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 ...