Searching for a Weapon of Mass Production in Nepal

Ravi Bhandari
Additional contact information
Ravi Bhandari: St Mary’s College, USA; rbhandar@stmarys-ca.edu

Journal of Developing Societies, 2006, vol. 22, issue 2, 111-143

Abstract: The World Bank recently published a comprehensive statement on land reform policy, the first in 30 years, that self-proclaims market-assisted land reform as a key policy to achieve not only efficiency, but even more importantly, equity. At the core of this ‘neo-populist neoclassical’ orthodoxy is: 1) the long-term pursuit of individual property and associated rights; 2) an idealized notion of the egalitarian and efficient small farmer based on the well-known inverse relation between farm size and productivity; and 3) a static view of rural markets blinding one to the negative and unforeseen consequences by landlords in the face of reform. This article critically examines the validity of these core assumptions in light of current calls for market-assisted land reform in Nepal. A major conclusion is that given the evidence, the presumed benefits of such reforms are ideologically driven, and therefore, will unlikely provide a much needed escape from poverty for millions of Nepali citizens.

Keywords: inequality; market-assisted land reforms; Nepal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0169796X06065799 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:22:y:2006:i:2:p:111-143

DOI: 10.1177/0169796X06065799

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Developing Societies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().