Mushar community is an under privileged marginalized community of Nepal with lower financial and food security as compared to other strata of society. The population of Musahar is 234,490 i.e 0.8% of the total country population settled in about 31 districts of Terai. Their livelihood mainly depends upon agriculture work, daily wages, and cross border laborious work. The spread of pandemic Covid-19 has further obstructed the economic activities adversely affecting social and economic condition of the most vulnerable groups such as Mushahar. In this context, SAP-NEPAL conducted Full Moon Symposium on “Impact of Covid on Marginalized Mushahar community” on 14 September 2021 virtually using Zoom platform. The program was chaired by Ms. Geeta Bhattarai, chairperson SAP Nepal, along total of 27 participants from Nepal Musahar Sangh, mediaperson, stakeholders, development organization representative and member from house of representative province 2.The event was conducted with major objective of highlighting and addressing the prevailing issues and problems faced by Musahar community during and post Covid 19. The webinar begun with welcome remarks by Narendra Prasad Joshi, Executive Director of SAP – Nepal. Since inception in 1985, SAP-Nepal has been advocating the overall social, political and economic issues for enhancement of the lives of the backward community collaborating with national and international support organization, he added.
Dr. Lalan Kumar Chaudhary, social activist, formally opened the discussion program with his opening remarks emphasizing on the social aspect of livelihood and financial engagement of the community. He also focused on the traditional, social and cultural aspect of the community. He further emphasized that the role of SAP – Nepal as revolutionary action for working with the aim to have positive impact on the social, cultural, economic and political life of the Musahar community. Similarly, Manoj Kumar Paswan and Pachu Majhi, members of Nepal Musahar committee, highlighted illiteracy, poverty, financial and food insecurity, social discrimination, and ill social norms and values are most common barrier to development of this community that could only be addressed through empowerment, capacity building and education.
Towards the end of the webinar, Mr. Pachu Majhi, Central committee member of Nepal Musahar Association, said that development and government are the two sectors that are directly responsible for continued backwardness of Musahar community. The development sector acts on the behalf of donor’s interest while the government implements its plans and policy based on their vote bank. Hence, the development sector and the government must get out of their comfort zone of donor agenda and vote bank agenda to really bring positive change, awareness and empower the backward community. The insufficiency access of the community to media, political party and development organization was also one of the causes of deprivation, hence, access of Musahar community to these sector should also be enhanced for overall development of this community.