CHITWAN OCEAN

Sliding down hills: some reflections on the thirty years of change in a Himalayan village Background: Alan Macfarlane, a famous anthropologist, first observed one of the gurung villages near Pokhara named ‘Thak’ in 1968 and later in 1986 with more frequent visits in subsequent years. His book ‘Resources and Population: A study of the Gurungs of Central Nepal’ was published in 1976 as a part of his PhD thesis based on his most intensive longitudinal study for a year in a small village. Later on, he wrote the article ‘ Sliding down hills …..’ in European Bulletin for Himalayan Research in 2002 after his striking observations of the changes in the same village. This review is made to critically analyze Macfarlane’s impressions or study results along with some responses made by some outstanding scholars on the same article. Author’s observation in 1968-69: While stayed for more than one year in a single village, the author identified that the village was culturally rich with strong c...

  The increasing access to education in Nepal is an important achievement in Nepal’s development arena. The access of quality education is mostly confined within the elite and rich people whereas poor families might not be able to send their children to the high to mediocre school or they don’t get good quality education even if the families are able to send them to the schools. This disparity among the student youth results in unequal uptake of knowledge from the education institutions. This eventually is creating unequal society having the differential access to education, employment and power. This proves the notion that wealth and education are directly proportional and wealth and risks inversely proportional ( Furlong et al, 2007). With the evolving late modernity, awareness among middle class people has also increased and they are being capable to provide quality education to their children utilizing money from generated from remittance and income from some skilled works. W...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic, which is also known as coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome. After its first identification in China in December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public Health Emergency of International Concern regarding COVID-19 on 30 January 2020. It was already spread to many countries including Italy, Spain and others before the declaration by WHO.   Later on 11 March 2020, WHO declared the problem as a pandemic. As of 31 May 2021, more than 170   million cases have been confirmed, with more than 3.54   million confirmed deaths which are attributed to COVID-19.   making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has revealed how the global systems can become vulnerable and lead to unintended consequences in every sector. As reported, many countries had imposed lockdown to re...

A sound performance management system practiced in organizations increases job satisfaction, employee retention, loyalty, and overall performance of organizations   Background/Introduction What is performance and performance management? Performance is defined as the potential for future successful implementation of actions in order to reach the objectives and targets ( (Lebas, 1995) . According to Oxford dictionary, performance is an accomplishment, execution, carrying out, working out of anything ordered or undertaken. Performance refers to outputs/outcomes, but also states that it is about doing the work , as well as achieving the results . It is in fact the behavior of an organization and associated employees expressed while work is done. Several factors affecting the performance of an individual or an organization are personal competence and motivation, leadership quality for guidance, team’s support, systems at workplace and the working environment/contexts. Perform...