KATHMANDU, July 22: Every monsoon, the Manohara River comes closer to Jima Sherpa’s home. When it rains for days, she stays awake at night, fearfully anticipating the sound of water breaking through her walls.
“It enters our rooms,” she says, “Our food gets ruined. We lift what we can, but some things, you just have to let go.”
Sherpa is 60 years old. She came here from Dolakha about twenty years ago. She wanted her children to study in Kathmandu and escape high rents. She and her family built a house on land near the river that was previously empty.
“We came for the children’s education,” she says. “The land wasn’t ours, but it was empty. So we made it our home.”
Two decades later, life by the river still feels uncertain.
Outside the maps
Jadibuti–Manohara’s tin-roofed lanes do not appear on official maps of Kathmandu. For residents here, life goes on outside the paperwork that defines the city’s plans, property rights, and public services. Local officials disagree on whether these areas should be referred to as squatter settlements.
Hari Bahadur Basnet, a ward member for Kathmandu Metropolitan City-32, says his office doesn’t recognize the area as a squatter settlement.
“There are no squatters here,” Basnet says. “Before 2025 BS, some houses did spread onto public land. But that land now belongs to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.”
Behind the silence is a wall of legal technicality. According to Basnet, the land isn’t public; people think it’s government land because it looks like a riverbed, but it belongs to private owners, some of whom haven’t been compensated. “This isn’t our jurisdiction,” he says. “If eviction happens, it’ll be the federal government’s decision.”
As a result, nothing happens. No eviction. No support. No plan.
Living without papers
Sherpa and Sarita Bishwakarma, 44, live on different edges of the Jadibuti–Manohara settlement but share the same uncertain life.
Bishwakarma has spent nearly sixteen years living on the riverbank near Manohara. She came from Bahrabise in Sindhupalchok, hoping for better opportunities in Kathmandu. But life here has never felt secure.
She owns no legal papers for her home. Years ago, she even paid rent to private land claimants who themselves had no official right to the land. Now, she lives without any formal recognition or guarantee that she’ll be allowed to stay.
Lending slows as banks focus on recovery of loans at fiscal yea...
She says, “Even basic services have been a constant struggle”. Bishwakarma only got electricity after repeated pleas, and she pays high rates because her connection is labelled “temporary.”
Though some shared toilets have been built, sanitation is fragile. Local governments have stopped many NGO projects from helping the locals, Bishwakarma says.
Despite the challenges, Bishwakarma remains active in her community. When the local ward refused to recognise the settlement officially, she and others formed their group to help neighbours solve problems.
Bishwakarma hopes for one thing: certainty. She wants to live without fear of eviction, but says she’s willing to move if it means safety and proper services. “We just want a place where we can live without worry,” she says. “If not here, then somewhere else. But not this life of waiting.”
For Bishwakarma, living without papers means living without peace. And each season, as the river rises, her future remains as uncertain as ever.
A different story in Bhaktapur
Across the river in Bhaktapur, even though there are more houses, life looks similar from the outside. Tin roofs, muddy lanes, and fear of floods. But the community there seems more organized.
Rita Majhi, 28, came from Kavrepalanchowk 15 years ago. Bikram Gurung, 36, came from Makwanpur around the same time. Both bought small plots from earlier settlers. No official documents exist. Deals were made under handshake and trust.
“I paid for it,” Bikram says. “But I know it’s not legally mine.”
Shyam Krishna Prajapati, Ward Member for Madhyapur Thimi Municipality-1, estimates that around 700 households live in Bhaktapur’s squatter areas.
“People keep building more homes. We have no control over it,” he says
Earlier eviction attempts failed. Politics made things complicated. But help has come in emergencies. Prajapati says the municipality distributed rice, oil, and cash relief of around Rs 25,000 per household after the flood last year, even to those who are living in squatter settlements. Unlike on the Kathmandu side, Bhaktapur’s squatters have formed local committees that coordinate with the ward, helping build bamboo barriers against floods and pushing for basic services like water lines and school funding.
A government school, Shree Saraswati Secondary School, sits inside the settlement and receives funding from the municipality, offering children at least some stability amid uncertain living conditions. While residents still lack legal ownership, this cooperation offers hope for a more secure future.
In the Federal Urban Budget for Fiscal Year 2082/83 BS, Rs 30 million has been allocated under the Settlement Development Program (34701114) for public land protection works in Suryabinayak, Changunarayan, and Madhyapur Thimi Municipalities of Bhaktapur. Although not a housing project for squatters, such measures are crucial for preventing further encroachment, a key issue in managing squatter settlements.
The landowners’ side
Megh Nath Chaulagai, from Kavre, bought three aana of land near the Manohara in 2058 B.S., where he wanted to grow vegetables.
But about 14 years ago, someone built a small house on his land. The man has refused to leave.
“At first, he said he’d pay rent,” Megh Nath says, “But he hasn’t paid for 12 or 13 years.”
The man now claims he pays rent to the previous landowner. Megh Nath went to the police. They said they would act, but nothing changed.
“I didn’t go to court,” he says. “I thought the police should handle it.”
He believes some squatters own land elsewhere but use political connections to stay near the river. But it’s hard to prove such claims in every case.
Padma Bahadur’s journey
Padma Bahadur Sijapati, 60, remembers how it all began. He came from Surkhet’s then Chaukune VDC to Kathmandu around 2058 BS after being displaced by conflict.
“We came at night and settled,” he says. “There were fights with the police. Later, we worked with political parties.” Now, he’s a senior advisor for the National Sukumbasi Morcha. He speaks for squatter communities.
Sijpati says that about 3,496 families live along the riverbanks in the Kathmandu Valley. Some families have managed to buy land elsewhere. But he says not everyone has that chance.
“There are squatters in Nepal, we were squatters, and we still are.”
He still has land in Surkhet and bought some land in Kavre. But he says many squatters started with nothing.
Relocation remains a problem. Sijapati visited the buildings that the government built in Ichangu Narayan for squatters. He found them too small and poorly built. “They say they’ll give one room per family,” he says. “How can a whole family live in one room?”
Shifting river
Over the years, the Manohara River has slowly changed its path, as both residents and local officials confirm. Ward Member Basnet says that maps from 2021 BS show the river flowing in a different place than it does now. Because of this shift, land that used to be private now lies within the river’s current path, creating confusion about boundaries and ownership.
People like Sijapati also agree that the river’s movement has put squatter settlements partly on land officially marked as riverbed and partly on nearby private plots. The shifting river has made legal claims, development plans, and the safety of families along the river more complicated, leaving government and landowners struggling with overlapping responsibilities and ongoing uncertainty.
Alternative plan
Plans for a fruit and vegetable wholesale market once promised a different future for the banks of the Manohara River. In the mid-2000s, the government laid a foundation stone for the market on 200 ropanis of land in Madhyapur Thimi, inaugurated by then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, with hopes of creating a thriving hub for fresh produce trading. However, nearly half the planned site, about 90 ropani, was soon occupied by squatters, and the project stalled. Despite budget allocations and official pledges, the market was never built.
Local leaders like Basnet and Prajapati recall how the area was originally intended for this market but became entangled in land disputes and encroachment issues.
Who actually are Sukumbasi?
In Nepal, the term “Sukumbasi” refers to landless squatters, people living without legal rights on public or private land, often in makeshift settlements along riverbanks, such as those on the banks of the Manohara. While many, like Sherpa and Biswakarma, arrived from rural districts seeking better opportunities, the question persists: who truly counts as a Sukumbasi in a country where most families can trace land ownership back generations?
Some settlers, such as Sijapati, started with nothing but have since acquired property elsewhere, blurring the lines between genuine landless communities and those staying for convenience or political reasons. This raises concerns about whether the Sukumbasi issue is a never-ending cycle, especially as new migrants continue to arrive and settlements expand.
The cost of being invisible
Between the river and the buildings, the Sukumbasi of Jadibuti–Manohara live in constant uncertainty. People like Sherpa and Biswakarma have built homes in places the city does not officially recognise, facing floods, insecurity, and being left off the map. Across the river in Bhaktapur, life is a bit more organised, but the same fears remain.
Landowners, too, are caught in this web of contested claims, legal loopholes, and inaction, while leaders like Sijapati speak for the squatter cause. Yet Sijapati himself is part of the complex truth: though he once arrived with nothing, he now holds land in multiple places, hinting at how blurred the lines have become between the landless and those who have quietly secured property but remain symbols of the struggle.
In the MTM Appropriation Act 2081, Madhyapur Thimi Municipality has planned programs for managing squatter settlements in line with broader urban development goals. These initiatives include organised settlement and basic services. However, the Act does not detail any Sukumbasi-related projects dedicated specifically to Ward No. 1, suggesting that future actions for that ward would likely be implemented under broader municipality-wide programs.
After all, Sukumbasi or not, they are people like anyone else. When the floods come, they could lose not just their homes and things, but their lives. Every monsoon, the river gets closer, and people like Sherpa and Bishwakarma keep waiting for help. If the worst happens, who will answer for the lives lost in the water?
