<figure><img width="760" height="428" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5d09c7e80680e07bc25jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Nepali workers entering the border from India through Behaliya checkpoint in Rupandehi. Photo: MANORANJAN SHARMA</figcaption></figure>In July, as the government eased the first lockdown, people streamed <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/returnees-may-be-taking-coronavirus-to-rural-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">across the border from India into Nepal</a>, spreading the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/as-india-peaks-covid-19-spreads-rapidly-in-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coronavirus infection along cities in the Tarai</a>. The districts from Jhapa to Parsa became hotspots. Hospitals ran out of ICU beds and ventilators, municipalities had no test kits left, and there were horror stories of patients dying while going from one hospital to another that refused admission. But it did not take too long for asymptomatic carriers to bring the virus into Kathmandu Valley, where population density and high mobility <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/covid-19-spreads-closer-to-nepals-ruling-circle/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">made the capital an ideal breeding ground for SARS-CoV-2</a>.   With 16 additional deaths on Monday and two on Tuesday, total Covid-19 fatality in Nepal has now reached 429. Kathmandu Valley alone accounts for over one-fourth of all deaths in Nepal from the virus. On Monday, Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur districts recorded 647 new cases (about half the nationwide total of 1,356). The tables are now turned. Even as the Tarai has the virus largely under control, the majority of the 223 patients in ICU and 37 on ventilator support nationwide are in Kathmandu Valley. The country’s only infectious diseases hospital in Teku, despite adding isolation wards, ventilators and ICU beds, has <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-virus-vortex/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">run out of space for Covid-19 patients</a>. “Even with the increased capacity, we cannot admit all the patients,” hospital director Sagar Rajbhandari told Nepali Times. Three months after the government announced it would build a 300-bed hospital just for coronavirus patients, there has been no action. It has not followed the advice of its own public health experts to expand testing and tracing. In fact, the Nepal government seems to have admitted defeat. Its unspoken strategy now is now letting the virus take its course, warning citizens to adopt their own precautions and learn to live with the disease <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/a-covid-19-exit-strategy-for-nepal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">until a vaccine is available</a>. This explains why even as the number of new cases and fatalities in Kathmandu Valley <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-beats-own-record-in-covid-19-cases-and-deaths/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">break its own record every day</a>, the lockdown is being further eased with public transport, flights, shops and restaurants allowed to open. Adding to this is the utter lack of coordination between locally elected municipality officials and the District Administration Offices which issue new and contradictory guidelines every day, and blame each other for the situation getting worse. Locally elected representatives <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/nepals-leaders-are-in-isolation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">should have been allowed to handle the outbreak</a> like in the Tarai, with the central government only ensuring that they have adequate resources, equipment and medical personnel. “Kathmandu’s response to the pandemic shows that the central government doesn’t trust local units who are close to the people and can respond fastest to their needs,” says Chandra Kishore, a Tarai-based journalist in Birganj. “The focus should be on empowering local governments and health posts to contain the spread of the virus.”Even as Kathmandu struggles to contain the virus with all the resources and facilities at its disposal, Nepal’s capital could learn a few things from the way Tarai cities and municipalities handled the spike and brought the virus under control.One example is Narainapur in Banke district, which first made it to the news as a hotspot back in May <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/with-3rd-covid-19-fatality-nepal-issues-funeral-guideline/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">with over 100 cases and Nepal’s second Covid-19 fatality</a>.Most of the infected were migrant worker returnees from India. Since then, the municipality has brought active cases down to zero. <figure><img width="640" height="398" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5d29c7e80680e07bc26jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>“In our experience what worked the best was the collaboration between the local government, CDO office and the Nepal Army,” says Naresh Shrestha, the Covid-19 focal point for Banke district. “This has helped us conduct proactive contact tracing and raise awareness about safety measures. Narainapur is also relatively isolated which helped us seal the access points and better manage the outbreak.” <figure><img width="640" height="435" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221109151112/636bb5d49c7e80680e07bc27jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>After Kathmandu Valley, Banke has conducted the most PCR tests and of the total 1,662 coronavirus cases in the district, 1,264 people have already recovered. The remaining cases are in densely populated areas of Nepalganj and Kohalpur.Nepalganj mayor Dhawal Shumshere Rana says his city was among the first to be hit with the coronavirus, and had to learn quickly through trial and error.“We didn’t know what was coming. Me and my staff took PCR tests ourselves to set an example for others,” Rana said on the phone. “We now have the virus more or less under control. We still have some cases, but life is back to normal and our people are following safety measures.”In the neighbouring district of Bardia which has a 83km border with India, there has been a gradual rise in cases. In Badhaiyatal municipality, the authorities shut the quarantine centre that had become an incubator for the virus.“After we realised what was happening, we focused on containing the virus in the quarantine centre and invested in contact tracing, which helped us bring the situation under control,” explained Gokarna Giri of the Bardia District Health Office. “But containing the virus in crowded cities and marketplaces has been challenging. We can’t reach everywhere, people have to be mindful about obeying safety measures.”Udaypur in the Inner Tarai of eastern Nepal <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-muslims-face-stigma-after-covid-19-tests/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">was a coronavirus hot spot in April</a> when 13 men in a mosque who had returned from Delhi all tested positive. There was stringent contact tracing of people who they had been in close proximity to, and the district was sealed off for months.In fact, Udaypur’s experience is now called the ‘Bhulke Model’ after a ward of Triyuga Municipality that used PCR tests for contact tracing after false negatives  from RDTs. Infected people were immediately sent to hospital isolation wards, and health officials did repeat contact tracing of the entire community until cases came down to zero.  <a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Muslim-woman-activist-Udaypur%20,3997" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gaighat-based activist Najbul Khan</a> used to travel every day on her motorbike during the lockdown with supplies and essential medicines for communities ostracised due to infection. Her Muldhar Mahila Kendra offered counseling for youth who were mentally stressed, prepared iftaar for the Muslim community for 18 days during Ramadan.“All of us, the community, volunteers, and the local authorities worked together to overcome the coronavirus. It is because of this that Udaypur is a model for successfully bringing Covid-19 under control,” Khan says.In the beginning, Udaypur did not even have sufficient personnel to collect swab samples, and the district hospital’s Parmendra Yadav was working overtime to conduct tests <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/protecting-those-who-protect-us-from-the-epidemic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">without proper personal protective gear</a>. His hard work was met with stigma: fearful colleagues stopped talking, and the eatery he frequented stopped serving him.  But Yadav persisted, he trained lab personnel to bring the district’s limited health services up to speed and received PPE from non-profits in the area.“It was a difficult two months, but it paid off knowing how far we have come in terms of controlling Covid-19,” says Yadav. “Kathmandu could learn from our strategy of widespread testing, contact tracing, and strict border controls.”With additional reporting from Ramu Sapkota.

Sonia Awale

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Covid-19 lessons for Kathmandu from the Tarai

Rivers have been the lifelines of civilisations with their dynamic ecosystems providing vital services for human survival and ecological balance through the ages.&nbsp; But accelerating anthropocentric footprints are causing severe, and often irreversible, damage to river systems across the world, including those across High Asia, a region that sustains nearly a fourth of the global population downstream. An example is the <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/how-the-bagmati-civilisation-is-becoming-uncivilised" target="_blank">Bagmati River</a> that courses through Kathmandu, crosses the Himalayan foothills to join the Ganga in India. A river that once shaped the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/when-it-comes-to-water-pollution,3196" target="_blank">Kathmandu Valley Civilisation </a>is now a polluted and biologically dead water body constricted by urban sprawl, choked by construction debris, chemical waste and untreated sewage.&nbsp; The loss of a sacred river is tragic enough, but its hazards related to health, life and livelihoods are not limited to the Valley, nor is its enormity fully gauged by the metrics of fatality, income loss, flood return periods, runoffs, embankment failure.&nbsp; It is a systemic collapse of ecological integrity, socio-economic stability and cultural heritage, affecting its downstream users as well. The death of Bagmati is a peril for a population size way bigger than circa 5 million residents of Kathmandu Valley. The degradation started in the 1980s and has accelerated. Why has not enough been done to save this iconic river that runs through Nepal’s capital?&nbsp; The Bagmati River Basin Improvement Project (BRBIP) was designed to make headway in restoring the river with a sewage treatment plant, dams for storing water to support dry-season runoff, recharge groundwater, creation of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/resurrecting-bagmati-the-river" target="_blank">green biodiversity corridors</a> along the river bank to also serve as recreation areas, reduce the urban heat island effect, and also provide cultural continuity. The project also envisages collection of hydrological data for managing Bagmati multipurposewater systems and providing flood forecasts and early warnings aimed at protecting lives and property, among other things. Most importantly, the project takes the integrated water resource management approach, which, in principle, is a holistic and collaborative way of managing all elements of the water cycle to ensure water security, public and environmental health and amenity.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260329040336_9605240fa8c7d649ce49fbe43565130e3187e979338ccf959c4e9b8c581b7a4c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20260329040336_9605240fa8c7d649ce49fbe43565130e3187e979338ccf959c4e9b8c581b7a4c" data-rendition-name="original" width="2126" height="1577" loading="lazy" alt="Bagmati NT"> </figure>  This should pave the way for managing a river as a connected ecological, social, and economic system by enabling coordination across agencies and disciplines, stimulating technological innovation and financial investment. The success of this approach depends on long-term political will and commitment that transcend political cycles, but also needs strong community and civil society in defining issues and proposing solutions, creating and sharing knowledge, taking independent action to inform practice, monitoring and evaluating policies, and participating in public decision-making. Civil society, especially, in making the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/encounter-with-bagmati-river" target="_blank">revival of the Bagmati River</a> a pressing governance issue. The Bagmati Action Plan 2009, a precursor to the BRBIP, was designed in response to lawsuits filed in 2000 and 2004 by an independent legal practitioner of Kathmandu against waste dumping in the river.&nbsp; It took him almost two decades of legal battle for Nepal’s Supreme Court to pass orders for mandatory septic tanks in all homes in Kathmandu Valley, relocation of squatters from Bagmati river banks to government-built houses, and embargo on dumping and burying garbage on the banks of the river and its tributaries. Despite court orders, however, actual results have been unsatisfactory. Restoration of Bagmati barely made it to any political debate or electoral manifesto this time. Treatment plants have not been operational for years, yet no one is held accountable. The population ignores waste segregation or single-use plastic rules to check littering.&nbsp; The current condition of the river therefore seems to have more to do with the lack of public awareness and behaviour change than the failure of various master plans. Why does the deep danger of a dead river fail to arouse widespread civil society concern, let alone action? The apathy is perhaps underlined by an innately anthropocentric understanding of the river as a mere resource to be exploited, rather than the backbone of existence.&nbsp; Such a paradigm shift is possible when river or river systems are understood to be necessary for &nbsp;a harmonious coexistence with human populations. The more pertinent question is not whether a dead river can be restored because there are many examples from around the world where that has been successfully achieved. It is whether we choose to restore our rivers for intergenerational equity. This would require a holistic perspective and political will to revive reverence for a river system so that its symbiotic relationship with human settlements can be restored. Roshni Gurung is Research Assistant, River Basins at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

A lifeline becomes liability

As a direct fallout of the Israel-American war on Iran, Nepal on Monday nearly doubled the price of aviation fuel in a move that is going to impact during the spring peak tourism season. The steep price hike of jet fuel appears to have been made to cushion the impact on the general public. The price of petrol, diesel and cooking gas were also hiked for the third time in a month on Thursday.&nbsp; Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) will now cost $2,237/ton up from $1,207. The cost of ATF in Kathmandu was <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/sky-high-fuel-price-hits-nepal-s-tourism-airlines" target="_blank">already one of the highest among Asian airports</a>, and this price hike will affect mostly long-haul flights to Istanbul, Seoul and Narita for airlines that need to refuel in Kathmandu.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260404130420_4ae075d1e871fc5608cf242d6e309005d30cfdb6e6d0ecfb45ca7388a851c6aa.png" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260404130420_4ae075d1e871fc5608cf242d6e309005d30cfdb6e6d0ecfb45ca7388a851c6aa" data-rendition-name="original" width="1784" height="1294" loading="lazy" alt="aviation turbine fuel prices"> </figure>  Domestic airlines, which paid Rs127 per litre, will now have to pay Rs251 for their turboprop planes. “We have no recourse but to pass this on to passengers as a fuel surcharge,” said one executive of a domestic airline in Nepal. As it is, Nepal Oil Corporation levied a hefty tax on petrol and ATF in order to subsidise diesel and cooking gas. Many analysts were expecting a fuel price hike, but the near-doubling of the price of ATF means the new Nepal government is trying to protect ordinary citizens from raising the price of diesel and LPG even more than it has so far. Aviation fuel in Nepal is trucked in on tankers from Indian refineries and its price is highest in Kathmandu, and less in Bhairawa and Pokhara — transportation costs being higher depending on distance. But even in Bhairawa, ATF prices have doubled for the only international airline that serves it, Thai AirAsia.&nbsp; Most airlines flying Kathmandu from nearer airports in India, the Gulf and Southeast Asia will be less impacted because they can fly in on full tanks and need minimum refuelling in Kathmandu. But carriers like <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/high-cost-lays-aviation-low-in-nepal" target="_blank">Turkish Airlines</a>, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, &nbsp;and Nepal Airlines which fly wide body aircraft on long-distance routes will be hit hardest.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026040305040_a40db74375ebe0c28e7c35477bc262df9ae392a84e7bfa4033996181d69e0209.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="2026040305040_a40db74375ebe0c28e7c35477bc262df9ae392a84e7bfa4033996181d69e0209" data-rendition-name="original" width="1032" height="689" loading="lazy" alt="sky high prices"> </figure>  However, ATF costs have also been raised in regional airports like Hong Kong, India and Singapore. Aviation fuel at New Delhi airport has risen to $1,698/ton. Korean Air is adopting emergency measures to reduce expenses to make up for rising fuel costs. South Korea gets nearly all its fuel from the Gulf, and the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz has been especially damaging for the country. Fuel makes up more than a third of the operating cost of airlines, and even a small increase in ATF prices can make a big difference. Crude oil prices have increased 50% since the West Asia war began on 28 February, and global ATF prices have doubled.&nbsp; Airlines in Asia, including Nepal, face a double shock. The first is the higher fuel cost, and the second is that fewer people are travelling. Nepal’s tourism arrivals fell in March compared to February. India has added up to 20% fuel surcharge on domestic flights, and has reduced flights by 12%. Chinese airlines have also been affected, with China Eastern preparing for a significant impact of the Gulf war. It has added fuel surcharges to new tickets, as have Cathay Pacific, Thai International and Air Asia. Vietnam has drastically cut the number of domestic flights, and the Philippines will ration ATF. Australia imports 90% of its ATF mainly from China which has stopped export to ensure domestic supply to its own airlines. Carriers like Qantas have curtailed flights, changing aircraft type on long-haul routes, and a fuel surcharge of up to 20% have been added to tickets. Most Asian airlines are adding fuel charges only to new tickets, and the increase will not affect the price of pre-sold tickets issued for April and May.

Fuel price shock hits Nepal aviation

<a href="https://www.triarchypress.net/michael-thompson.html" target="_blank">Michael Thompson</a>, who died on 18 March after suffering a stroke a few weeks earlier, was a former Gurkha officer, mountaineer, and <a href="https://soscbaha.org/lecture-series/cultural-theory-and-clumsiness-some-lessons-from-nepal/" target="_blank">founding pillar of Cultural Theory</a>.&nbsp;
His daughter Ursula said it was a peaceful end, Mike himself had asked to be taken off medical support after doctors said they could do no more.
Together with his PhD adviser, the late Mary Douglas and fellow PhD student Steve Rayner of Oxford’s Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Mike chose to generalise from years of anthropological work—unlike other social anthropologists—to filter out common traits of human behaviour across time and space, and then to apply that to modern society and its conflicts.
Cultural Theory has also been used to explain water and energy conflicts in Nepal and California, seat belt and pension fund battles in Europe, the underlying social dynamics of kibbutz in Israel, and what Mike liked to call “argumentative technology assessment” plus much more.&nbsp;
Unlike other ‘descriptive’ social sciences, Cultural Theory is ‘interpretive' in its orientation, which makes many in the ‘descriptive tradition’ rather uneasy with its ‘uncomfortable knowledge’.
A classic example is the massive almost six-year exercise that resulted in the multi-country, multi-author 4-volume study Human Choice and Climate Change led by Steve Rayner and Elizabeth Malone for the US Department of Energy and the Pacific North-West Lab.
It was, and perhaps still is, the first time that the social sciences looked seriously into climate change. However, its insights and conclusions were uncomfortable enough for it to be ignored, and only Mike Hulme of the Tyndall Center covered it as a chapter in his book Why We Disagree About Climate Change a dozen years later.
During my various lectures around the world, I myself have found younger scholars in China, India, South Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Latin America much more welcoming and open about Cultural Theory interpretations than in Europe or America.
Mike liked to say that his own work on Cultural Theory was initially conceptualised while <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=3633" target="_blank">he was in Nepal climbing mountains</a>. He was part of the British expeditions on Annapurna’s South Face in 1970 and Everest Southwest Face in 1975.
Even while working on his PhD under Mary Douglas, which was published by Oxford University Press as Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Mary Douglas and others having done work on the Cultural Theory of everyday goods and consumption (including drinking), Mike’s Rubbish Theory showed how unwanted trash or scrap eventually became invaluable antique.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, OUP withdrew the book after its eminent economics professor-board member objected to the book showing the limitations of economics in explaining value.
When I asked his wife Anne why Mike was not republishing it, she said it was probably because he is practicing what he preaches, hoping to see if that book can transit from discarded ‘waste’ to achieve ‘antique value’. &nbsp;It did, and was being put up on Amazon for an astronomical sum until Pluto Press republished it.&nbsp;
In line with Cultural Theory, which examines and explains everyday life, Mike’s sociology of mountaineering expeditions was published in Diadem Books’ Mirrors in the Cliffs in 1983 as a hilarious but astute piece titled Sahibs and Sherpas.
I first met Mike in April 1986 at the now famous <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/in-memoriam-jack-d-ives-1931-2024-rqpsk7eh" target="_blank">Mohonk Mountain Conference</a> in upstate New York, the conference with most of the world’s eminent mountain experts which resulted in a major scientific paradigm shift – the debunking of the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=1211" target="_blank">Theory of Himalayan Degradation</a>.&nbsp;
It resulted in the book <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Sustainable-Mountain-Development-Getting-the-Facts-Right-Jack-D-Ives,946" target="_blank">Uncertainty on a Himalayan Scale</a> (with Warburton and Hatley), which was republished in 2007 by Himal book with a long updating foreword by Mike and me.
Our collaboration continued across many centres in the US and Europe starting with San Diego’s Western Behaviourial Sciences Institute in 1989/90 where I first met Mary Douglas and Steve Rayner (and became the first person in Nepal to tele-conference via landline phone connected to San Diego’s computer system).&nbsp;
We continued on to Battelle Pacific Northwest National Lab in Washington state that resulted in the monumental 4-volume Human Choice and Climate Change, and involved work with Oxford’s James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, King’s College London, LOS Center in Bergen, places in Germany and very much at the <a href="https://iiasa.ac.at/options-magazine/summer-2022/people-profile-from-everest-to-systems-analysis" target="_blank">International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA/Laxenburg)</a> since the early 1990s.&nbsp;
During forays to Europe and transits through London, I often stayed with Mike and Anne at their London Highbury-Islington house and later in Bath when he moved there. Incidentally, they had bought the London house rather cheap before its gentrification (their neighbour was a school where Tony Blair’s young children studied).
Between <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4675" target="_blank">mountaineering </a>and Cultural Theory, Mike worked as a builder, and he single-handedly retrofitted their London home, which he later sold to buy a much bigger and better house in Bath with money to spare as retirement fund.
The idea of what was good versus bad development in the Himalaya from a perspective was further developed as an IIASA/Oxford Science and Society research resulting in our 2017 book Aid, Technology and Development: the Lessons from Nepal.&nbsp;
While he was in Nepal for that research, we did manage to get him to deliver a <a href="https://soscbaha.org/lecture-series/cultural-theory-and-clumsiness-some-lessons-%20from-nepal/" target="_blank">Social Science Baha</a> lecture on the book’s essence, <a href="https://soscbaha.org/lecture-series/cultural-theory-and-clumsiness-some-lessons-from-nepal/" target="_blank">Cultural Theory and Clumsiness: Some Lessons from Nepal</a>.&nbsp;
Sometimes our collective writings came from discussions in the strangest of ways and places. After a long meeting at the IIASA schloss, we ended up in a pub for beer, and the discussions were around what it would take for a city to be a force for good and not one bad for the environment.&nbsp;
If such a city could be designed, one could plonk it on the middle of a degraded landscape, which theoretically should then heal itself. Someone less inebriated obviously took notes and circulated it, which eventually resulted in the Engineering Sustainability paper On Governance for Re-engineering City Infrastructure.
Another time, I had to give a keynote presentation at an IIED/Sussex STEPs Center dialogue in London’s Goodenough College on re-imagining Development in LDCs. Following that talk, we sat down and produced our Restoring Development Dharma with Toad’s Eye Science.
Just before Covid struck, we (including Bruce Beck and Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer from IIASA) had been working on a Cultural Theory examination of four schools of engineering thought, our last meeting was at Steve Rayner’s Keeble College in Oxford as part of that exercise.&nbsp;
Its earlier efforts were explored in our work on transboundary risk management in the Himalaya at Bergen’s LOS Center and also dealt with in a chapter in EARTHSCAN’s IIASA publication Transboundary Risk Management edited by Joanne and others.&nbsp;
It argued that risk is socially constructed in four distinctly varied ways, where facts and values are entangled, leading to competing technological preferences. Mike desperately wanted to follow up on the Keeble meeting at IIASA, but – given the Covid fears already underway – Anne put her foot down and had him quarantined at home.
Our other on-going effort was, given that IIASA was founded during the Cold War as a place for scientists of the Euro-American West and the Communist East to work together to build confidence for peace, but after the collapse of the Berlin Wall that division (hence raison d’etre) no longer existed – to develop a global North-South axis for IIASA’s work.&nbsp;
We believed that was where the great challenges of tomorrow development debates as well as environmental concerns (including climate change) would play out. Towards that end, he was working with a range of Global South scholars and was very anxious to see if an IIASA-Nepal Social Science Baha/South Asia Institute for History and Philosophy collaboration could be developed.&nbsp;
Mike retained interest in Nepal’s developments up to his very end, even when on hospital bed, asking his daughter to find out from me what was going on with Nepal’s March elections that saw a seismic upheaval which decimated all the old political parties.&nbsp;
When Ursula described the gist to him, I am sure he was inwardly pleased that it vindicated Cultural Theory as Political Science’s contention that moral high ground activist egalitarianism not given proper place at the policy table can strike back at insensitive bureaucratic hierarchism and market individualism’s crony capitalism with swift and lethal vengeance.
Michael Thompson’s physical presence will be greatly missed, but his impact on interpretive social science – and its extremely relevant application to Nepal’s and other LDC’s developmental conflicts – will live on.
Dipak Gyawali is an energy economist with the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). He is a former minister of water resources.&nbsp;
To listen to Michael Thomson’s lecture at Social Science Baha in 2011 <a href="https://soscbaha.org/lecture-series/cultural-theory-and-clumsiness-some-lessons-from-nepal/" target="_blank">click here.</a>

Michael Thompson, 89

Along with the Sherpa community, it is perhaps Kathmandu Valley’s Newāh Civilization that has been the most studied by anthropologists, architects, historians and social scientists.&nbsp; Tomes have been written about the built environment of the Valley’s former kingdoms, the influence of Indian culture, and how it in turn inspired the temples, monasteries and monuments in Tibet, through China right up to Korea and Japan. Lately, there has also been an attempt to recognise and preserve not just the brick and mortar landscape of Kathmandu, but also the intangible heritage of the Newāh people. A critical component of the ancient festivals in the streets, alleys and baha of the inner cities are ritual plays and dance. Gérard Toffin is a social anthropologist with the Centre d’Etudes Himalayennes at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, and has been researching in the region since the early 1970s, focusing on Newāh society and especially its Jyapu farmers. Lately, his work has focused on indigenous theatrical performances, and how they are evolving with modern influences.&nbsp; RECORDING RITUALS The result of his study is this hefty ethnographic book, Newar Theatrical Performances: Religious, Royal and Comic Aspects, delving into sacred performances. This is the first-ever detailed documentation of the minutest aspects of traditional plays and holy ceremonies of Kathmandu Valley. This book is not for the package tourist on a quick walkabout of Patan, the details and terminology can be daunting even for natives to navigate. But this is what social science research is supposed to do – take a deep dive into cultures that we take for granted either because we are a part of it, or because we have never bothered to find out its meaning.&nbsp; Dance forms with mythological themes, masked processions, gestures, facial expressions of the performers, have all been passed down from one generation to the next, adhering to age-old codes. The world is moving at an accelerated pace because of TikTok-induced globalised connectivity, but traditional gender or caste dynamics and hierarchies are carried over intact in many of these performances. It is as if traditional theatre itself is a time capsule giving us a peep into the past. Some of the performances and dance are in danger of going extinct as the population ages and the young migrate out. However, there has been a cultural renaissance among the Newāh guthi overseeing these ritual plays, dances, or chariot processions. The next generation of apprentices are being trained. This pride in heritage means that Kathmandu Valley civilization is not as endangered as it may appear.&nbsp; Gérard Toffin’s book is an important ethnographic work that will help preserve the Nepal Valley’s unique blend of urban-rural, cosmopolitan-agricultural, Hindu-Buddhist, indigenous-national. The Tantric choreography of Newāh theatre, just as the kama sutra depictions on erotic temple art, show Indian influence, but Toffin says they have been ‘Newarized’.&nbsp; One example is the sexually-explicit shadow play staged every year since 1690 CE by Jhyalcha Guthi in Patan that exposes the infidelity of King Yog Narendra Malla. Toffin devotes a whole last section of his book to irreverent plays (khyalah) that ridiculed the rich and powerful, the royals and upper castes and their shenanigans.&nbsp; He examines the importance of comic relief at a time when death was ever-present in historic Kathmandu with its frequent epidemics. One cholera outbreak in 1885 is estimated to have killed 10,000 people – a fifth of Kathmandu’s population at the time.&nbsp; The Saparu festival in Kathmandu and Mataya in Patan memorialised through street processions those who had died the previous year – and this was institutionalised into Gai Jatra by King Pratap Malla in the 17th century to console his queen after their second son was killed by an elephant. Families were asked to file past the palace to show the queen that she was not the only one grieving.&nbsp; Pratap Malla also allowed clowns, burlesque plays, and satirists to make the queen laugh. The Rana and Shah regimes which suppressed free speech continued the Gai Jatra tradition to allow citizens to let off steam. Rulers were lampooned, and the performances involved scatological jokes, cross-dressing and lewd acts.&nbsp; Interestingly, the Nepal Bhasa word ‘pyakha’ means both ‘dance’ and ‘theatre’ (today also ‘cinema’, as Toffin notes) and so the performances were also a combination of ritual dance, traditional music and a stage play. Stories involve gods, goddesses and mythological characters, and are passed down through generations of performers. (See adjoining article on Pāhāñ Charey.) Street performances by masked dancers, like in the ‘Katti Pyakha’ in Patan, enact divine themes. The moving deities demand as much reverence as their static idols in the inner sanctum of temples. The book devotes a whole section to the importance of cultic masked dances where the performer is possessed by the spirit, and goes into a trembling trance.&nbsp; Some of this is now simplified and secularised into performances for tourists in hotels, but the genuine original masked dance troupes still parade down the streets, proving that ancient and modern are made to co-evolve in ways that only Kathmandu knows how.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260329140352_aace3ece2e2cc577aa478d83de4b34930e6ff9c088d5f5e3f02fa178d124a60d.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260329140352_aace3ece2e2cc577aa478d83de4b34930e6ff9c088d5f5e3f02fa178d124a60d" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="Newa theatre book details NT"> </figure>

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