Indebtedness to care: land, loans, and love in financializing Nepal

ABSTRACT

A common misconception about women landowners in Nepal is that they do not control the lands they own. In this paper, I focus on women landowners' land-title loans. What does women’s accrual of monetary debt in exchange for titles tell us about women’s control over land? And, what does women’s land debt tell us about the gender of financialization in the context of agrarian change? Based on ten months of ethnographic research in Saptari, Nepal, I show that land use is shifting from cultivation to financial pledging, and that women routinely exercise control over their lands vis-à-vis their command over intergenerational care practices, a process that I term the ‘indebtedness to care.’

KEYWORDS:

• Financialization
• land speculation
• gender
• indebtedness

Acknowledgements

None of this research would have been possible without the generosity of women in Saptari, Nepal, who invited me into their lives and shared their stories with me. My research was made possible by a generous Fulbright Student Grant to Nepal in 2018–2019. I am grateful for Dr. Ganesh Gurung at the Nepal Institute for Development Studies, and Dr. Tom Robertson, Yamal Rajbhandary, and members of the Fulbright Commission in Nepal, for their research support. Many thanks to Bharti Yadav for her translation support and to the Deo family, for everything. I am thankful to Drs. Sharmila Rudrappa. Jason Cons, Michael Young,. Heather Hindman, and Daniel Fridman for their constant guidance and support. Many, many thanks to Jaime Feng-Yuan Hsu, Chen Liang, Upasana Garnaik, Alejandro Márquez, Vrinda Marwah, Rui Jie Peng, Holly Querin, Tara Tran, Jackson Walker, and Kathryn Wiley for their careful readings of my work. I am indebted to you all for the time, care, support, advice, guidance, and feedback you have devoted to me and my work, and I hope – someday – to repay my debts to you.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Census data show that the total population working in agriculture declined from 81.2% in 1991, to 65.7% in 2001, to 60.4% in 2011. Men’s agriculture labor rates declined from 74.9% in 1991 to 60.2% in 2001 to 50.5% in 2011, and women’s agriculture labor rates declined from 90.5% in 1991 to 72.8% in 2001 to 73.6% in 2011. World Bank/ILO estimates higher rates than the census, with the total at 70% in 2011, down to 64% in 2019; men’s at 60% in 2011, down to 52% in 2019; and women’s at 79% in 2011, down to 74% in 2019.

2 Many of these dhito transactions are with moneylenders, however, as this article shows, not everyone who conducts dhito does so with a moneylender.

3 While beyond the scope of this paper, despite some microcredit groups’ by-laws that prohibit land-title loans or loans for anything other than entrepreneurial activities, these groups do engage in land-title loans.

4 Moneylending has a long and storied history in Nepal. Moneylending has often been connected with land. Many moneylenders were killed or fled Nepal during the civil war, and the post-war status of moneylending practices that do not involve land requires detailed investigation.

5 In 2017, the federal government phased out the Muluki Ain, and created two separate forms of federal criminal and civil laws.

6 This study received IRB approval. Interviewees received consent forms in Nepali and provided verbal consent. Verbal consent, in addition to interviews, was audio recorded. To protect interviewees’ identities, pseudonyms are used and locations remain unidentified.

7 Caste systems in Nepal are complex. Caste is imbricated with socio-political power structures, with certain Hindu castes originating from the Hill regions being dominant, and certain Hindu castes, as well as non-Hindus, including Muslims and indigenous nationalities, being less dominant. In Saptari, race intersects with caste in particular ways. Madhesis, loosely, residents of the plains, are a racialized group, often marginalized and excluded from socio-political structures, irrespective of their Hindu caste status.

8 Rural and urban are not neat or discrete categories. In 2017, Nepal finalized its federal restructuring process, and remapped Village Development Committees as either rural municipalities or urban municipalities. This means that ostensibly rural villages could be deemed urban, and urban areas deemed rural. And so, many women I met lived in ‘rural’ parts of urban municipalities, and others lived in ‘urban’ parts of rural municipalities.

9 Women were recruited via snowball sampling. Interviews took place at a private location of each interviewee’s choosing, and took between one and two hours to complete. Interviews were semi-structured, with questions that addressed daily life, familial relationships, and economic and financial decision-making. Interviews were transcribed and coded in Maxqda.

10 Of the 22 (n = 22) women I interviewed who were involved in land registration, five (n = 5) are Yadav, or non-dominant caste, four (n = 4) are dominant Madhesi caste, four (n = 4) are Muslim, four are (n = 4) Madhesi Dalit, two (n = 2) are dominant-Hill caste, and one (n = 1) is Tharu, an indigenous nationality. Four (n = 4) of these 22 women are widowed. Of the 5 (n = 5) women I interviewed from the Land Reform Office, three (n = 3) are Madhesi Dalit, one (n = 1) is Tharu, and one (n = 1) is Muslim. 4 of these 5 of women were widowed. Four of six (n = 4) women I interviewed from the District Court are dominant-caste Madhesis, one (n = 1) is Yadav, and one (n = 1) is Tharu. I met several Dalit and Muslim women at the District Court, as well, but none agreed to be interviewed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by US-Nepal Fulbright Commission [grant number Student Research Grant].

Notes on contributors

Beth Prosnitz

Beth Prosnitz received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently works and resides in California.