Reclaim the public land, but without undermining rights

Reclaiming stolen land of Kathmandu is an opportunity to restore the lungs of the city.

In a country where government reports are often buried in bureaucratic drawers, the decision to resurrect the 1995 Rawal Commission report is nothing short of a jolt to the status quo. After 31 years of political hesitation, the government has finally moved to freeze more than 1,859 ropani of public land in Kathmandu that had been illegally converted into private estates. This move, spearheaded by Land Management Minister Pratibha Rawal—the granddaughter of the commission’s original chair—is a welcome and bold assertion of the state’s duty to protect public assets. However, as the government moves from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’, it must tread carefully. If this long-due action is handled with the same haphazard haste seen in the recent move to evict landless squatters, the state risks a legal and social backlash that could stall action for decades still.