Commercial vegetable farming is transforming a Chitwan Chepang settlement

Once a subsistence and food-insecure village, Hapani in Ichchhakamana Rural Municipality is seeing steady rise in household incomes.

A decade ago, Tek Bahadur Chepang returned home disappointed after spending three years working in Malaysia. The earnings were not enough to improve his family’s life, and he faced the same uncertainty that had long defined the lives of many Chepang families in the hills of northern Chitwan.