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© 2025 Nepal Now: On the Move
Description
We're talking with the people migrating from, to, and within this Himalayan country located between China and India. You'll hear from a wide range of Nepali men and women who have chosen to leave the country for better work or education opportunities. Their stories will help you understand what drives people — in Nepal and worldwide — to mortgage their property or borrow huge sums of money to go abroad, often leaving their loved ones behind.
Despite many predictions, migration from Nepal has not slowed in recent years, except briefly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 1 million Nepalis leave every year to work at jobs outside the country. Tens of thousands go abroad to study. Far fewer return to Nepal to settle. The money ('remittances') that workers send home to their families accounts for 25% of the country's GDP, but migration impacts Nepal in many other ways. We'll be learning from migrants, experts and others about the many cultural, social, economic and political impacts of migration.
Your host is Marty Logan, a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal's capital Kathmandu off and on since 2005. Marty started the show in 2020 as Nepal Now.
110 Episodes
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Send us a text Help steer the future of Nepal Now as it moves to Canada in September 2025. Fill out the survey. It takes just 3 minutes. You might have guessed from the headline for this episode that I am leaving Nepal. It’s a family move actually, back to my home country of Canada. Of course I will miss Nepal, where I’ve now spent 14 years of my life, but I’m confident we’ll be back one day. I will also miss doing this: speaking to all of you every couple of weeks about this fascinatin...
Send us a text The rise in the numbers of Nepalis migrating to Japan in recent decades has been phenomenal — and I think overshadowed by movement to countries like the US, UK and Australia. Today the Asian country is by far the top destination for students going abroad to earn degrees and, in many cases, a path to settlement in the country. I doubt that you would ever guess that the origin of today’s migration to Japan is colonial Britain’s presence in Nepal’s neighbour, India. I’ll le...
Send us a text Undoubtedly the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign has been a success. In less than five years it has led the identification and return to Nepal of about 160 religious icons — statues, paintings, and more. These were stolen from this country and displayed or stored in public museums and private collections globally since Nepal opened to the world in the 1950s. Now what? The aim of the NHRC is to have these gods and goddesses (devi-devta in Nepali) returned to their communit...
Send us a text Talking to Prakash Gurung made me realize that not all migrant workers from Nepal are leaving the country out of necessity. When I interviewed him last year the 26-year-old told me about his failed migration attempts – as both a student and a migrant worker – but I got the sense that he had options in-country as well; he just preferred the idea of leaving. I think there are many people in similar circumstances — they could find a job here at home, but believe that abroad t...
Send us a text Gyanu Adhikari is co-founder of The Record, the online news portal that published from 2014 to 2024. With 10 years’ experience running a media outlet that not only innovated in its content – offering long reads, history series, and podcasts, for example – but also experimented with funding—using a subscriber model—Gyanu has lots to share about media in Nepal. But surprisingly, he was most eager to talk about the state of the country—and more optimistic than most people I...
Send us a text If I told you about a 30-year study that has already resulted in 261 research publications, you’d be impressed right? And if I added that the study is based in Chitwan, and co-led by a Nepali, Prof. Dirgha Ghimire? I think you’d be even more enthusiastic. At least I was when I learned about the Chitwan Valley Family Study just a month ago. I’m not sure how I missed it over the past two decades that I’ve lived here but I’m a firm believer in the adage ‘better late than never’. ...
Send us a text I’ve said it to you listeners more than once: it seems that almost every young person I've met in Nepal in the last couple years was planning to go overseas, or knows someone who's doing so. Now I have proof, kind of. Yesterday I spoke to a researcher whose team surveyed a high school graduating class. 40% of the students said they want to go study abroad after graduation; another 40% said they hope to go work overseas. That's 80% — a huge number, but I'm not surprised.&n...
Send us a text Just like coffee shops, it seems that education consultancies are multiplying faster than rabbits in Kathmandu. I’ve always wondered why prospective students spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of rupees to have someone fill out their overseas college and university applications for them. After all, if they've made it to Grade 12 or beyond, surely they must be able to do it themselves. So I was very happy to have nursing expert Radha Adhikari on the show to ex...
Send us a text It’s been more than a dozen years since Maya Sherpa returned from working in Kuwait. Today she devotes herself to helping other returned female migrant workers readjust to life in Nepal. One reason why she's so committed to that work is because of the violent reaction she faced, not as a migrant in Kuwait but after she returned to her community in Nepal. My three takeaways from today's conversation are: Women continue to be stigmatized as 'fallen' or immoral,...
Send us a text Hi everyone. I have to admit that I had a pretty good idea of what this episode was going to be about, how it was going to unfold, as they say. I was talking to the father of three daughters, grown daughters, all living overseas, and I thought that he and his wife were planning to go live with them in the US, but I was wrong. You're gonna have to listen to find out exactly how I was wrong, but I will say that it was one of the most enjoyable interviews I've done in...
Send us a text Khakendra Khatri paid 7 lakh or 700,000 Nepali rupees (about 5,000 USD) for a job in Russia, but soon after arriving he realized that he was being sent to the front line of the Russia-Ukraine war. Desperate, he bribed a commander, and then escaped by walking through a forest overnight with a group of other trafficked Nepalis. Needing work to feed her children, Sushma found a recruiter to send her to join her aunt working in Kuwait but got sick and returned to Nepal after ...
Send us a text Hi everyone. Today we're speaking with Tanka Dhakal, a journalist who’s currently doing a Master’s degree in the US. He’ll tell us about how the targeting of migrants in that country affected a city council meeting he was reporting on. But what I think is even more interesting is Tanka’s personal reaction to that meeting. But before we get to that, I want to let you know that you can now support Nepal Now with a monthly subscription. This is totally voluntary, but if you...
Send us a text Hi everyone. I’m sorry for the delay in releasing this episode. In a minute, we’ll get to this week’s chat about how female migrant workers are treated after they return to Nepal, but first I want to share some personal news. My stepfather passed away in December, which changed everything. Like many of us he was a migrant. Born on a farm 90 years ago in northwestern Ontario, the centre of Canada, when he was a young man he moved 2,500 km away to Vancouver on the Pacific Ocean...
Send us a text Hi everyone. Today we’re replaying our most popular episode of the year. Like every migration story, it is a unique one. Prem Awasthi moved to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, almost exactly one year ago to start a new job with the United Nations. We talked with him just hours before his plane left Kathmandu, to hear his expectations of this new stage in his life, and the life of his family. Welcome to Nepal Now: On the Move. My name is Marty Logan. This is the podcast that ...
Send us a text Pragati Nepali is just 19 but already she has been married, migrated to work in neighbouring India, and then moved to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for other opportunities. That’s where friends told her about a job in a garment factory in Jordan. When we talked last week she estimated that she might be finished her paperwork and winging toward the Middle Eastern country by mid-December. Jordan is one of very few Middle Eastern countries to which the Government of Nepal allows wom...
Send us a text Today we’re catching up with Aayush Pokharel, a graduate student in Canada who we first talked to in May. This year, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has severely cut the number of temporary residents it allows into the country, including international students. It also chopped the number of temporary work permits for grad students like Aayush, which are usually followed by a chance to apply for PR — permanent residency. Many temporary residents in Canada now wor...
Send us a text Of all the reasons I’ve heard for Nepalis migrating to work abroad, this one was the most shocking: to fight for the Russian Army in its invasion of Ukraine. The news first reached the mainstream media in mid-2023 but long before that, photos of young Nepali men posing in Russian Army uniforms had been circulating online. For the unemployed, or under-employed, Russia quickly became the newest, fastest way to earn foreign currency, topped up in some cases with the promise of an ...
Send us a text Nurses. I don’t know about you but when I think of people migrating for better opportunities one of the first groups that comes to mind is nurses. Not only in Nepal: I know that this is a huge issue for Caribbean countries and I read recently that in Nigeria, midwives too are being recruited to work in countries of the north. Back in Nepal, over a third of nurses have sought documents that would permit them to practise overseas, I read in one media report. I met Sudipa Poude...
Send us a text Today we’re doing something different. We’re devoting this episode to last weekend’s huge rain, the flooding and other disasters it spawned, and the climate migrants who will emerge from these incidents. And here I’d like to give my condolences to the family and friends of the more than 200 people confirmed killed in the devastation. I know: last week I guaranteed we would share the episode about the nurse migrating to Canada but I thought the topic of climate migration ...
Send us a text This is a very short episode, basically to say that we are behind schedule so this week's episode is delayed until next week. We think that it will be worth the wait, as we'll be talking to one of many nurses from Nepal who are leaving the country for better opportunities abroad. In fact, this is not a trend only in Nepal; nurses throughout the global South are moving North for what they see as better working and living conditions. Please watch for the new episode...
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