Fluid Democracy

Abstract

This ethnographic paper describes how two villages in Himalayan Nepal currently employ two very different approaches towards democratic politics in order to solve problems of water management. The paper thereby demonstrates how, in a landscape in which water management is a significant political problem, an analytical attention to this problem can reveal significant difficulties with Nepal’s nascent democratic project. The two villages examined in the paper are both situated in Humla, a rural district in northwest Nepal. In the first village, there is a dispute between this village and its neighbour regarding the water supply. This dispute appears to have been exacerbated in recent years by electoral politics. In the second village, local frustrations with the corruption and ineffectiveness of electoral politics have led to the suspension of electoral democracy in favour of a multilayered rotational system. This new rotational system appears to have broken a political deadlock and allowed a drainage system to be built. The paper therefore makes two straightforward ethnographic observations. First, that in Humla, in northwest Nepal, the management of water is a pressing political issue in various ways. Second, that an investigation of how different societies are approaching this issue demonstrates significant fault lines in Nepal’s newly fledged democracy, including in places where electoral politics are already being abandoned.