<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111012110/636cd9da9c7e80680e092ec6jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="1500"/><figcaption>Photo: BIKRAM RAI</figcaption></figure>As Nepal prepares for the 12th National Population and Household Census, there is much happening behind the scenes before thousands of enumerators fan out across the country  knocking door-to-door.Scheduled for 8-22 June, this is the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepalis-to-stand-up-and-be-counted-next-year/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first census under a federal system</a> and the most inclusive and ambitious since the first count was done in 1911.Since the census happens once every 10 years, those involved are usually new and need extensive training. The <a href="https://cbs.gov.np" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Central Bureau of Statistics</a> (CBS) has devised three levels of training at the central, provincial and local levels.Three program sessions were completed as part of the central-level training in early March, during which 200 officials were brought up to speed to operate as provincial and district officers. They will be deployed in 87 census offices across Nepal. At present, CBS officials are on the last leg of a week-long, provincial-level training session for instructors countrywide.The instructors will in turn train the enumerators and census supervisors, passing on skills on how to approach, interact with, and interview people and fill out the questionnaire.To improve the process of data collection, CBS has also changed the method of collating information this time around. Instead of just assigning government school teachers for data collection as was the practice in the past, an open call for applications for enumerators and census supervisors was made.“We had been having discussions for a long time about the need to mobilise educated young Nepalis around the country to help with data collection,” says Tirtha Raj Chaulagain, information officer at the CBS. “More than 120,000 people have responded to our request to apply, and there is bound to be a lot more applicants because there is still time until the application deadline.”The CBS now faces the task of vetting applicants and selecting 39,000 enumerators and 8,000 census supervisors. Those who have completed high school are eligible to apply for ‘enumerator’ while those with a bachelor’s degree can apply to become ‘census supervisors’. The age limit caps off at 40 for male applicants and 45 for female applicants.The data collection itself is set to be more comprehensive and detailed, with the use of three separate questionnaires.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=38073&amp;preview_nonce=5c5e53a600&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">How will Nepal develop in the next decade?,</a> Sonia Awale“Nepal will have the longest census questionnaire out of any other country in the world that conducts a census,” says Chaulagain. “Census questionnaires elsewhere in the world generally have 20 questions on average. Ours will have 55.”The first pilot survey of House and Household Listing will be completed in May, which will collect household and livestock data. For gender identity, the option for ‘Other’ was introduced for the first time in the last census in 2011. Officials say they are preparing to note that survey provides space for individual conversations and safe space for gender minorities.The second phase will begin after the responses of the first one has been analysed. This will allow time for the CBS  to conduct an entirely different survey depending on the data that they receive.The main questionnaire will have 55 questions related to family resources, property ownership and income. Other details related to language, religion, ethnic identity, educational background and disability will also be part of this section. The main questionnaire will have 8 questions related to head count of family members living and working overseas.Two new parameters have been added to the main questionnaire, one being ancestral language, and another a question about whether children under 5 years of age in any given household have birth certificates or not.The third part of the census will be the Community Questionnaire, the first of its kind used in a national census. Information from every ward in the country, ranging from the demographic structure of each community to its access to government services, development infrastructure, national resources, and disaster preparedness will go into this.Among all the firsts happening this time, another one of them is the documentation of the existing infrastructure. Count of buildings, along with information indicating their use and purpose is a part of the questionnaire. There are questions that will help differentiate between villages and cities, eventually contributing to mapping the degree of urbanisation of each ward.The census will also make a more prominent use of technology in the data collection process this time around. Enumerators deployed within Kathmandu Valley will use electronic tablets to collect data, while paper-based questionnaires will be used in the rest of the country. Nepal’s diplomatic missions around the world will participate in an e-census by responding online.Scholars and population experts note that this year’s census is going to be the most inclusive and accurate census in Nepal’s history.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/">Lies, damned lies, and statistics</a>, Ramesh Kumar“Not only are the questionnaires themselves more inclusive of Nepal’s diverse communities, but the operational modality itself has changed. The members of civil society and other concerned organisations will be able to directly participate in the data collection process,” says Yogendra B Gurung, PhD, who teaches at the Tribhuvan University.CBS has also adopted the motto, ‘My Census, My Participation’, to reflect the level of interaction this census is expected to engage the citizens in.“Potential enumerators and supervisors will be selected based on which communities they belong to and what languages they speak because that makes a big difference in their ability to interact with a diverse range of people across different communities,” explains Tirtha Raj Chaulagain.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111012110/636cd9dd9c7e80680e092ec7jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="151">The census results are expected to reflect the country’s changing socio-political and demographic landscape more accurately. The study is expected tol provide more accurate data on the increasing urban-rural divide.“All levels of our government and our civil society have felt the need and are waiting for new data, as old data and statistics are outdated and of little use under the federal system,” says Gurung. “With the data collection parameters becoming so comprehensive, there can be no doubt about the quality of the results, provided that the data is managed in an efficient manner.”<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepals-population-to-cross-30-million/">Nepal’s population to cross 30 million</a>, Nepali Times_________________<h2>A century of census</h2><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111012110/636cd9de9c7e80680e092ec8jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="669" height="461">Although official accounts document the first Nepal census in 1911, there have been claims and accounts of Jang Bahadur Rana conducting a headcount after returning from the UK in 1850.In fact, Volume 1 of the 2014 <a href="https://nepal.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/PopulationMonograph2014Volume1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Population Monograph of Nepal</a> published by the National Planning Commission and the Central Bureau of Statistics mentions  head-counts, counting households, stone taps, paatis, and temples at various points in history before and during the prime ministership of Bhimsen Thapa from 1806 to 1837.The first official census of Nepal, however, was conducted in 1911 following an Istihaar announcement published in 1910 by Chandra Sumsher Rana’s government.“Nepal’s administration was very much influenced by British colonial power, and so the census was conducted as much as an attempt to follow in their footsteps as it was to identify Nepal’s able-bodied, working population in order to find out the number of youths who could be conscripted into the British Indian Army amid a looming political crisis in Europe,” says researcher Sanjay Sharma.The results of the 1911 census put Nepal’s population at a little over 5.64 million, with most Nepalis living in the mid-mountains. That number would decrease by almost 65,000 people to 5.57 million in the 1920 census, with the decrease attributed to a significant loss of Nepali lives in World War I, the 1917 influenza epidemic, as well as out-migration. The 1930 census showed a further decrease to 5.53 million, but this could also be due to counting inaccuracies.In his 2014 book, One Hundred Years of Census-Taking, statistician Tunga Shiromani Bastola writes, ‘The absence of a large number of young males from the country and the death of a large number of them during the war might have lowered the fertility and growth of population in the Hill region.’Indeed, Nepal’s mid-mountains had lost much of its population after the war, with some ethnic communities like the Gurung, Magar, Rai and Limbu which were preferred by the British as Nepal’s ‘martial races’ suffering more significant losses than others.“Data about ethnicity was not included in earlier censuses, so it isn’t quite possible to say exactly which ethnic communities were most affected. But colonial British policy was to hire the Gurung and Magar people from the western hills and the Rai and Limbu people from eastern Nepal, so these communities might have been affected disproportionately to other Nepalis,” explains Sharma. “Moreover, some battalions were also comprised of Chhetris, so it can be assumed that these five ethnic communities were the most affected by the war.”The 1920 census thus also included data of injured and disabled Nepalis in an attempt to quantify the impact of the First World War. Since the war in Europe had ended by then, however, the 1920 census was also aimed at preparing an inventory of slaves by sex in Nepal, called Kamara-Kamari, a system that was abolished in 1925.The population would further decrease by 41,000 according to the results of the 1930 census, with a sharp decline in the population of Kathmandu valley. The reason for the decrease has been attributed to undercounting at a time when young Nepalis feared the census was being conducted for the purpose of conscription as tensions rose between Nepal and Tibet, and war looked imminent. The population would bounce back by the next census in 1941, showing an increase for the first time since Nepal began conducting censuses.After the 1950 revolution that led to the fall of the Rana autocracy, and much of the work related to the census was abandoned in the wake of Nepal’s newly democratic political climate. The census, therefore, began after a gap of more than 10 years in 1952, ending in 1954.<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-in-the-2020s/">Nepal in the 2020s</a>, Sewa BhattaraiThis count also marked the first modern census in Nepal’s history, what Bastola has characterises in his book, as ‘an endeavour to collect internationally comparable data’.Around 17,000 enumerators were deployed across Nepal to collect demographic data. Language and religion were also added to the questionnaire for the first time in 1952.Ten years later, the 1961 census was the first one conducted by Nepal’s Central Bureau of Statistics which was established in 1959. The results took four-and-a-half years to be published, and established the tradition of a decennial census in Nepal.Nepal was now in the Panchayat era, and the 1971 census marked a huge technological leap with the advent of an electronic data processing system with early computers. Meanwhile, the 1981 census introduced a ‘Post-enumeration quality check survey’ (PES) in an attempt to check the accuracy of the data.Journalist Mohan Mainali worked as an assistant census supervisor in Taplejung during the 1981 census, having just completed his SLC exams at age 17. During three weeks in March 1981, he and an assistant travelled across two village Panchayats in Taplejung to conduct the Household Schedule. The Assistant Supervisor would conduct the household schedule while enumerators would conduct the individual schedule.“The questionnaires we had to carry were long and heavy,” Mainali recalled. “It would sometimes take more than an hour to travel just from one household to another, since there were no roads connecting villages back then. There also was the possibility of rain, so we also had to protect the questionnaires.”Mainali describes the cultural climate at the time that posed challenges in conducting an accurate household count. “The men would be away from most households, and we would need to interview the women. Since the head of the households were men, we would ask the women for their husbands’ names, but they would be reluctant to utter the name of their spouses, such was the tradition in rural Nepal,” he says. “This and other factors prevented us from getting accurate counts.”Mainali also remembers how personal motivations affected data collection. “An enumerator would earn 20 paisa for data collected on each individual and often, they would over-count and exaggerate data to earn more money,” Mainali told Nepali Times. “There were significant discrepancies between the population data collected in the household schedule and the individual schedule, which resulted in us having to redo the individual questionnaires.”The 1991 census, the last census of the 20th century, identified 60 castes and ethnic groups for the first time and employed school teachers as enumerators for the first time, as well. The <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=8345#.X6oMhi8RoWo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2001 census</a> was conducted amidst a period of political turmoil in the aftermath of the Royal Palace massacre and the middle of an armed insurgency. It used a combined data collection method of complete and sample enumeration and adopted multimedia platforms for result dissemination.‘The <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/blogs/thebrief/2011/09/27/nepals-population-26-6-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2011 census</a> … included census publicity in local languages, maximum involvement of female interviewers, and the involvement of enumerators from different caste and ethnic groups,’ writes Bastola in his book.By this time, Nepal’s population had surpassed the 26 million mark, a 370% increase in a century. A century after the first census, therefore, Nepal’s 2011 census served as numeric and demographic documentation of Nepal’s historic political and socio-cultural changes.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=38051&amp;preview_nonce=38f8426e6c&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nepal in 2030,</a> Sanghamitra Subba<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/?p=38023&amp;preview_nonce=024823c344&amp;preview=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Towards 2030</a>, Nepali Times

Shristi Karki

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Everybody counts in Nepal

&nbsp;
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…To hell with poetry, with memories, &nbsp;
with my mother’s food- maybe not my mother’s biryani-&nbsp;
To hell the memory of turning nineteen&nbsp;
in quarantine. To hell with waiting. To hell
with this poem. To hell with how long.
(<a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-115260978/359-cooking-by-mukahang-limbu">Mukahang Limbu</a>)
Your friend sends you half a poem by <a href="https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poets/mukahang-limbu/" target="_blank">Mukahang Limbu</a>, with a note at the bottom: Found this gem online and thought to share with you. You go back and read it a couple more times, the way you do with poetry that reaches into you to touch certain chords and you instantly know you’ve found a place to go to.&nbsp;
But home can also be just a memory and you find out why as you read When I first came from Nepal by Limbu:
Missing the feeling of home&nbsp;
I smell the iron rust
of the Municipal Gardens.
The sour tang of home still sits&nbsp;
on the tip of my tongue&nbsp;
like the zest of sweet citrus fizzing.
There are nights when you turn to poetry for reprieve. The world closes in upon you sometimes and sometimes pushes you away, leaving you on the fringes, staring at the inner circle, where you feel you do not belong.
You discuss the imposter syndrome with your friend. What can one really do to become authentic in a world that constantly tests? Often, there is only so much to do. Perhaps it is to be and to live as you are and bare yourself to the core, even between strangers.
<a href="https://www.voicedairy.com/spoken-word">Deepa Bohora</a> beams at the sight of you, asks you your name and smiles as though you are not a stranger but an old friend. She instantly engages with you in conversation about her childhood, about her struggle with Lupus.
“It is poetry that salvaged me. And Yukta Didi, who showed me that I could also write poetry,” she says of Yukta Bajracharya, poet and writer.
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As you navigate a busy street in Patan together, Bohora tells you about her father’s work in India and about a fan that was her friend when she was a child. And there is that poem she narrates, about this fan. The fan.
The fan is her friend. But in her poem, she becomes a friend to the fan. The fan goes on to tell us the story of the little girl with Lupus, strung in her own metaphor of healing. The device, which has been sitting in her house for years, gathering dust, warped with spider web, becomes a symbol of her own yearning to recover.
When the fan is repaired and once again starts spinning off cool air, Bohora writes a second installment about its restoration. And as the fan rises from its ashes to become a device of use again, what we really see is Bohora’s recovery.&nbsp;
“I write poetry because I like to tell stories. There are so many stories in me and in the people around me. That’s why I write poetry,” says Bohora. But poetry comes to her like a song, like the humming of the fan on a hot summer’s day in Surkhet, so she becomes the little girl again, who runs around her village telling everyone the fan has been fixed.
That healing she finds in poetry is shared experience for many. “They say we are all poets at least once in our lives. And that is when the heart breaks,” says Saras Chari. He says he started writing poetry as a form of expression away from a childhood scarred by bullies.
“First it was that, and then at some point, I realised that I had some talent, but as I grew older, I realised it was my only talent. And so I write to see where I fit in this society and to talk about issues that are misinterpreted,” says Chari.
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When a <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/peaceful-physically-distanced-protests/" target="_blank">series of anti-government protests</a> were staged in Kathmandu in 2020, Chari noticed how at each one of those events, the public was pitted against the government security personnel. “They’re not our foes. They’re one of us. Their families are one of us. But when they’re out there, defending the line, they become the ones who stand against us. And in that, they’re oppressed by the government, while being tasked at oppressing us,” says Chari.
And so his poem, Pyadha, traverses the minds of traffic police, police and soldiers:
Those toes locked inside boots bleed, too,
They get sucked on by leeches and
They yearn for the feel of the grass…
(translated from Pyadha)
&nbsp;“Look at how many ways poetry has been used in history,” Chari says. “Poetry was taught to us by pundits to propagate religions. Poetry was used to teach, but also to control. It has also been the medium for expressing love, just as much as it has been used to stir rebellion. Poetry is powerful,” says Chari.
Anand Vijay Gurung, who sits in the audience as Chari performs his verse on stage says that poetry serves its own purpose. “Or wait, why must it even serve a purpose? That’s a difficult question to answer. If a piece of poetry inspired you to feel more intensely, it has served its purpose,” says Gurung, who likes to think of poetry as a word game. And so in his poem, We Are All Migrants, he writes:
…to navigate their way in a world and find
The elusive perfect nest
etched in their mental maps.
“Poetry is pretty much everyone’s game,” says Chari. Like Deepa Bohora, he too found a community in <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/Review-from-the-page-to-the-stage,593" target="_blank">the Word Warriors</a>, a spoken word poetry group. And while Gurung calls writing a lonely task, Slam poets like Bohora and Chari have formed their own circles where poets come together to write and perform.
Chari and his friends Prakash Zimba, Rupesh Bhattarai and Shuvangi Khadka perform together under the name, <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Finstagram.com%2Fkavindrapur%3Figshid%3D16dc04x37mx12%26fbclid%3DIwAR0ODA8yTZBhHrFb4mDQXWyuTGANf04wl47UtkeeXhUMfXYrbaqfhdMyG2A&amp;h=AT2gylLtbTPg2QgDfSfe3jOP_z3o2IwdJ-yQvnn-hAhN4_ue4tA2asN8zbjw06-pJ9a8kCnD1cSi8qxEOy3QoDxQJJ1s4uPHlW8nn8UO2pq9D-n4CrO61UUIryNapDw0LA1iB8Q0pxA" target="_blank">Kavindrapur</a>, in memory of the &nbsp;forgotten poets that frequented a sattal rest house next to Kastamandap, during the reign of Pratap Malla.
The king was the patron of the poets. And there in a rest house in the heart of old Kathmandu, the streets would reverberate with verses as poets wove a mesh with their words. It is this memory that has been created into a legacy by the young poets, even as they struggle with other challenges of being poet.
“Poet, but paid” is painted in white on the black tee shirt Chari wears. “We get invited to events, often to perform or to judge, but no one cares to pay for our time or expression. Poetry is not respected,” Chari expresses his frustration.
And his sentiment is seconded by Gurung: “Nepali society respects writers and poets but there is no support system to serve that vocation. There is no reward monetarily and often, poets pay for their own books to be published.”
Gurung’s anthology of poetry, Dandelion Snow was published in 2020, and most of the people who bought his books have been friends. Poetry books are published with the expectancy of a prolonged shelf-life, he says.
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And yet that does not deter the courage of Bohora, who hopes someday to pull together a book of her poems. “That’s the dream, I’ve been carrying. Someday, I’d like to do a book of my own,” she says. “My words have done what my father’s sweat hasn’t.”
When the likes of Rupi Kaur and Nayyira Waheed stormed Instagram’s little boxes with their anecdotes, poetry appeared to have found a new platform for revival. While it has also given birth to debates about what really is poetry, then, if it can be dashed off in incomplete sentences and expressions.
“At least it’s helped other poets see, that it is possible to sell,” says Gurung.
In Kathmandu, a surge in performance poetry was seen in the last decade with Word Warriors performing at different events, raising pertinent personal and political questions, while also creating space for young writers to form their own groups.
But poetry has also been used to challenge. In the recent anti-government protests, the crowd cheered as Sapna Sanjeevani recited: Ab hum Sita Nai Banbo, refusing to the submission that Sita had to adhere to. And it is a sentiment that resonates with many women writers of the decade.
My country cries over&nbsp;
burnt flags,
borders,
the birth lore of gods,
not the bodies of desecrated dead girls;
My country says I am a Goddess.&nbsp;
Neha Rayamajhi's a poem published in <a href="https://lalitmag.com/my-country-loves-me/">LaLit magazine</a> is steeped in sadness and anger. There is sarcasm. There is mostly protest in her words:
My country asks me&nbsp;
for my father’s name.
Men who are dead,
or have become ghosts
they own me more than the women who birth me:
My country asks me to love this motherland.
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“Writing poetry is creating something beautiful out of sometimes messy and ugly emotions. It also means clamining and reclaiming power from those experiences,” says Rayamajhi.
Her words are representative of the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/everyday-as-if-it-is-womens-day/" target="_blank">new generation of Nepali women</a>, who dare to question traditions passed down to them and laws that threaten to bind them. The refrain carries the irony of the idea of motherland while being force to disrespect mothers, who are allowed to birth children but never allowed to be citizens.
But to not be citizens is not limited to being <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-waits-for-an-unequal-citizenship-law/" target="_blank">unable to pass down your identity to your children</a>. It can sometimes be tangled in memories of who we were and who we have become.
Away in Oxford, Mukahang Limbu’s life unfolds to his audience on his Instagram stories as he cooks meals with fellow students and lives the life that has the semblance of a typical university life. But this award winning poet recreates the idea of home in his posts through foods as much as he does in unfinished, dangling sentences.
Away from home, we often discover ourselves more closely. Home, then becomes an idea. Home can be the taste of a vegan ice-cream made from cashew milk in Manhattan, sometimes. But home can also be fried-rice eaten on repeat when you live far away from home.&nbsp;
Home can also be friends who do not ask you questions, just as home can be a tandoori sandwich eaten during a conversation with strangers you have just begun to trust.
And so these lines by <a href="https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/poem/when-i-first-came-from-nepal/">Limbu resonate</a> with so many of us:
I know now 
In this place, where I did not know, the things I did not know embrace me in ways 
I didn’t know.

nepali-times-weekend-longreads

Everybody counts in Nepal

Young Nepali poets in search of poetic license