It is my great opportunity to lead this Department as a Head. My attempt is to enhance academic programs run by CDRD from the point of view of development studies as RD is a sub-field of development studies and one of the multidisciplinary subjects within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. We welcome students from various disciplines, for example, Anthropology, Demography, Economics, Engineering, Environmental Science, Geography, History, Political science, Public Health, Rural Development and Sociology to pursue MA in RD which requires a blending of knowledge and perspectives from these multidisciplinary areas. Let me allow saying something about Nepal why CDRD programs are urgent as it is an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary enquiry into change and social and economic transformation in rural development
Nepal is a small landlocked Himalayan country situated between two major Asiatic civilizations: India to the south and Tibet, an autonomous part of China, to the north. For political and administrative reasons, Nepal is structured along hierarchical lines. There are three different levels (listed from the lowest to highest): Local Units (753), Districts (77), and Provinces (7). Around 61 percent of total local units is rural whereas about 63 percent of total population are residing in urban territories.
Nepal is a least developed country in the world with per capita of US$ 998 in 2018. About 27 percent of Nepal’s population is multidimensionally poor. By place of residence, the rural-urban divide is evident, with 7 percent of the urban population and 33 percent of the rural population being multidimensionally poor. Nepal ranks 197th in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and 145th out of 186 countries in terms of Human Development Index. Around 66 percent are engaged in agriculture and the nutritional status of Nepal’s population is poor; it ranks 118 out of 162 in the world with an average daily dietary energy consumption of 2340 kilocalories per day and 2.3 million people (8.1 percent) are undernourished.
The present Government of Nepal has adopted a unique socio-economic development model in accordance with its long-term objective of building “Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepalis”, which is only possible through high economic growth and its equitable distribution. In this context, the Tribhuvan University is a key implementing academic organization, which has been recognized as a state university. The Government of Nepal has, therefore, worked with Tribhuvan University (TU) to establish a high-quality research and training institution to serve the country’s development related programme and policy through the Central Department of Rural Development (CDRD).
The major aim of CDRD is to produce high level human resource in the area of development studies by offering formal degree programme as Master of Arts in Rural Development (RD) that is intended to provide knowledge of fundamental structures that describe the level of development of nations and societies using multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspectives. A special attention is paid to policy strategy used by actors in the field of development politics.