Ever thought why Western Nepal is considered as less developed and remote and Eastern Nepal is more detailed. Lets try to demystify that by taking some basic factors into consideration.
Topics to consider:
1. Geography
2. History
3. Topology and Weather Patterns
4. Inhabitance
5. Education and literacy
6. Economy
7. History
Nepal has a total land area of 147,182 km2 and is roughly rectangular in shape which makes it easier for us to divide the country into two sections like a fruitcake, sliced right in the middle of center. Geography wise Nepal’s central part length wise is located approximately on the Nawalpur district, left to Chitwan but taking the factors like culture and ease of division we consider Kathmandu as the central part of Nepal despite the geographical fallacies.
First let's look at the map of Nepal:
Dividing Nepal into two parts with Kathmandu as a pivot point, we get roughly equal parts in both sides in the ratio of 3:2 (approx.). Eastern part of Nepal comprises of the State 4, 5, 6 and 7 whereas Western part of Nepal comprises of the State 1, 2 ,3 and 4. Note that state 4 must be divided in both parts as it is a big region area wise.
Now to address the elephant in the room, lets look at some factors that could be the key factor in determining the development causatively, associatively, or indirectly whatsoever.
EN: Eastern Nepal
WN: Western Nepal
Geography:
We look the geographical features of eastern Nepal by diving further into the points as:
1. Latitude and Longitude:
Eastern part of Nepal falls between Lat Long of 27.854027, 88.196313 and 26.365295, 88.038719 whereas western part of Nepal falls between Lat Long of 30.341591, 82.082352 and 26.938721, 84.903326. Being a small country area wise latitudes and longitudes does not pose a huge difference.
2. Altitude Ranges:
Eastern part of Nepal stretches from lowest of 506m in Jhapa to as high as the worlds tallest mountain peak 8849m (~8850m). On the other side, western Nepal has 229m to Dhaulagiri 8167m. Visually its apparent that eastern Nepal has an average altitude of 4677m and the western part of Nepal has an average of 4198m and its apparent that eastern Nepal is relatively in a higher altitude than western part.
Topology and Weather Patterns:
From geographical data it is evident that Nepal on the eastern part has relatively higher altitude. Topology wise, both eastern and western Nepal have similar features. Both of them comprise of the terai belt(southernmost division), hilly belt (middle division) and mountain belt(northern division) which spans all across Nepal from left to right.
Resources wise the eastern part of Nepal has more lush forests and colder temperature than the western part of Nepal. The average high temperature during summers is from the western part of Nepal. The places from the west like Dhangadhi, Nepalgunj, Bardiya etc. are responsible for highest temperature observed in the summer. Whereas the eastern part of Nepal has moderate to chilly weather and climate unlike the western part of Nepal. Hilltop stations, mountains and valleys are responsible for the lovely weather to the east.
Nepal’s monsoon arrives in the mid-summer after the months of June by the corridor through the Bay of Bengal wind current which enters through the eastern part of Nepal and makes its way all the way up to the westernmost part of the country. As a reason western part of the nation experiences a delayed monsoon than the eastern part. EN also receives plenty of downpour in the monsoon thanks to the mountain ranges and the elevated hills, while WN receives the leftovers of the EN monsoon pour.
As per the table:
We can see the extreme winter temperature also comes from the western part of Nepal.
City wise most of the WN have higher temperatures than the EN.
This concludes EN is more favorable to live than WN.
However, this also comes with cons like EN has suffered the major health hazards like the Koshi Flood of 2008 which affected 65,000 people and 700ha fertile land.
Inhabitance:
From the weather patterns and geographical as well as topological structure it is clear that EN is more favorable and appealing to live than the WN. Which is evident too, the population of EN is far more than the WN.
The top 3 most populous states belong to EN with total of roughly 60% of the population and the remaining 40% of the WN are all mostly concentrated in major cities like Pokhara, Chitwan, Butwal, Bhairawaha etc.
Cities of EN are dominating in population too, while the least populous districts of Nepal all mostly from WN.
Education and Literacy:
Education and literacy in Eastern Part of Nepal is better than western part of Nepal, despite the lesser number of districts and lesser area the literacy rate of the eastern part of Nepal.
After downloading the dataset of literacy rate of the year 2013, we visualize the data using the power of pandas and python.
District Distribution:
There are 49 districts in WN and 26 in EN with proportion of 65.33% and 34.67% in WN and EN respectively.
Literacy Rate Distribution:
EN has higher total literacy rate comprising of mean literacy rate of 66.52% whilst WN has lower total literacy rate of 64.36%.
Visualization:
Graph shows us how EN has higher literacy rate in every section than WN.
Top 5 districts with highest literacy rate:
The 4 out of top 5 districts with highest literacy rate is from EN and only one is from WN.
Top 5 districts with lowest literacy rate:
There are three districts with least literacy rate from EN and all three belong to the Terai region. Maybe there is some another factor affecting like influence and culture. Two districts from WN have least literacy rate out of the top 5.
Possible speculations for this uneven distribution of literacy rate could be:
a. Lesser Infrastructures for schooling.
b. Low population which causes the governmental bias to hinder fund the education in places with very low population.
c. Inaccessibility of study materials due to transportation limitations.
d. Cultural beliefs and low orthodox erasure.
e. Universities:
Most of the top universities and colleges are present in the central part of Nepal perhaps because of the location of Kathmandu, apart from that other major universities in Nepal are mostly from the EN, which causes the migration of students in pursue of graduate and high school degree, which cause more and more investment in colleges in the EN as a ROI benefit which is very much unlikely in WN.
Economy:
Economy of Nepal as per government looks like this:
If we count this and total, we get total of 2,383,100 Rs. (In Million) from EN and total of 1,081,219 Rs. (In Million) from WN which is almost as half from the counterpart.
If we look closely into the data, majority of the contribution of Nepal comes from the Central and Easternmost part of the EN. Now if we want to analyze the factors driving this irregularity in economy they might be:
1. Factories:
EN has considerably more factories in comparison to WN due to the easier access of raw materials from Indian border and relatively cheaper transportation of materials cost. So, investors tend to establish more factories as close as to the Indian border.
2. Tourism:
EN brings many tourist spots like the Temples from Kathmandu to the world’s crown mountains. But WN doesn’t fall far behind in tourism sector as well. Pokhara, National Parks of Bardiya are some of the most visited tourist spots of Nepal. During the time of writing as Nepal only has one way of international arrival through plane in Tribhuvan Int’l airport, tourists tend to explore in the proximities of the capital first and then head back to the farther parts of the country. Only a fraction of tourists travels all the way into another region for more exploration.
3. Transportation:
EN has better transportation facilities and infrastructural development. As Nepal is a landlocked country, the only way of cheap import is by road which comes from India. The major border of Nepal, Raxaul which falls in EN is the major custom entry point. The imported goods are circulated throughout the country from this point. As a result what happens, EN benefits due to close location with this point and government prioritizes the building of roads in this part as its highly crucial to maintain the goods imported and ensure the items are imported properly into the country. WN on the other hand, probably due to the rough topology doesn’t see many projects regarding transportation. As a result, most of the parts are highly remote and inaccessible. The roads aren’t well maintained as government capitalizes off from the EN, so WN is more of like a make use of the scrape budget condition.
History and People:
As Nepal was not colonized, there are no external powers who influenced the development in the nation. Major breakthrough in industrial era occurred when Late king Prithvi Nr. Shah shifted the capital to Kathmandu from Gorkha. The Lichhavis settled in the banks of Baghmati and planned a prosperous city which we call Kathmandu. The first industry Raghupati Jute Mills was established in 1946A.D. by His Majesty Govt. of Nepal in Biratnagar, EN. “In Nepal, industrial development started rather late due to the closed socio-political and economic status of the country during the Rana Regime. So, the history of industrial in 1936. Thereafter, in 1940, Gharelu Ilam Prachar Adda (i.e. information dissemination about cottage level skill- based enterprises) was established.” With this breakthrough economy of EN has been increasing more than WN. EN also has a prosperous history, as all the administrative and major historical timeline were all concentrated there. All the conquests, political conspiracies and administrative reforms were brought from the EN due to the nature of kingdoms before the greater unified Nepal. So, EN has seen more activities in the past than WN which was rather passive from the medieval times perhaps due to the other factors mentioned above.
Conclusion:
In my speculation, EN always was favorable from the past. With all the pros it contains like the weather, resources, geography as well as from the present-day condition like industries, tourism, and accessibility EN has seen better days than WN and the increasing population may be a cause or an effect. Statistically speaking, EN has more literacy rate as a result of the infrastructural development. WN has become a wild west correspondence of USA, a deserted place which sees more and more migration day by day to the EN in search of better QoL and facilities. Jobs, Business, People, Properties are crucial factors as everyone wants to be close to the center of a booming economy. With the increasing influence of globalization and India, EN sees newer technologies faster than WN.
To maintain a balance, govt. should bring a massive reform project for WN and plan future economic developments from ground zero in the unvisited lands of west, like smart cities from scratch, but it requires a massive budget and transparency, which is very hard to obtain.
