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

The forgotten forcesIndia is not perceived as a big migration but rather a frequent commutingand a phase of growing up in the lifecycle of the people in the westernhills of Nepal.Besides, the bright lights of the European and American cities, as is theglobal phenomenon, will continue to attract Nepali young people.5. Migration in policy: Poverty reduction strategy and theInterim PlanMigration has not acquired a very evident position in the state buildingpolicies except for the Three-Year Interim Plan (written as interim planhereafter). This may be due to the fact that migrants have not beenof interest to the political parties and the government except for theirpotential economic strength as donors for fund. The interim plan recognisesthat with the peace process there is an upcoming environment wherethe remittance can be invested. However, due to this overemphasis onremittance, the plan focuses only on imparting skills on possible migrantswithout analysing the cause of this large scale possible outflow of its ablepeople. Though remittance has its own important value in the Nepaleseeconomy, as raised by the pessimistic discourses, focusing only on sendingout its people would make Nepal dependent on the forces over whichneither the migrants nor the country has any control. Remittance alonecannot be a long-term poverty reduction strategy and the interim plan issilent about how remittance can be productively used. Besides, there is novision to use migrants beyond their remittance.So, the chapter assumes that management of migration cannot be dealtwith separately from the state building agenda. It argues that migrantsshould be looked upon as assets that can be mobilised for state-building.Debates remain whether they could contribute to the country if they stayin the country or cross the border. We argue to move beyond this debateand opt for the best alternative with us- which is to use the potential ofthese migrants who work and live abroad from wherever they wouldlike to contribute for development of the home country. The chapteranalyses the use of migrants in other nations and, learning from such bestpractices abroad, discusses how one could use the Nepali migrants forour state building agenda. The objective of the paper is to help concernedauthorities device strategies to use Nepali migrants in state building. Withthis, it tries to answer one way-out for today’s haunting questions: How176