About Aawaaj Research
- Author: Pankaj Thapa
- Issue Date: 15/08/2024
- Word Count: 11,975
Productivity as Patriarchy, Adaptation as Class Reconfiguration, Mitigation as a Racial Logic: An Ethnographic Study of World Bank’s Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) in Madhes, Nepal
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?
Aawaaj News is expanding its work through Aawaaj Research, a dedicated wing focused on examining Nepal’s social and political life through evidence-based inquiry. While media representation and discourse shaping remain central themes, Aawaaj Research will also
investigate broader questions of inequality, marginality, and structural exclusion—producing research that brings forward perspectives often overlooked in mainstream narratives and offers alternative ways of understanding Nepal’s changing society.
Built on the belief that media has a vital role in shaping public understanding, Aawaaj Research will foreground questions of representation, power, and equity, and analyse how narratives (both within and beyond media) shape public discourse. Our research approach combines rigorous qualitative and quantitative methodologies, enabling us to capture both lived experiences and structural patterns. We aim to produce work that is publicly accessible, policy-relevant, and grounded in Nepal’s socio-political realities.
Aawaaj Research is currently developing two major studies. The first investigates representational inequalities in Nepali climate change discourse, and how disparities in visibility, voice, and portrayal can materialise into other tangible inequalities. The second draws on ten years of data on monsoon-related disasters to assess who is most affected and whether existing disaster-response policies align with the needs of Nepal’s diverse and geographically varied population.
Through these efforts, Aawaaj Research seeks to contribute to a deeper, more equitable understanding of Nepal’s social and political landscape, and to strengthen the role of evidence in public dialogue.