KATHMANDU, NEPAL – The Bagmati River, which flows through Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city, is considered a holy river in Hinduism, the country’s majority religion. But passersby say the stench of its pollution makes them cover their noses thanks in part to an increasing population of landless people who squat along its banks.
Sita Chamar, whose family lives in a small hut in the Bagmati settlement, says local squatters are accustomed to the pollution and stinking garbage.
“I [have been] staying here [for] 15 years,” says Chamar, combing her untidy hair with her fingers. “We are used to this foul smell.”
Originally from Nepal's border with India, Chamar, now 38, is a member of the Dalit community, known as the “untouchable” caste. When a flood swept away her house and land in 1995, her family was left homeless. After living with a neighbor and begging on the streets for a few months, she eventually moved her family to the capital after hearing rumors that jobs were available here. But when they arrived, she says she realized it was not easy for a Dalit woman to find a job after all. After months of searching for work, she says her family was forced out of their apartment and has been living in the settlement on the banks of the river ever since.
The roof and walls of her hut are made of tin sheets and jute sacks. Four unwashed dishes lie scattered inside the hut, and a plastic jar filled with filthy river water sits next to a heap of rags in one corner.
“We fetch water from [the] Bagmati even though we know that the river is diseased,” Chamar says.
But Chamar says this is the only place where she can provide a roof over her children who are 13, 11, 8 and 5. Her husband, Ram Hari Chamar, is a day laborer. His earnings depend on uncertain conditions. He says some days he polishes shoes and others he works as a porter to earn money.
“Sometimes he earns up to 200 rupees [less than $3 USD], but on a dull day not even a rupee [1 cent USD] and [we] have to sleep [on an] empty stomach,” she says.
She says her children don’t go to school because of financial constraints. Instead, they try to contribute to the family, too.
“They collect plastic and scrap materials,” Chamar says.
The settlement has no electricity, water or health care facilities.
“I wouldn't have stayed here in such a situation had I [had] my own place to settle in,” she says. “The only property I possesses is this hut, which is erected on public land.”
Because the settlement is built on public land, Chamar says that her family lives in constant fear of eviction because the government may drive them away at any time.
“If that happens, where should an impoverished Dalit woman like me go with my children?” she asks.
Chamar and her family are not alone, as thousands of other landless people also live in the squatter settlement along the Bagmati River. And there are millions more throughout Nepal. They cite different reasons for being landless – some families have always been landless, while others lost their homes to natural disasters or developmental projects – but most came to Kathmandu to find jobs that continue to elude them, thanks to uncertain economics and politics. The government of Nepal has recognized the many landless people across the country and is distributing land to some families. Still, some some say the efforts aren’t widespread or effective enough.
In Nepal, land has traditionally been the prime source of social, economic and political power, according to the Community Self-Reliance Centre, CSRC, a nongovernmental organization, NGO, working for land reform in Nepal. Yet as many as 25 percent of Nepali families are landless, according to the last census, taken in 2001. There are 4 million squatters in Nepal, with 50,000 in Kathmandu alone, according to a 2007 article by IRIN, a service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In Kathmandu, advocates say hundreds of squatters choose the Bagmati settlement because they can’t afford to rent rooms in the city. Most of the residents of the settlement hail from the impoverished Dalit community, a socially, culturally and economically underprivileged group. While some families lost their land to natural disasters, like Chamar’s, and developmental projects, such as highways, power plants and mines, others haven’t had land in their families for generations.
Bom Bahadur Dum, who also lives in the Bagmati settlement with his family, says his father had no property, so he didn’t inherit anything except a grass-thatched hut.
Many say they chose to come to Kathmandu because of rumors of job opportunities, but few have found any. Like Chamar, Dum says he also brought his family to Kathmandu from western Nepal in search of work.
“When a man told me that income-generating opportunities are in abundance in Kathmandu, I decided to move to the capital city three years ago along with my family,” he says.
When Dum arrived in Kathmandu with his wife and three children, Dum started hunting for jobs. He says finding a job hasn’t been as easy as he’d heard, but now he can’t afford to return home.
“Since we are outsiders, it’s difficult to get wage labor in Kathmandu,” he says. “If we go back to our own places, there also we will be denied of jobs as we already left the place.”
While some squatters are day laborers, like Chamar’s husband, because they can’t find permanent jobs, others collect plastic bags and scrap materials or even beg to earn money. Without steady incomes, landless families say they can’t afford to move out of the river settlement.
”Shelter was the first pressing problem that we encountered,” Dum says. “While strolling along the Bagmati River, we saw some six or seven poorly built huts on its bank. We asked the people living there if we can stay there, too. When they said yes, we also decided to make [a] hut.”
In addition to their difficult living conditions, Chamar and Dum say that they and the thousands of other landless people who erect huts on public land live in constant fear of government eviction.
“The government has not chased away as of today, and [we] don’t know what will happen in the days to come,” Dum says.
Despite the fear of government raids, the settlements are growing, Chamar says.
“Just within the last two weeks, four landless families arrived here and settled in,” Chamar says.
There is no recent data that estimates the number of landless people occupying public lands, but more than 5,000 live along the Bagmati River, says Rebati Prasad Dhakal, secretary of the Landless Settlers Problem Resolution Commission, a government commission established last year to help settle landless people. He says the government decided in 2002 to provide 5 kattha, or nearly 18,200 square feet, of land and 10,000 rupees, $140 USD, in cash to each landless family. But to date, this policy has been only partially implemented.
“This is because all the landless people in the country are not Nepali citizens,” he says.
He says that about 5 percent of squatters on Nepali public land are from India and that the government is working to verify squatters’ nationalities before distributing land.
Prakash Acharya, section officer of the monitoring and evaluation section in the Ministry of Land Reform and Management, says the Landless Settlers Problem Resolution Committee has set up committees to solve the problems of landless people in 25 of Nepal’s 75 districts so far. Acharya says the committees have distributed land mainly in Nepal’s Midwestern Region, where much of the landless population lives.
“Land is being provided to landless people so that they could own the land and till the land for harvesting,” Acharya says.
The chairman of the Landless Settlers Problem Resolution Commission in Chitwan, two districts west of Kathmandu, announced at a recent press conference that the commission has already distributed land to 226 landless families and plans to distribute land to 170 more families soon, according to Nepal Mountain News.
Although various governmental and NGOs have been working for the rights of landless people in the country, some say there is still much work to be done.
Jagat Basnet, land activist and CSRC chairman, says providing land for the landless people is a human rights issue. He says that the government has been assessing the landless situation but has not yet released its report.
“The government should concentrate its efforts to address the situation of the landless squatters at the earliest,” Basnet says.
Acharya says the government hasn’t prepared a federal report yet because the districts are handling the distribution. He says the government aims to release a detailed report by mid-April, the end of the Nepali year.
Chamar says she has no knowledge of any land distribution programs. Acharya admits that many landless people are unaware of the government’s distribution of land ownership certificates because it receives little media coverage.
Despite media coverage, Chamar, who lives in Nepal’s capital, says that until land distribution is widespread, her family and thousands of others will continue to live trapped in a cycle of poverty.
“Such is our plight that we have nothing,” she says. “Our leaders say wealth distribution will be equitable, but the fact is we were born in poverty, have to live in poverty and will die in poverty. Who dares to care [about] people like us who live in dirty slums?”