English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

The Remake of a StateSuch labour migrants are perceived to be the backbone of the Nepalieconomy – especially since the Maoist conflict in 1999. Remittance wassaid to be the major contributor to the decrease in poverty by 10.3 percent from the start of the country’s ninth plan in 1997 to the end of it.According to the latest estimate, there was a rise of NRs 81,407 million inremittance in 2008 over the previous year when remittance amounted toNRs 92,437 million (NIDS 2009). The impact is evident also in more microlevel. Remittance receiving households increased from 23.4 per cent in1996 to 31.9 per cent in 2003/04 and remittance constituted 23 per centof the income of the receiving household by 2003/04 (CBS 2004).Besides this trend of labour migration where 75 per cent are unskilledand 25 per cent are semi-skilled (NIDS 2009), migration of skilled peopleas students and professionals is on the rise. The number of studentsmigrants recorded by the ministry of education was 21,035 for 2007-2008- the latest available estimate. Out of the most chosen destination among47 countries, Australia was chosen by a majority of 36 per cent, the UnitedKingdom (UK) by 14 per cent and USA by 26 per cent (NIDS 2009).Apart from these temporary and semi-permanent migrants, about twomillion Nepalese are organised under the Non-Resident Nepali Associations.Its branches in 40 countries host foreign citizens of Nepali origin, longtermforeign residents as well as temporary migrant workers. On theirlast general assembly in Nepal, they further urged the government tofocus more on capitalising on the skills acquired by Nepalese while stayingabroad. This was a further move forward from their ‘already old’ agendaof economic support where they had promised for economic schemes ofvarious types from small level like a tourism promotion programme ‘sendhome a friend’ and other philanthropic projects to large scale investmentlike ‘100 Million US dollar fund’.Whatever their forms are, the policies and development modulescan incorporate the migrants as a potential group for their humanand economic resources. However, as said earlier, the conflict and theimmediate post-conflict phase have tried to use migration in an ad-hocand hasty way. When the potential of the migrants came to be visible,the state is now encouraging full-fledged migration without analysing itspotential usefulness and harms to state-building efforts. This could be amajor fault. It is therefore necessary to study examples from abroad andbe aware about the migration-development nexus. Some of them areanalysed here.169