ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches how more marginalised sections of Nepalis (such as caste, ethnic, regional, and/or gender minorities) have engaged with the national ‘development,’ deemed largely ‘failed’ because of ‘exclusion’ of those minorities, and how they are trying to achieve inclusion now, by taking up cases of indigenous ethnic minority (Janajati) women and Dalit women who have been subjected to intersected marginalisation by gender and ethnicity/caste.
Mounting calls for ‘inclusion’ concentrated around the issue of proportional representation of identity-based groups in various public arenas, especially in electoral bodies. Janajati and Dalit women followed suite and increased their share in those bodies at federal, state, and municipal levels, though not measuring up to their population ratio (except for the case of Dalit women in local bodies, where their mandatory reservation was set higher than their population ratio). Though it may be a step forward towards their mainstreaming in national development, the fear looms large that the reservation politics can obstruct taking up other measures that are also necessary for them to achieve inclusion, in the true sense of the term, at the moment.
