Quick answer: Does inequality still exist in Nepal?

While Nepal has systems that prohibit discrimination, disparities based on region of origin, caste, gender, education, and income can still affect life opportunities. In hiring, it is important not to infer ability from background, and to apply the same evaluation criteria and provide accessible support channels.

Nepali thinking patterns often lean toward money-related perspectives, with a tendency to talk bluntly about money, judge situations by whether someone has money or not, and relate to people through a financial lens.

Wondering whether money talk could be phrased more indirectly tends to be the view of people who already have financial leeway.

In everyday life in Nepal, inequality often creates confrontational tensions, and money-related troubles arise easily.

In money troubles, Nepalis who cannot gain the upper hand due to gaps in income, education, information, healthcare, and region often resort without hesitation to cunning, disorderly behavior—and there is a climate in which this is tolerated. Even people who are not short of money have not broken free of the habit of acting with the same kind of cunning.

Passersby and beggars

Walking through Kathmandu, you often encounter beggars on the street.

A beggar’s day is spent taking action to receive money from others. With a clinging gesture, they hold out a small container in front of passersby, and 10 or 20 rupees are dropped into it. Some pedestrians walk straight past; others hand over money and move on.

Whether you give money or not, it is a brief moment in passing—something you forget once you have walked on.

Common sense around lending and borrowing money

Situations that turn into trouble over lending and borrowing money are common in Nepali society.

For example, even if you kindly lend money or goods to a Nepali in need, what you lent often is not returned. The goodwill of the lender is ignored, leaving a situation that does not sit right.

Also, because Nepali money lending often skips the process of signing a contract, cases that later end up in court are not uncommon. Skipping proper process and ending up in disputes is a common behavioral pattern among Nepalis.

In Nepal, with its wealth gap, there is a fixed idea that those with money are naturally expected to give to those without, so immoral behavior that exploits others’ goodwill can sometimes pass.

From a Hindu perspective, those who have money or goods are expected to give to the poor, and it is common sense in Nepal that the wealthy and the poor coexist by each fulfilling their respective roles.

Acting according to religious teaching can sometimes put you at a worldly disadvantage, and Nepali society holds complex forms of common sense.

Because of Nepal’s complex unequal society and religious faith, flexibility and adaptability stand out in how Nepalis live—and for better or worse, this has become a defining trait.

Kind feelings do not land

Many people in Nepal who can live at a normal level still beg, and people who are not monks dress the part and solicit alms—there are many who play the hypocrite.

It is also an open secret in Nepal’s underworld that some beggars are backed by the wealthy and that begging is run as a business. Violence and destructive acts tied to an unequal society are not especially visible in everyday Nepal, but behind begging businesses that use poverty as a shield lies a violent and destructive reality.

Sympathetic feelings toward beggars become meaningless emotions with no effect on the complexity of the underworld.

You cannot really tell whether a passerby beggar is genuine, so if you have a spirit of service, either give freely or do nothing at all.

Getting overcharged is a lack of negotiating skill

When buying goods in Nepal that have no price tags, negotiating the price each time is normal. Without knowing the going rate, you are highly likely to be overcharged, so foreign tourists easily become targets for Nepalis.

Not minding being overcharged by about 20 rupees on vegetables is a foreigner’s sensibility; Nepali housewives pour energy into patiently negotiating those 20 rupees to buy cheaper.

When shopping in Nepal, sellers and buyers compete in negotiating skill from a no-price-tag starting point in a contest of gain and loss. People who are uninterested in money or who already have money often lack negotiating power, and their leeway means they lose that contest.

Wanting to overcharge × getting overcharged

To avoid being overcharged, you would want to negotiate from the position of someone without money—but once you know the realities of poor households in Nepal, you start to wonder whether negotiating over a 20-rupee difference really has meaning.

Differences in money sense greatly affect the energy put into price negotiation. Whether it is 20 rupees or 200,000 rupees, the side that wants to overcharge gauges the other side’s leeway and throws out its tactics.

Once you see those blatantly cunning tactics, regardless of the amount, being on the side that gets overcharged starts to feel better.

The value of lies

Nepalis often tell lies that fall apart in seconds as well as elaborate ones. The content is often convenient for the other party, reflecting a habit of trying to look good somehow.

For example, in land and property sales, people casually introduce false valuations to close deals, and cases that later become problems and disputes are common.

Nepal has no established real estate industry structure, and individuals act as brokers, so being deceived by unscrupulous brokers’ false valuations is common even among Nepalis themselves.

Legitimate price negotiation does not take hold, and in a skewed state where good people are cheated out of money, they can be overcharged by millions as casually as giving a beggar 20 rupees.

In closing

In recent years in Nepal, work abroad and economic activity through remittances have flourished, and domestically the number of households with the means to buy homes and private cars and to spend on children’s education has been growing year by year.

Even so, even when material life improves, ways of thinking that disrupt the social order shaped by an unequal society remain deeply rooted as Nepali habits. So even when people without money become people with money, fixation on money only grows, and the ability to find value elsewhere seems to weaken.

Also, among Nepalis who remain in poverty, most still cannot escape low education and living conditions. Among the actions of the poor are practices that misuse religion and the idea of almsgiving to obtain money, which further complicates Nepal’s unequal society.

Daily life in Nepal is often tossed about by complex common sense shaped by various forms of inequality. For better or worse, Nepalis respond with adaptability and flexibility, living according to each moment rather than reflecting on the essence or truth of problems in an unequal society.

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