Records suggest that Nepal has made steady progress in per capita income (PCI) and HDI. For example, PCI was $1,100 in 1999 and $1,300 in 2013. Likewise, HDI was 0.34 in 1990 and had increased to 0.458 in 2011, but it is still low when compared to 0.548 of the South Asian region for 2011. There has been high inequality with an HDI of 0.301 between higher and lower castes in remote areas, but such difference is lower in urban areas. On EVI, Nepal reached 27.80 in 2012—4.23 points less than the 32 threshold.

Since many of these positive achievements are associated with urbanisation, the ‘ruralopolishing’ of Nepal continues unabated. Ruralopolishing is a definitional change from rural-to-municipal status, where rural-based communities with high population density compete for collective urban facilities. Many Village Development Committees (VDCs) have either been changed in definitional terms into municipalities or they have been annexed to existing municipalities. However, unplanned urban expansion has invited several problems.

An elite-driven process

Fertile farmlands have been targeted for residential conversion by dividing them in response to definitive market signals. Land plotting has increased for residential development; more houses have been built; and parcel resale values have increased but productive farmlands have decreased. The level of subsistence livelihood has reduced and cash dependency has increased. Many subsistence activities have been replaced by imported food products, as many open spaces in newly declared urban areas are occupied for the construction of infrastructure and residential buildings.

Near the roadside, the price of raw land has soared, justifying sale and subdivision of parcels while ignoring ecological consequences. Land dealers are responding to market signals by selling land per square foot. Rational landholders are retaining property ownership based on their expectations of anticipated future net benefits. These landholders are waiting for market signals showing the emergence of fast-growing economic centers and residential clustering.

There are also institutional flaws such as the lack of an open public planning process involving the city, its residents, and other key actors while declaring VDCs as municipalities. These have been technical and elite- driven processes that could lead to social and spatial segregation and economic inequities. The majority of stakeholders often find out about the declaration of their areas into municipalities only when the bulldozers move in for road making. There have been no practices to discuss issues with university faculty and students where the majority of the next generation of policymakers, civil servants, engineers, community activists, urban professionals, and business leaders come from. Discussing issues with future planners is a potentially powerful way to transmit new norms and ideas that challenge problematic ideologies of planning and exclusive political dynamics, not only across institutions, but also across

generations.

Waning social cohesion

Nepali villages have traditionally been coalescing social units; they used to provide a social safety net through family and kinship bonds. Even after many villages are declared or annexed to municipalities, new migrants are trying to living close to their neighbours, initially reinforcing the dependency relationship in urban areas. However, cost of lands, income and social inequalities are becoming major constraints. As new urban areas are being populated by neo-urbanities, many remain unfamiliar with each other. The traditional safety nets developed over hundreds of years wane out. Many communities are grappling with transition from subsistence to cash-based livelihoods in growth-oriented economies. The higher standards of living, high taxes, high utilities cost in urban areas are constraining traditional leadership structures to maintain social cohesion despite living in congested residential buildings.

Competition for housing—owning, renting, or building—is very high. Those who can afford, build their house in an incremental manner over several years while they live on the plot in small shacks while the prime residence is being built. Though some families might be lucky to have temporary shelters, with extended families and kinship groups, overcrowding has become a common problem, often accommodating 5-11 people. Despite such crowded living, the rent for a single room shared with one or more other families often costs 60-70 percent of family incomes, leaving insufficient incomes for food, clothing, education and health care.

Mistakes repeated

Despite experiencing severe urban vulnerability problems, ‘ruralopolishing’ continues throughout Nepal with 191 municipalities as of December 2014. The theoretical debate that urbanisation enhances secondary and tertiary sector activities and contributes substantially to foreign exchange earnings has already become a saga in Nepal.  The Nepali economy is surviving on remittances contributed mostly by those who were displaced from Nepal due to faulty institutional policies.  Despite several positive aspects, remittances have added multiple problems. As couples separate for a long time, a growing number of children living with divorced parents are becoming landless and are forced to live in urban outskirts. Political parties looking for vote banks are clandestinely supporting illegal settlements in poorly planned areas. Recent incidences show that such settlements have become major victims of natural calamities, but politicians refuse to take responsibility for their wrong doings. Some political parties are giving false assurances to neo-urbanities for jobs, labour rights, housing, and representations in various organisations. False assurance has led to frustration that has increased criminal activities in urban areas as many unemployed youths need some means for living. The proliferation of overcrowded informal settlements and increasing unemployment in many towns have resulted in a number of social problems, including poverty and the breakdown of the extended family, increased crime, and vandalism. For example, suicide cases have increased from 75 in 1990 to 6,512 in 2013, and these incidences are mostly reported in urban areas. Many new urban migrants are forced to live on daily wages including illegal activities like drug dealings and prostitution as other jobs with future security or pension are very rare.

Nepal urgently needs an urban development strategy that will steer urbanisation away from good quality agricultural land and helps conserve natural resources. In order to address these challenges, it is essential to establish participatory and responsive local governments to maintain order, guide development, provide services, and conserve the environment; institutionalise urban land reforms with well-defined private and public rights in the use, valuation, servicing, and control of land for urban purposes; implement strict rules to distribute, maintain, and manage utilities and services; and maintain a professional, accountable, transparent, and ethical public administration. Public policy-making has to be transparent and participatory, but the execution of decisions have to be professionally done, free from political interference and corruption.

Bhattarai is professor of geography at University of Central Missouri, the US.