The kinship basis of a Nepalese rural ward

The rationale for this paper is that it is necessary for rural development planners and workers to have knowledge of the structure of rural Nepal and the functions and processes of its various parts. There is a lot of knowledge that exists, but it deserves to be systematised and disseminated for application in national development planning. It is suggested that in carrying out rural development projects, rather than approaching the population of a delimited area as an undifferentiated mass, an awareness of its structure in terms of kinship and localisation can facilitate such work. This paper discusses an aspect of the social structure of rural Nepal: the kinship basis of the rural world. Its argument is that with particular reference to the pahad or middle hills zone of Nepal, the rural ward is basically composed of several partrilineages or unilateral descent groups in the male line which typically cluster together in a given section, neighbourhood or locality of the ward, usually caqlled "villages".