The Gurkha Recruitment, Remittances and Development

Abstract

Nepali's migration for foreign employment began with the Gurkha's recruitment in the British Army in the dawn of the nineteenth century. Since then, they have been sending remittances to the country as recruitment has been an aspect of bilateral relations between the two countries. After 1947, when India was liberated from the British colonial rule, the Gurkha's recruitment diversified to other countries including India and Singapore. This process is continued and tends to be so for some near future. Thus, the country is receiving a sustainable source of remittances from Gorkha working in different foreign armies. This fact is often ignored in the studies of remittances and their applications in Nepal. This article analyzes Gurkha's recruitment pattern in different national armies, the remittances they send, and the application and development function of the remittances. This article concludes that Gurkha's collective recruitment in the foreign armies involved social and financial forms of remittances. The social remittances significantly contributed to social modernization in the isolated villages, while the financial remittances spurred entrepreneurship development thereby contributing to regional development.