism, the term ‘empowerment’, according to Calvès (2009, p.744) has been ‘“taken hostage” by development agencies and has been stripped of its original emphasis on the notion of power’. Instead, packaged in the context of neoliberal understanding (Wong, 2003), the term is used in ‘combination with other fashionable terms such as “community,” “civil society,” and “agency”, and is now at the heart of the rhetoric of the “participation of the poor” in development’ (Calvès, 2009, p.736). 

The incorporation of neoliberal values as its guiding principle has had, and continues to have a profound impact on feminism, development and “Gender and Development” (GAD). Goetz (2004, p.137) highlights the continued institutionalised depoliticisation and the context of staying relevant to the larger agenda as two problems. Leach (2007, p.82), who revisits the Gender and Development (GAD) discourse in 2007, notices much of the agency literature to be gender-blind and thus calls for a ‘new round of engagement to put gender back in the picture on more politicized terms in the context of changing environment and development policy’. 

The Absence of Race in Development

If we are to re-read the above literature review on development’s history, but from a different lens – the invention of global poverty, formation of institutions to govern them, the establishment of a discourse to legitimise the process, coercion of governments and populations to subsume them under the neoliberal agenda, the apparition of a racial project within development begins to crystallise.  Yet, there is a stunning silence of race within development (White, 2002; Kothari, 2006; Wilson, 2012). 

Breaking the taboo of race in development, White (2002, p.408) states that ‘the silence on race is a determining silence that both masks and marks its centrality’. Building on White’s postcolonial racial characteristics of development, Kothari (2006) adds the sanitisation of development discourse through race-neutral language such as culture as a further aid to silence race within development. Adding to postcolonial theorists’ focus on discursive continuities, Wilson (2006, p.6) explores the ‘repeated transformations, reworking and reanimation of race in the context of global neoliberalism’ and states that new images under the rhetoric of participation, empowerment and community ‘contribute to and extend, rather than challenge, racialised regimes of representation’ (Wilson, 2006, p.45). Khoja-Moolji (2020) who studies representations of third-world girls in Nepal and the UK states how humanitarian organisations obscure racial logics through the exclusion of the word ‘race’ from its official discourse but continue to locate third world women as belonging to an elsewhere.  

Is Climate Change a Development Challenge or a Humanitarian Crisis?  

As development discourse moves from Women in Development (WID), Gender and Development (GAD) and a brief experimentation with ‘Women, Environment and Development (WED)’ (Leach, 2007), we eventually arrive at the current discourse of sustainable development (Leach, Scoones and Stirling, 2010; Escobar, 2012; Taylor, 2018). Around the same time, the World Bank, faced with a legitimacy crisis, was strategically repositioning itself as a “knowledge bank” (King and McGrath, 2004, p.56), and today hosts a range of documents on different nations as country profiles amongst other knowledge deposits (World Bank, 2024). Amongst these deposits of knowledge is the ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA), which enshrines ‘productivity, adaptation and mitigation as a triple-win to address climate change and food security’ (World Bank, 2024). Taylor (2018, p.89) states ‘since promoting the term in 2009, the World Bank has ascended to become the leading voice in the CSA choir’. 

The World Bank lends its knowledge deposits to a wide array of partners – take for example, the location of my own field work in Bhagwanpur Rural Municipality of Siraha District in Nepal. Here, farmers were being assisted with the technical knowledge and material resources to build ‘improved cattle sheds’ as part of the World Bank’s Climate Smart Agriculture policy. The funding partner was Care Nepal which has borrowed the knowledge from World Bank, and the project’s implementation partner is the National Farmers Group Federation (NFGF), Nepal – “an umbrella organisation of farmers’ groups advocating the rights of marginalised, disadvantaged, women and small farmers throughout the country”, (NFGF, 2024). The fact that a peasants’ group federation is working towards development goals merits its own research, however, that is not within the scope of this study. Nonetheless, it is interesting how ‘the relationship between knowledge and lending is considered anew’ (King and McGrath, 2004 p.68). The above example also blurs the fact if ‘climate change is a humanitarian or a development issue?’ 

Stating ‘climate change is a top driver of humanitarian need and human suffering, particularly for the poorest countries’, the United Nations proclaims that ‘the climate crisis is a humanitarian crisis’ (United Nations, 2021). Similarly, a DFID report making an argument for the importance of ‘continued’ international development, states ‘extreme poverty and climate change as the most pressing development challenges’ (DFID, 2023). Climate change thus is a domain for both, humanitarianism and development organisations. 

Calhoun exploring the tension between improving the lives and conditions of the third world and providing emergency relief within humanitarianism, states despite the humanitarianism’s immediate imperative to stick towards relief, finds itself ‘ineluctably back into politics, development, and markets’ (2012, p. 90). He therefore states that ‘humanitarian action is thus grounded simultaneously in an individual ethical imperative to save life or alleviate suffering, and a social organisation designed to improve collective conditions of life’ (Calhoun, 2012, p.90). 

During the Ethiopian famine from 1983 – 1985, Edkins (2000, p.73) notes how development found itself ‘marginalised in terms of resources and public support as disaster relief was practiced independent from development practitioners’. The privatisation of aid, the role of NGOs in helping cosmopolitan Western audience extend solidarity to distant others, expanded the role of NGOs in the developing world. (Costas, 2007; Chouliaraki, 2010; Calhoun, 2012; Wilson, 2016). This was a cause of friction between the two and needed to be reconciled. Development therefore evoked a familiar discourse of objectivity based on scientific discourse – ‘modernity’s regime of truth’ (Edkins, 2000, p.119), and today, both development and humanitarian organisations find themselves working towards achieving similar ‘goals’. This does not mean that humanitarianism has ceased responding to emergencies, it means humanitarianism justifies its interventions through development discourses such as alleviating poverty, tackling climate change, addressing gender inequality, and finds itself constantly using terms such as ‘empowerment’, ‘community’, and ‘agency’. 

The development sector does not only lend knowledge, but also borrows. Take for example the featuring of case studies in its success stories, impact reports, and policy documents – such as in the World Bank’s CWIS individual country profiles (World Bank, 2023) and on DFID’s ‘case studies’ (DFID, 2013). In the context of CSA, Taylor (2018) notes how the World Bank, in the absence of a clear conceptual framework is seen promoting a ‘success story’ model which glorifies the three tenets of CSA – productivity, adaptability and mitigation. For Taylor (2018, p.100), ‘the selection of stories is a convoluted political process’, however it is also important to bring here Chouliaraki’s (2010) concept of ‘post-humanitarianism sensibility’ where humanitarian communications are moving away from traditional ‘shock effect’ to visually pleasing ‘empowering stories’. Chouliaraki (2010, p. 113) mentions ‘these representational practices are closely related with the new spirit of interventionism in the humanitarian project, which goes beyond relief and aspires to transform the economic and political structures that can support a better life for the vulnerable others.’ For Chouliaraki (2013), such mediated representations of suffering are susceptible to two criticisms – one of authenticity, which is a failure to adequately represent the political conditions which sustain inequalities, and second of agency, where acts of benevolence obscure unequal relations and ‘contribute to reproducing an unequal world order founded on colonial legacy of the West’ (Chouliaraki, 2013, p.35). 

And it is here where my research begins – on the paradox of the voice of the agency – first, the voice which the development / humanitarian sector produces and disseminates, and second, the voice that Appadurai (2004) calls to nurture to allow marginalised communities the ‘capacity to aspire’. The reasons, as I will explain before leading to my research question, is not to call out the development sector for its inaccurate representation, or to uncover what is beyond the portrayed story. I aim to understand what its impact is on their understanding of their marginalisation. 

Conceptual Framework: 

The literature review has so far concerned itself with the development’s relation with three axes of marginalisation. Its failure to address global poverty as class inequality and subsequent market-based logic to treat global poverty has failed as inequalities within and amongst nation states continues to grow (Hubbard, 2001; Escobar, 2011). While gender and development saw different forms of experimentation and resistance, development’s selected framing approach have feminists tackle new challenges while staying politically relevant to development (Goetze, 2004; Leach, 2007). Finally, race is yet to be included in the development domain – however, its silence ‘is a determining silence that both masks and marks its centrality’ (White, 2002, p.408). 

Despite several calls to look and change its practices, development has continued imposing its unilateral vision of modernity, creating and sustaining a distinct ‘other’. King and McGrath (2004, p.18) note, the changes in development policy are inspired by economic cycles and political changes in the North, rather than its participating counterpart. Therefore, citing development failure to poor governance and lack of appropriate market mechanism, the World Bank coerced the developing world to adopt neoliberal values – leading to further depoliticisation, and reduced welfare for its citizens.

Furthermore, the obscuring of development and humanitarianism, which has been heightened since the adoption of neoliberal values (Wilson, 2012) has been witness to further depoliticisation of gender, race, class and now environment. Nonetheless, both development and humanitarian organisations, continue to legitimise their work through ‘success stories’ – a style of communication which has been influenced yet again by neoliberalism, and has been characterised as ‘post-humanitarian communications’ by Chouliaraki (2010). 

With so many theoretical inquiries already in place, where does the space for future inquiry lie, one may ask? Here we return to Mosse’s (2005, p. 233) observation on the orientation of local communities to the knowledge of powerful players. ‘The ethnographic questions is not whether but how development project works; not whether a project succeeds, but how ‘success’ is produced’, Mosse (2005, p. 8) asks. It could be argued that ‘success stories’ is one way to demonstrate and legitimise a project’s success. But how is it produced? As mentioned before, in the context of Pigg’s (1992) study, how does the success story orient itself to the powerful narrative? It is here, where the theoretical chapter breaks, and finds itself asking important questions of agency – the process of the transformation of the agent herself. The objective is to understand the journey of the agent – her historical journey, her position in society as a woman, as a racial/ethnic minority, and as a person who has lived in abject poverty. How has development changed her perception of her marginality? 

Climate here therefore is just a lens to understand development, as at least during my research, it is climate change that threatens her existence. 

Research Question & Purpose of Study: 

The orientation of knowledge could perhaps be understood as Couldry’s (2010, p.5) ‘neoliberal normalisation – the embedding of neoliberalism as rationality in everyday social organisation and imagination’. It is here, where my interest lies – to perform a sociology of voice, which would ‘register the lived relations and dislocations between domains that come with the implementation of neoliberalism’ (Couldry, 2010, p.113). Subsequently, the questions that I ask myself are, who are these voices that have emerged triumphant in the wake of food insecurity and climate change?  ‘What categorical differences have been naturalised?’ (Couldry, 2010, p.122). What is the impact of neoliberal normalisation on their own perception of marginalisation? Do they perceive their marginality as lack of material resources, or owing to their historical conditions? Or both?   Considering that most “success stories” embody all (or a majority) of the above subjectivities (race, class, gender), how do they see their marginalisation beyond the lenses ascribed to them when telling their stories?  The objective of the research is to understand if, and how depoliticisation is occurring within marginalised societies – the beneficiaries of development, if we would rather call them. It is to understand how inequality sustains, despite it being an explicit Sustainable Development Goal. 

My research questions therefore are: How does development/humanitarian communication practices orient beneficiaries to subscribe to the dominant knowledge and narratives? What impact does such orientation have on their own perception of marginality? 

RESEARCH DESIGN & METHODOLOGY

Ethnography as a Method, and as a Methodology: 

Despite their immense contribution towards enabling a greater understanding behind the cause of things, in the context of my research question, I had to make an empirical assumption of discounting quantitative methods such as surveys and questionnaires. I subsequently turned my attention to qualitative methods of research, and while for a brief moment of time considered interviews as my method, decided upon ethnography owing to its better relationship with my research question. Ethnography would enable me to ‘experience’ as a participant observer, ‘enquire’ (interview), and ‘examine’ historical archives and personal artefacts (Wolcott, 2008, pp.49-50). Ethnography as a method would enable me to gather ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973), and as a methodology, hopefully allow me “to lay bare the messy and fertile terrains of human experience that philosophical thoughts bracket” (Ong, 2019, p.483). 

However, simply deciding upon ethnography was not sufficient, I would have to attend to the very valid criticisms of ethnography – both as a method and as a methodology. Brewer (2005) highlights two prominent criticisms of ethnography – the crisis of representation which questions the value attributed to ‘thick descriptions’, and the crisis of legitimation which questions the validity, reliability, and generalisability of collected and presented data. Responding to the criticisms, Brewer (2005, p. 53) encourages ethnographers to deploy, and encourage readers to adopt an ‘ethnographic imagination’. Ethnographic imagination has three dimensions – ‘field notes and interviews reliably represent a social world, microscopic events illustrate features of broader social processes while setting out the grounds of generalisations, and analysing the social world through which people make everyday sense’ (2005, p.53). This paper, along with the deployment of Brewer’s (2005) ‘ethnographic imagination’, also follows Willis and Trondman’s (2000) ‘theoretically informed methodology for ethnography’ (TIME) and Wolcott’s (2008) guidelines while ‘experiencing, engaging, and examining’. 

Madhes, a Personal Journey: 

For the purpose of my ethnographic study, I chose two communities in Nepal’s Madhes Province. This however is not a coincidence and is based on my own personal journey of learning the region’s complex historiography, lived reality and contemporary political problems in relation to the state of Nepal. 

The Madhes identity, like many other identities is a fluid identity, it spans beyond the meagre geographical territory that has been given to the now officially recognised Madhes Province of Nepal. For the purposes of this article, we will use Singh’s (2011, p. 1048) defintion: “Madhes includes the cultural and lingual space that exists as a basis of identity amongst the people residing in the region”. The Madhes region of Nepal therefore expands across the southern region of Nepal, and is characterised by flat Terai plains, and is physically distinct from the Pahad (hilly) region of Nepal. 

Sha (2023, p. 457) while reviewing a recently published book on the history of Madhes by Maximillian Mørch states that there has been “scholarly eagerness to comprehend the Tarai region of Nepal following the several Madhes movements of the recent past”. This statement holds true for me as well. While prolonged and repeated engagements with the region allowed me to see the population’s unique (but thematic) marginalisation, however, as I pursue my scholarly endeavour, I constantly find myself referencing to the movements as the ‘boiling point’ of centuries long oppression. The protests, like for other scholars, for me opens the important question of how their oppression went unnoticed for such a long period of time. This paper does not allow the space to explore such details, however Madhes’s history in relation to the centre (hills) – from the annexation by the Shahs (1768 to 1846), the impact of the Rana rule (1846 – 1951), subsequent experiment with democracy in Nepal following Britain’s departure from India (1951 – 1961), King Mahendra’s Nepalisation (1961-1990) which attempted to promote a homogeneous Nepali identity, and dissatisfaction with Nepal’s decade long civil war (1996-2006), which eventually led to the protests in 2007, 2008, and 2015 has been adequately explored. (Jha, 2009; Mulmi, 2017; Gupta, 2021; Pherali and NEMAF, 2021; Mørch, 2023). The authors have subsequently explored themes of internal colonisation, direct colonisation, dispossession, historic and contemporary political oppression to understand the nature of Madhes’s political, social, and economic marginalisation. 

The Madhes protests of 2007, 2008, and 2015 therefore serve as important events which produce “knowledge about structural inequalities, political marginalisation and dehumanisation of Madhesis in Nepal’s nation building process”. For the purposes of this paper’s argument, it further helps me establish that the nature of marginalisation in Madhes is different than that of the hills owing to their ethnic difference(s). It is in this political backdrop, development and humanitarian interventions in Madhes Province are conceptualised and executed – however, much of these programmes are developed by the urban elite in the hills and together combined with neoliberal reforms, contribute towards their depoliticisation rather than pursuing radical agendas of social transformation. (Pigg, 1992; Pherali and NEMAF, 2021). 

The complex political nature of Madhes’s marginalisation, and development’s treatment of economic empowerment over political reconciliation, as it is in the World Bank’s CSA literature and success story draws me towards Madhes for the study of my research. My choice of one Madhesi community, and one Dalit community within proximity to the Madhesi community, is not to “essentialise, exoticise, or totalise” (Appadurai’s (1988, p.41) the Madhes and the Madhesi-Dalit community, but to address the complex socio-political situations developments are placed in, and the selective lenses they choose to ignore. 

Sampling: 

Being already familiar with the World Bank’s CSA literature owing to a previous engagement, I decided to choose climate as my frame. I then entered a Google search on the internet to look for news regarding CSA in Nepal and came across an article by Janak Adhikari. I subsequently connected with him via LinkedIn, and we agreed to meet in Nepal. 

In Nepal, Janak introduced me to his former college mate Ishwor Thapa who was working for the National Farmers Group Federation. (NFGF) in Siraha as an Agricultural Technician. Upon connecting with him, he asked me to visit Lahan. Once in Lahan, Ishwor and his colleagues showed me ongoing CSA interventions in Bhagwanpur Rural Municipality. CSA efforts were mostly engaged in helping communities build improved cow sheds which was a process of concretising the existing cowshed, building a stable roof, and channelling the urine into a collection pot. It would also require the construction of a manure collection tank, which would increase the quality of the manure. Similarly, other engagements were mulching (covering the soil with organic material to retain soil moisture) and plantation of pulses (mung bean) between crop cycles (wheat and paddy). I was also introduced to my first informant Pandit 01, who had taken a small loan to transform the field behind her home into a vegetable garden. These vegetables are meant for household consumption and the surplus is sold in the local market. An improved cow shed was also being constructed in her home, and by the time I concluded my field visit, the improved cow shed was almost ready.

Having worked in the region as a development communication consultant earlier, I knew empirically that a landless community too should be nearby. I later asked Ishwor if there was any, and better if they were working with any. Hardly a coincidence that both criteria were met. He cautioned me though that the efforts in the landless community were focused on contract farming, an intervention where Care Nepal, the local government and the NFGF had come together to provide landless Dalit women with arable land. Similarly, I was introduced to Dalit 01, who is the President of the Dalit Krishak Mahila Sangh (Dalit Women Farmers Association). She is the first in her community to own a small plot of land, on which her home stands. 

On the second day, in the evening, I re-visited my various engagements – mostly noticing the differences between the two communities. One is a Pandit (surname) village. Pandit, translated to English from Nepali means priests – they are from the upper caste Brahmin family. Although marginalised from the mainstream Nepali identity (Pherali & NEMAF, 2021), they are self-sufficient. They are small scale land holders, their houses are well spaced, and their lands are registerd. They send their children to private schools, and can dream of their children pursuing government jobs. They have a road leading to their village, electricity poles, and a temple to pray. They have surplus, and most of all their community has a name – Kalyanpur. Meanwhile, the Dalit community, only two kilometres as the crow flies from Kalyanpur does not enjoy the same facilities. Some fifty homes are clustered together, and there isn’t a road leading to the village. And most importantly, their community does not have a localised name.  

And therefore, I refer to Kalyanpur as the Pandit village, and the Dalit community as the Dalit village. In both the villages, I choose to anchor my research to the exemplary women I have been introduced to. While the two were my ‘key informants’ to engage, enquire, and examine (Wolcott, 2008, pp.49-50), I also spoke to numerous other informants from the two communities, and with the aid workers who would be present in the field.

Design of Research Tools

Once the two locations and the participants had been identified, I began my ethnographic exercise. I spent 17 days in the community from 14^th to 29^th May 2024. I would spread my day between the two communities, observing their day-to-day activities, enquiring about the meaning behind things, and examining their homes and personal spaces. I also conducted two semi-structured interviews with my key informants, and engaged in numerous conversations with their family members, other community members and aid workers. I watched the construction of the improved cow sheds, joined the members as they would harvest their onions, sat down in kitchens as they would prepare meals for their families, and drank tea – eight cups of tea. 

Upon returning to the UK following my field work, I wrote up my field notes, and transcribed the interviews to develop a single data set. This task also required translation of Nepali and Maithili languages into English. While I have a strong command over Nepali, my command over Maithili isn’t the same. Therefore, when I had to conduct semi-structured interviews in Maithili, I asked Nayan Yadav to help me, whereas during informal conversations, I would ask younger family members to assist me in the translation. I then began to read the data set to enable an ‘analytical coding’ (Emerson et al). This entailed an exercise of thematic analysis as a method for identifying, analysing, and interpreting patterns of meaning (‘themes’) within qualitative data” (Braun and Clark, 2008, p.79). While the initial effort was a deductive approach to determine selected themes in the data, the available data set, which included important excerpts and observations beyond but related to the proposed study, required me to move towards an inductive approach. While I feared the implication of this to my dissertation, Emerson et al (2011, p.198) words were reassuring, and evidence that this is not a singular experience: ‘As analyst, the ethnographer remains open to the varied and sometimes unexpected possibilities, processes, and issues that become apparent as one immerses oneself in the written data’.  

While most of my thematic analysis and coding process was done in my notebook as I read through my typed field notes and interview transcripts, I later typed the relevant part of the analysis using a Crabtree and Miller (1992) template to allow clarity, and to include in my appendix. I have also included field notes (written and typed) and a few photos.

Ethics and Reflexivity

Besides the practical ethics of seeking consent, which I took prior to conducting interviews, several other ethical concerns arose for me during the undertaking of this research, forcing me to reflect in myriad ways while justifying the paper’s need. The first set of concerns arose from my engagement with the community. Despite several explanations about the objective of my visit, and me clearly stating that I was visiting as a researcher, I was initially assumed to be a member of the NGO or its donor embarking on a site visit. Similarly, I would be asked about the use of the study, for which my response “to study the social impact of climate change on communities” was never convincing enough. Finally, my own position as a male whose last name aligns with the hilly people, I would constantly have to reflect on my own power and the access it brings. Lastly, as a former development communication personnel, who has worked in the community before, and has produced neoliberal documentations of humanitarian efforts, I face an identity crisis as I write this paper. The most haunting question being: what if I return to work in the same field following my degree? Will I be able to account for the sociopolitical aspects of marginality when an organisation assigns me a job? Or will I, like the community I researched, be forced to orient myself to the knowledge of the more powerful? 

Limitations

While I have tried my best to ensure the paper is an accurate representation of what I saw, there could have been limitations to what I saw, or more worrisome, the lack of certain knowledge could have blurred my sight. Kramer and Adams (2017, p.458), while determining how long to participate in the group before being able to draw valid conclusions about its culture state most ethnographers spend at least one year conducting field work. As such, my 17 days fall miserably short. 

ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATION

As part of my focused coding and thematic analysis, I was able to identify six themes which would help me answer my research question. Below, I attempt to analyse and interpret each theme. 

Knowledge, Class, and Soil:

The drought was at its peak when I arrived at Bhagwanpur, and NFGF, with funding from Care Nepal was helping farmers build ‘improved cattle sheds’ as part of the World Bank’s CSA. My first visit to the community, as mentioned above was facilitated by a member of NFGF. He began by showing me the improved cattle sheds, and thus questions around ‘improved cattle sheds’ became my point of entry to the community. Naturally, I began with understandings of climate change with everyone. Jal Bayu Pariwartan, as it is referred to locally, was introduced via a training session organised by NFGF. For many, climate change was an explanation of the impacts they had been experiencing: 

Pandit 04: I learnt about climate change after the training session. But I could sense the changes – for example, delayed and erratic rainfall, prolonged drought, and degrading soil. After attending the training session, I was able to relate and understand the changes. 

Both Pandit and Dalit farmers, when speaking about climate change explained it in terms of symptoms such as increasing prevalence of drought, heatwaves, erratic weather, and interestingly the ‘weakness of their soil’. There was a small distinction between the two communities experience with climate change in relation to the length of time they have owned/contracted land. Pandit farmers, who knew they had been using fertilisers long enough, correlated the use of fertilisers as the reasons for their soil degradation and subsequent climate change. However, the Dalit community, who have traditionally worked in other’s fields, and only with the introduction of ‘contract farming’ have begun taking care of their own farms, are unable to trace the introduction of fertilisers in their fields. Therefore, for them, when asked about the ‘reasons for climate change’, the answer first appears as symptoms of climate change (training). However, beyond that it is either science’s jurisdiction, or god’s will. 

Thus, we see the introduction of climate change knowledge, and its relative understanding in context of soil and the impact of drought, erratic rain within the farmers in Madhes. However, its politics, that is the reasons for climate change is kept away from the beneficiaries, and at certain instances farmers are led to believe in their own complicity in soil degradation and climate change. 

Pandit 06: One of the main reasons for climate change is the use of chemical fertilisers. If we reduce it, we might get less produce the first year. But then our soil will improve, and we will get more produce.

Edkin’s (2000, p.72) visiting development’s rearticulation of Sen’s (1981) ‘entitlement theory’ states ‘if lost entitlements can be blamed on environmental degradation, which threatens food security, projects to remedy this can be seen as projects to replace lost entitlements. The crucial move is to regard the fertility of the land as part of the entitlement bundle of third world peasant farmers’.  As noted by Edkins, the process appears similar – for the farmers, deteriorating soil is a lost entitlement due to environmental degradation. While I did not actively seek answers to why knowledge of climate change is skewered, nonetheless knowledge as misinformation, and their perceived complicity towards soil degradation becomes important tools to gain the compliance of farmers to produce, adapt, and mitigate – for it is in the farmers interest to do so. 

Reasons for Inequality: 

The Pandit village, if we are to take Pigg’s (1992) social mapping, is where ‘thorai bikas’ (little development) has happened, and the Dalit village is where there is no ‘bikas’ (development) has occurred. Similarly, the city would be where lots of bikas has occurred. Pigg’s social mapping of development model, also maps reasons for inequality. 

For Pandit 01, the reason for her inequality was her location in the village, rather than being in the city.  

Pandit 01: We are farmers, we don’t have jobs in the city. If we don’t work in the fields, how will we eat? What will we eat? If we were in the city, we would do (own a) business and earn more money. But we are in a village, if we don’t work in the field, how will we eat?

Similarly, for the Dalit, historically and contemporarily landless, the reason for her inequality is lack of property. 

Dalit 01: We don’t own property sir. Our fathers did not own property, their fathers did not. We live in this small plot of land. This too, everyone has had children, their children have had children, and now there is very little space left.

Dalit 01’s statement evokes Sen’s (1981) ‘entitlement theory’, where he challenges the Malthusian view on famine by stating starvation occurs not because there is not enough food to eat, but because some people don’t have enough to eat. In this context, landlessness does not occur because there isn’t enough land – for there is plenty of land just outside Dalit 01’s house, but it is registered to someone else’s name.

Edkins (2000, p.72) however states that Sen’s (1981) ‘entitlement theory’, while earlier the domain of radical critics has been taken up by the development sector, and rearticulated ‘that links poverty with population growth and shortages with the environment’. In this context, one can note the ambivalance and depoliticisation in Dalit 01’s comment. While she knows that land is a ‘lost entitlement’, she is also conscious of her own shrinking resources in comparison to population growth. 

Nonetheless, the promise of progress and modernity looms large – if the Pandit believes the market will improve her condition, the Dalit believes ownership of land will improve her condition. The sensibility through the above two themes therefore becomes that development is not to address or correct inequality, but to teach communities how to thrive despite inequality. 

Productivity as Patriarchy: 

One evening, I was entering the Pandit village when a gentleman (Pandit 06) stopped me for a chat. After explaining my visit’s objective, he invited me to observe his field. En route, I asked him his name, to which he furnished his wife’s name. I was jotting fieldnotes as we walked, and I asked him, the name does not sound like a typical male’s name. He then said he had given his wife’s name as she was member of the local women’s farming organisation, and thus a beneficiary of CSA. This remark, while an interesting observation, alerted me that perhaps the gentleman was still under the impression I was reporting for an organisation. I explained my objectives again. While he said he understood, he continued his lesson on climate change, soil degradation, fertiliser, and productivity. 

As part of CSA’s crop intensification technique (World Bank, 2023), he has planted mung bean in his field between crop cycles (wheat in winter, and rice during monsoon). According to the World Bank (2023), ‘adding leguminous intercrops (such as mungbean catch-cropping between rice and wheat), helps increase the system’s overall productivity by allowing the cultivation of an additional crop, maintaining continuous soil cover, increasing soil organic matter, and replenishing soil nitrogen content’. Basically, catch-cropping increases production, and improves soil quality. Pandit 06 (husband) is aware of this and shows me the barren fields along the way, calling their owners too lazy to plant mungbeans between crop cycles. We finally arrive at the field where Pandit 07 (wife of Pandit 06) is attending to the field, weeding the grass out, while also ensuring the goats don’t destroy her crop. 

After he shows me the farm, we leave Pandit 07 (wife) to her work, and Pandit 06 (husband) guides me back to the village as we continue our conversation. As we approach the village, Pandit 06 stops and shares with me an important lesson on productivity: 

Pandit 06: You know, we have been talking for almost an hour. Do you see the four women over there, who have been sitting down and talking the entire time? You have been abroad, do foreign (Western) women do this? No, they can’t do that. The weather is pleasant, if they would do some work, they would be productive, and healthy too. 

We bid farewell, and Pandit 06 asks me if I can remind the local NGO to send him the fertiliser spray he was promised. 

Similarly, being productive would also allow ‘concessions’ to women by men, as seen in these communication excerpts: 

Dalit 03: Ever since we have started this contract farming, our husbands give us more freedom. They let us sit down in the evening to talk to each other. 

Dalit 02: Earlier, my husband wouldn’t let me visit my maternal home. But now, when I am free, I visit my maternal home. I am also confident to go to the market or visit government offices on my own. This training has been very helpful for us.

Dalit 05: Our husbands don’t drink as much (alcohol) as they would earlier.

While Pandit 06’s lesson on productivity directly invoked patriarchy, the second batch of excerpts (Dalit 03, Dalit 02, and Dalit 05) illustrate glimpses of ‘empowerment’. ‘Empowerment’ accordingly is linked to confidence, stating they are able to face men,  government offices, go to  the market. Men, governtment offices, and market could be read in this context as ‘institutions of power’, where women lacked confidence to go. Interestingly, neoliberalism ‘empowerment’ could then be seen as access to ‘institutions of power’. For the market, this is a win-win situation, as women’s increased engagement means increased capital. Similarly, access to other wants such as visiting maternal homes and permission to loiter too was granted by such institutions of power. Interestingly, there wasn’t a single reference to the power such institutions command, and strucutural gender inequalities are simultaneously overlooked and entrenched in a ‘form of depoliticised collective action that is completely non-threatening to the power strucutre and political order’ (Batliwala and Dhanraj, 2004, p.17). In this context, empowerment reflects a ‘“romantic” vision of local and community-based power wherein internal power relations, conflict and social inequalities are deemphasised or ignored’ (Calvès, 2009, p.744). 

Adaptation as Class Reconfiguration:

Taylor (2014, p.19) states the word adaptation, which demarcates climate and society as separate entities and bearing impact upon each other, is a representational strategy to ‘standardise conversations for talking about climate change, while legitimating interventions and technocratic governance’. Considering our earlier analysis of inequality’s normalisation, ‘adaptation’ therefore becomes a logical choice to survive in the wake of climate change. Adaptation, while requiring beneficiaries to change their practices, reconfigures class in a manner which is beneficial to the elite, and contributes to ‘durable inequality’ (Tilly, 1998). 

Dalit 01: No, the dhani sau (rich landlord) would not provide us with their land for contract farming.

Interviewer: Why? 

Dalit 01: Because they were afraid if we had our own lands, we wouldn’t work on theirs. 

Interviewer: Then who gave you the land? 

Dalit 01: Satyalal Safi. 

Interviewer: Who is Satyalal Safi? 

Dalit 01: He is a Dhobi. Low-caste like us. He helped us out. 

Interviewer: Oh okay, that is the land for contract farming. However, you were telling me you have also taken some extra land under lease? 

Dalit 01: Yes, one bigha (approximately 0.6 acres). It belongs to Shiv Yadav. 

Interviewer: Who is Shiv Yadav? 

Dalit 01: He is the brother of Ram Shankar Yadav. 

The entire community then joins to explain me that Ram Shankar is Member of Parliament (MP) for Siraha 1. His brother leases the land to Dalit 01 under sharedcropping.  

Tilly (1998, p.10) while exploring the roots of categorical inequality states ‘exploitation and opportunity hoarding favour the installation of categorical inequality, while emulation and adaptation generalise its influence’. In context to the above conversation, the dhani sau (landlord) would earlier exploit the landless Dalit (serf) to work on their fields (exploitation) through ‘command of resources’ (Tilly, 1998, p.10). The earlier denial of the rich landlords to provide them with land can be interpreted as a form of ‘opportunity hoarding’, where ‘access to a resource’ is restricted. The access is restricted because the landlord is suspicious of any improvement in their situation through the ‘social relationship’ (Weber, 1968; quoted in Tilly, 1998). After the lower-class Dhobi, through emulation, demonstrates the success, the landlord is convinced of their benefit. Therefore, it later allows the Dalits (serf) to lease land from them through “share-cropping”. Finally, of adaptation – ‘it gives even those who suffer from exploitation and opportunity hoarding short-term incentives for collaboration with existing social arrangements’ (Tilly, 2003, p. 35). In our context, adaptation teaches the Dalit farmer how to thrive despite inequality. 

Adaptability as Resilience: The Myth of Survival 

The use of the term ‘adaptation’ also seems to be a continued application of an earlier era World Bank myth – the myth of survival, which according to de la Rocha (2007, p.46) ‘emphasizes adaptation, solidarity and reciprocity as the major tools for surviving in conditions for poverty’. De la Rocha’s (2007, p.47) phenomenal study on urban capitalist society debunked the myth that ‘when faced with economic adversity, the poor work harder’. Basing her study in the wake of Mexico’s 1994 financial crisis as a direct result of the World Bank’s push for liberalisation in the country she found that ‘sources of income other than wages can complement but cannot substitute for wages in urban capitalist societies’ (de la Rocha, 2007, p.60) moving away from her earlier concept of ‘resources of poverty’ to ‘poverty of resources’. 

My findings shows that the myth of survival is not only applicable to urban capitalist societies, but also in rural communities – the common denominator within both being, one, the failure of development, and two, its unwillingness to accept its failure.  

In continuation to the above conversation, I ask Dalit 01 if the rich landlords have leased their entire land or continue to retain some: 

Dalit 01: No the dhani sau (rich landlord) still has his land. Now we only go for ropai (paddy plantation). 

Interviewer: Who does the rest of the work then? 

Dalit 01: They use machines.   

The technology Dalit 01 is referring to is the switch from manual ploughing (with the use of cattle) to tractors and other machines to harvest their crop, as part of agricultural modernisation during the green revolution. The rich landlords now require the Dalit’s help to plant the paddy, but besides that, other jobs have been delegated to the machines. 

I now turn to a field observation. In the Dalit village, I notice a virtual absence of men – in the settlement, and in the farms. In my conversations with all Dalit participants, with the exception of one, whose husband drives a tractor, everyone else’s husbands were abroad working as migrant workers. This is not a revelation; Madhes does send one of the highest numbers of migrant workers from Nepal. According to a report by IOM (2023), ‘Madhesh and Province 1 are home to the largest numbers of migrant workers, with each comprising more than a fifth of the total labour approvals issued in 2021/22’. Mandal (2018) provides a further breakdown, and cites government data to state that ‘Nepal’s top ten recipients of labour permits districts are: – Dhanusa, Jhapa, Mahottari, Morang, Siraha, Saptari, Nawalparasi, Sunsari, Sarlahi and Rupandehi’.  While five of the top ten districts (including the district of my own reasearch) is within the political boundaries of Madhes Province, all ten districts are in the Southern belt of Nepal, that is within the Terai. Collectively, it can be said that the Terai region sends the highest number of migrants workers abroad.  

I cannot help but think if the machines, which were introduced as means to modernise agriculture, replaced the four men, and alternatively they were forced to go abroad? No doubt their working conditions weren’t ideal earlier, as they would earn a meagre income of grains for their labour (Dalit 01: They would pay us 3 kilos of dhan (grains) for a day’s work), but the more important question becomes whose benefit did technology work for? 

Is this a new form of violence unleashed by the green revolution? Shiva (2016, p.12) while studying the impact of the green revolution in India’s Punjab states that ‘instead of abundance, Punjab has been left with diseased soils, pest-infested crops, water-logged deserts, and indebted and discontented farmers. Instead of peace, Punjab has inherited conflict and violence’. In a similar vein, Nepal’s Madhes region too finds itself battling with diseased soils and pest-infested crops, thus CSA interventions focus around improving the quality of the soil while mitigating climate change. However, who is to account for the jobs lost to technology? To agricultural modernisation? To add to the above analysis, class has alleviated the violence to an extent. For in the Pandit village, where most own small-scale land holdings, usually one male member stays back home to tend their field, and look after the household. 

Pandit 01: My brother-in-law is abroad; he works in a factory in Malaysia. My husband has stayed back to look after the household and the farm. 

Putting together de la Rocha’s (2007) ‘poverty of resources’ concept, the daily wage earners who toiled the fields of the dhani saus (rich landlords), in the wake of losing their jobs owing due agricultural modernisation, today, are forced to migrate to foreign lands to ensure a fixed income for their family members. A word of caution here, as unemployment in Madhes cannot be linked entirely to agricultural modernisation – the nature of underdevelopment in Madhes requires an entirely different study, and ethnography cannot answer the sociopolitical complexities of Madhes’s underdevelopment. Nonetheless, development has fallen short of fulfilling its promise of abundance, of its promise to ‘economically uplift communities’. Instead, it is complicit in sending poor peasants to become factory workers in faraway lands. And far from recognizing its complicity, it continues its work – with those who remain in the farms and the fields, to improve soil quality and alleviate climate change unleashed by the very modernity it aims to bring. 

Mitigation: A Racial Logic

This section is particularly difficult. How am I to explain the logic of race in a social situation where discourse is occurring in the local language, practice is oriented to the local community, and finally, there aren’t any development actors from the West teaching communities how to adapt and mitigate while continuing production? But in the above statement itself is the beauty of development’s power. The coloniser no longer needs to be actively present anymore – ‘in the name of modernization and development, an entire productive apparatus took charge of the management of the life of the “new” nations, replacing the older and more visible forms of colonial oppression and bringing forth at the same time a different disposition of the factors of life’ (Escobar, 1984, p.394). 

If we are to reflect on the practices within the two communities, the degradation of their soil, mass migration owing to technological innovation are instances of violence unleashed by development. Yet, instead of acknowledging their complicity, development with humanitarianism allies continues to legitimise interventions in ‘a carefully controlled definition of science and truth’ (Escobar, 1984, p.392). Furthermore, development denies modernisation’s own complicity in fueling climate change (Gupta, 1998; Escobar, 2012) and asks poor farmers to mitigate their role in climate change, by letting them believe either they, or god is responsible for the havoc they have to deal with. 

White (2002, p.411) while unmasking the presence of racial logic in development, analyses “V Y Mudimbe’s three critical aspects of colonialism: 1) territorial expansion and the domination of physical space; 2) the transformation of consciousness; and 3) the integration of colonized economy and history into master narrative’ (Mudimbe, 1988; quoted in White, 2002) 

Following White’s (2002) trajectory, we can apply Mudimbe’s (1988) three aspects of colonialism to our observations. With the incorporation of small farmers, and the provision of contracted land within its jurisdiction, and then justifying its interventions, development continues to expand its role of ‘integrating populations with markets and state structures, the extraction of raw materials, the expansion of science and technology, environmental degradation, the movement of populations, and the transformation of the means and relations of production’ (White, 2002, p.412). Secondly, it continues to transform consciousness, leading farmers to believe mitigation is in their interest, and finally, it subsumes them into the master narrative of neoliberalism, depoliticising their class, gender and racial struggles. 

White (2002, p.413) further argues that ‘while the continuities with colonialism are striking, the ultimate character of development is post-colonial, recasting the colonial transformations in new ways’. Kothari (2006, p.9) believes the concealment of race ‘is founded upon the assumption that development takes place in non-racialised spaces and outside of racialised histories’. In a ‘reworking of colonial representation, relations of oppression and exploitation are thus obscured, or reconfigured as ‘obstacles’ which can be overcome through hard work and a helping hand from the Northern donor/consumer’ (Wilson, 2012, p.60). Development therefore, according to Gupta (1998, p.10) is a ‘postcolonial condition’, where ‘historical trajectories of European colonialism, developmentalism, and global capitalism’ converge. 

The above excerpts from scholars who have studied development as a racial project, as a racialised project, as a postcolonial subject, and my own observations of similar practices, ascertains that mitigation is a racial logic. Yet, despite the widespread prevalence of racial logic, it is particularly difficult to articulate race in development due to its ‘anti-racialism’ (Goldberg, 2009, 2015). Anti-racialism according to Goldberg (2015, p.163) is ‘attempts to erase the evidence of racisms rather than addressing their structures, deeds and effects’. Stoler (1997, p.191) explores race’s malleability, or its dynamic ‘motility’ and states ‘racial discourses produce new truths and ruptures as they fold into and recuperate old ones’. This anti-racialism outlook and its production of a new truth, yet again is seen folding into and recuperating into old ones as it asks citizens in the Third World to mitigate on behalf of the Global North. 

Madhes, a Resilient Race: 

 Let us briefly return to the protests in Madhes, or what Pherali and NEMAF (2021, p. 175) have referred to as the surfacing of the political consciousness in the wake of ‘structural violence that Madhesis had experienced for centuries’. ‘Madhesis subsequently asked key questions surrounding their marginalisation, discriminatory citizenship practices, suppression of language and culture, and the role of democratic system, capitalism and neoliberal policies in undermining their grievances’ (Pherali and NEMAF, 2021, p.175). In other words, Madhes has been a resilient race despite historic and contemporary marginalisation. Their struggle continues, and I pick up on one issue to understand their reflection of the struggle – the quest for a citizenship with my participants. 

The quest for citizenship for Madhesis has been a historical struggle – earlier, they would have to demonstrate an ability to speak the hill people’s ‘Nepali language’, which has since been removed (Pherali and NEMAF, 2021). Currently, inspired by patriarchy, it restricts Nepali men married to Nepali women citizenship based on mediated fears that Nepali (read Madhesi) women will marry Indian men, confer them with citizenship, and subsequently flood Nepali territory and politics (Dennis & Lal, 2021; Karki, 2023). 

Citizenship struggles for Madhesi and Madhesi-Dalit women continues, as seen below:

Dalit 01: I didn’t have a birth certificate. Neither did my husband. We both struggled to get our citizenships. 

Dalit 02: When I went to apply for my citizenship, they told me my husband’s citizenship had been cancelled (invalidated). It took me two years and many requests to the authorities to investigate my case. After my husband’s citizenship was resolved, I received mine.  

Dalit 03: I had to prove that my father’s citizenship was authentic. I had to go to Rajbiraj four times to get the letter. I was pregnant too at the time. 

Yadav 01: They said I needed my birth certificate, which was in my parents’ house. I had to spend Rs 1,000. It took me around 5 visits to get my citizenship. 

When asked why the felt the need for citizenships, Dalit 01 said it was to ensure her children’s continued education, Dalit 02 and Dalit 03 required citizenships to become members of the Dalit Mahila Krishak Sangh. This membership would simultaneously allow them to be eligible for the contract farming program. Similarly, Yadav 01 required her citizenship to withdraw funds her brother-in-law had sent as remittance. The citizenship papers were also required for her to avail the short-term credit which she has invested in her vegetable farm. Thus, citizenship, welfare, and capital building are intertwined with each other – limiting and creating opportunities. None of the participants believed their citizenship denial was discriminatory, as administrative officers said the paperwork was required. Citizenship, like development, therefore, is a racial project. Goldberg (2009, p.16) states that ‘race has historically concerned the fabrication of social homogeneities, whereas racism concerns the maintenance of homogeneities’ contours’. ‘Race and nation, racism and nationalism run together in just these bonded ways’ (Goldberg, 2009, p. 17). The enabling of citizenship as a means to advance one’s lot (capital), yet again normalises inequality – inequalities, of class, race, and gender. 

DISCUSSION

My analysis so far has shown that the ‘orientation of knowledge of beneficiaries’ to subscribe to the dominant knowledge and narratives is done through normalisation of inequalities through focus on individual circumstances of empowerment and agency, rather than their collective political struggle. Similarly, neoliberal inspired development orientation, which overlooks the triple axis of marginality (class, gender and race), as seen in the analysis further entrenches such inequalities, continuing to their ‘durable inequality’ (Tilly, 1998). Such depoliticisation, transforms consciousness and allows beneficiaries to see their emancipation through growth of personal capital. Finally, transformation of consciousness, integrates them into a master narrative, in this instance of neoliberalism. Such transformation and integration, subsequently helps them forget the racial, class, and gendered struggles as seen in the quest for citizenship. For the farmers of Bhagwanpur – their political struggles gradually fade into memory as a new struggle emerges – the challenge of climate change which has deteriorated their soil – which is their subsistence. 

Perhaps, the process of orientation and changes in perception of marginality could be understood through Luke’s (2005, p. 28) third dimension of power: ‘is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it is divinely ordained and beneficial?’.  

Comparing Luke’s third dimension of power (2005) to our analysis, adaptation to climate change prevents people grieving about their socio-political conditions; mitigation is justified because of lack of alternatives, and finally production is valued because it is beneficial to them. All three – production, adaptation, and mitigation therefore become the interest of the farmers, eventually enabling them to subscribe to the dominant ideology. In the case of conflict, climate change and its association with food security, suppresses all other conflicts – class conflict, racial / ethnic conflict, and gender conflict. 

CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A ‘POST-MARGINALISATION SENSIBILITY

What then becomes of marginality as development and its neoliberal ally depoliticises collective goals, and enshrines individualism? 

After completing my fieldwork, I returned to the UK, and began the process of going through my fieldnotes when one particular field note which was a trivial reference on hospitality until then caught my attention. “Pandit 01’s son serves me and tea”. I then traced the other cups of tea I was served during my stay – eight cups of tea (see Appendix A). All cups of tea were served to me in the Pandit village. In the Dalit village, where I had spent an almost equal amount of time, I wasn’t offered tea a single time. 

Why wasn’t I served tea? Was it because of a class issue? During two instances, when I requested a cup of black tea instead of milk tea in the Pandit village, I was urged to drink milk tea, owing to its purity or freshness. 

Pandit 01: Have milk tea. It is from our own buffalo. It is very good.

Meanwhile, the Dalit village members did not own cows or buffaloes, and did not have projects to ‘improve cattle sheds’ in their community.

Or was it the Dalit village’s ‘compliance to norms and beliefs that directly support their own degradation’ (Appadurai, 2004, p.65). In this case, the community could have been subscribing to religious norms, where they believe that offering food to members of upper caste would be a sin, and they would be born as Dalits again in the next life. Or, did they fear that I, an upper-caste would reject their offer for tea? And to spare themselves from a perceived humility, they perhaps did not offer me a cup of tea? 

Here is where my limited time engaging, enquiring and examining falls short as I am unable to draw a definite answer to the above. My study thus becomes a ‘pilot’ in theorising the ‘post-marginality’. Nonetheless, I would like to draw upon the larger political suppression, that is the continuing, and redrawing of marginality to make an argument for the

‘postmarginal sensibility’. 

Vargeshe and Kumar (2022, p.24) while reviewing the ‘dialectical relationship between the objective condition of marginality, which is termed marginal situation, and subjective experience of marginality, which is termed marginal personality’ consider marginality as a ‘measure of the sum total of inequalities in a given space and time’ (Varghese and Kumar, 2022, p.36). Applying this relationship to our tea situation, the Dalit community’s objective condition could be their inequal class situation to access milk, and their subjective experience could be their perception that I may reject their tea (if served) owing to their ‘untouchability’ status. The development sector has tried to attend to the Dalit community’s objective condition, and subjective experience of marginality. As a measure to correct their objective condition, they have been given arable land to engage in agricultural activities. To correct their subjective experience, she has been empowered as a ‘woman’ and as a ‘farmer’. Here is where the disjuncture lies. Whereas development’s idea of alleviating her objective condition and subjective experience has been inspired by neoliberal values, her objective condition and subjective experience lies in the politics of marginality – of historical class, gender, and castebased discrimination. In the process of ‘neoliberal normalisation’ (Couldry, 2010), this politics of marginality has been depoliticised. 

I did ask the community if they continued to experience discriminations owing to their ‘untouchability’ status. “Not as much as before. Now, its occasional, and only practiced by the elderly”, Dalit 01 said, while others agreed. If the elderly are symbolic of impending death of marginality, for them a future, with the aid of development appears bright. But are we overlooking the elasticity of marginality? 

‘The elasticity of race – its mutability, adaptability, and motility – enables continued insinuation of racial meanings, arrangements and orderings into metamorphosed social circumstances. This racial marking has continued as race, under neoliberalising pressures, has become less explicit, less visibile, less obviously a mark of formal state formation’ (Goldberg, 2009, p.293). 

If the elderly are symbolic for the impending death of such caste-based discrimination, perhaps as Goldberg (2009) argues above for race, it is time to argue for marginality – to begin an exploration of a ‘post-marginalisation sensibility’ – where the end marks a new and less visible form of marginalisation. 

Acknowledgements: 

I would like to thank Professor Lee Edwards for her supervision and guidance, which not only shaped this paper, but also changed my outlook on marginalisation. I am grateful to National Farmers Group Federation (NFGF) Siraha, especially Ishwor Thapa, for allowing me access and for sharing with me their knowledge. Finally, to the people of Bhagwanpur 01 – thank you for teaching me what I did not know. I am indebted to you. 

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