The Struggle for Basic Needs in Nepal is a product of intensive field work in West Central Nepal (now Western Nepal) over a period of four years in the mid to late 1970s. It focusses on the lives of the seventy poorest rural households identified in an earlier survey of over six hundred (discussed in ‘Nepal in Crisis’ by the same authors). The households were re-visited and interviewed again, using a more participatory and interactive approach than in the initial rural household survey. They were asked what were the forces that made them poor and kept them poor. The answers reveal a shocking pattern of calculated oppression and expropriation and systematic neglect of their basic needs and rights—with ‘government’ and ‘the state’ appearing mainly as a coercive, rather than a positive, force. The study also explores the ways in which these poor people struggle to survive—to protect what limited resources and capacities they have, and where possible to extend them—and considers the potential for collective action. The experiences described and analysed in the book were those of the very poor in the late 1970s, but the authors fear that many such stories can still be found in Nepal today. Both the approach adopted in the research and the findings are of continuing relevance and interest to those concerned with the struggle for basic needs in Nepal at the beginning of the 21 century.
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