Navigating exclusionary-inclusion: school experience of Dalit EFL learners in rural Nepal

Modern schooling is often expressed as one of the key social dynamics of development and modernisation in Nepal. Ideally, school policies and pedagogies are said to embrace inclusion, socialisation and democratisation of young children irrespective of their class, caste, gender and ethnicity. The state’s signatory promises in national/international conventions and platforms often mention social inclusion as the most important expected goal of formal schooling. However, such an understanding is often undermined by persistent educational inequalities and differences which, in turn, underline emergent social, cultural and economic forces that exacerbate social exclusion of many schoolchildren. English Language Teaching (ELT), one of the modern education specificities in the national educultural space, is intricately connected to such inequalities, and is the de facto cause of the enforcing social exclusion of socially, culturally and economically marginalised Dalit children, despite the fact that they attend schools and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms as the “principled inclusion” advocates. Amid this paradox, the main purpose of this paper is to examine exclusionary-inclusion in relation to modern schooling and English learning in rural settings. Employing critical ethnography, this paper examines how modern schooling, particularly in relation to English teaching/learning including English-as-a-medium-of-instruction (EMI), perpetuates social exclusion of the Dalit schoolchildren. The analysis of the data derived from qualitative interviewing, participant observation and learner diaries, suggests to us that policy-practice ambiguities and complicated intersection of existing caste-class-gender disparities with English Learning Opportunities (ELOs) are the principal domains areas that enforce “exclusionary-inclusion” among the marginalised Dalit children in community, school and EFL classroom spaces in rural Nepal

First report of leucism for the kraits Bungarus walli Wall, 1907 and B. niger Wall, 1908, with updates on their geographic distribution in Nepal (Serpentes, Elapidae)

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Societas Europaea Herpetologica in Herpetology Notes. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://www.biotaxa.org/hn/article/view/62989Six species of kraits, genus Bungarus, have been recorded in Nepal (e.g., Schleich and Kästle, 2002; Sharma et al., 2013), including B. bungaroides (Cantor, 1839), B. caeruleus (Schneider, 1801), B. fasciatus (Schneider, 1801), B. lividus Cantor, 1839, B. niger Wall, 1908, and B. walli Wall, 1907. These species occur from the lowland habitats of the Terai Plains along the Nepal-India border into habitats at intermediate elevations in the Siwalik Hills and into the Mahabharat Range (Joshi et al., 2019), extending in the case of B. caeruleus, the most commonly encountered krait in Nepal, up to elevations of at least 1525 m, and up to 1730 m in B. bungaroides (Schleich and Kästle, 2002; Sharma et al., 2013). All of these species appear to be of medical importance as a cause of snakebite mortality and morbidity (e.g., Bhetwal et al., 1998; Pandey, 2015). It is noteworthy that confirmed records of kraits in Nepal display a patchiness consistent with intermittent sampling: while some species probably have a countrywide distribution, records tend to exist primarily for areas of high human population concentration where sampling and the incidence of snakebite can be expected at greater frequency (e.g., B. caeruleus, B. fasciatus, B. lividus). On the other hand, some species cluster only in the southeasternmost extreme of the country (B. bungaroides, B. walli), and given their distribution in neighbouring countries, this sampling may reflect reality

Save The King: Human-King Cobra, Ophiophagus hannah (Cantor 1836), conflicts and the need for conservation strategies in Nepal

Abstract.—Snake research tends to have a low priority in Nepal and very little information, mostly confined to populationsin small areas, addresses the biology and threats to the King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah). Herein we providedata that could facilitate an assessment of the species’ status in Nepal and begin to address its conservation needs.We recorded data on King Cobras from 2015–2020, crosschecking with previous studies to avoid any duplicationof records. A King Cobra from Siddhara, Arghakhachi District, was the first record of the species in the district. Werecorded a total of 50 King Cobra mortalities from 20 districts, with most of them killed near human settlementsadjacent to forested areas. We mapped the locations of all mortalities and recorded land-use changes within a 500-mbuffer around each site over a 30-year period (1990–2020), revealing extensive landscape fragmentation in previouslyconnected natural areas. Our data suggest that the major threats to King Cobras are deliberate killing by humans andlarge-scale habitat loss due to an increasing human population. We recommend increased research to better understandthe biology of this charismatic species and continued conservation education and community outreach programs tofacilitate the development of effective conservation strategies

Water security in times of disaster risks : strengthening community-led initiatives in urban settings

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bidur (Nepal) residents relied on smaller community-managed water supply systems. Government lockdowns barred travel for technicians (along with most people), and machines used by larger projects having technical problems could not be repaired. The Bidur model offers a powerful example for built-in resilience. Large water supply systems are important but susceptible to risks like landslides. Municipalities need urgent technical support in water security planning. A study of Bidur residents’ households with access to alternative water sources supplied through smaller community-led projects were less affected by the 2015 earthquake