Educated rural youth leaving the countryside, a development failure? Investigating the (dis)connection between rural development, youth transitions and scholarship programme in Sindhupalchok district, Nepal

This research explores the interaction between educated rural youths’ mobilities and community development by following the twelve JTA(Junior Technical Assistant) Scholarship receivers’ life trajectories. The study centres on the main research question: Why did they not return to the Sindhupalchok district? The analytical framework is used to dissect the diverse dimensions of receivers’ mobilities within the youth and agrarian studies. I employ the ethnographic approach to analyse twelve receivers’ life trajectories in-depth through participant observation. It shows their diverse decision-making, from applying for the scholarship to the lives after graduation. The findings reveal the societal elements behind the mobilities, generally considered an ‘individual phenomenon’. Drawing on the framework of the youth transition, I analyse their education-to-work transitions as life pathways. The factors that shape their pathways are socially generated aspirations. Also, they are affected by the uncertainties derived from unstable circumstances. Consequently, mobilities do not simply arise by individual willings but are created by social dimensions, which comprise complicated elements depending on one’s caste, gender, socioeconomic situation, etc. And they seek a destination that provides them with sufficient income. In this context, the rural communities cannot be the youths’ pathways’ destination not because of conflict of the resource redistribution, but because the present capacities of rural communities cannot provide appropriate income sources. However, the receivers who left the Sindhupalchok district have not found their destination yet. Consequently, the paper argues the JTA scholarship receivers’ youth transitions are not finished yet because they have not reached their destination, the sufficient income to maintain their lives. Namely, they can repeat returning and leaving in their pathways like previous community returnees. Hence, their mobilities should not be judged a ‘failure’ of rural development; instead, it is significant to find a way to make them participate in rural development by considering their youth transition.