8.5 Federalism and State Restructuring

The ground (recap): the why (exclusion and conflict — Sociology 7.5), the design (7–753–3), the unfinished (capacity, boundaries, fiscal federalism). The movement-reading (this unit'saddition): federalism as the convergence point of all four movements — the Dalit demand for representation, the janajati demand for identity-provinces, the Madhesh demand for the tarai's autonomy, and the women's movement's demand for local voice: each found in "restructuring" its own answer — which is why the 2007–15 settlement was simultaneously constitutional engineering and social-movement arbitration (the CA as the movements' parliament). Theanthropological record of the transition (learn three findings): (1) the local governments' arrival as an identity transformation (the ward office in the mother tongue; the deputy-mayor's office as gender's institutional revolution); (2) the boundary and naming contests as identity's ongoing production (Koshi 2023; the Tharuhat far-west assertion); (3) the everyday federalism gap — the provincial official still met in Kathmandu's guest-houses; the civil service's slow federalisation — structure preceding practice (Sociology 7.5's implementation files, ethnographed). The law-student's close: federalism is the legal answer to an anthropological diagnosis — a society too plural for one centre; its success will be measured in the only currency anthropology recognises: whose voice changes at the village pump.