Widespread applications of reinforced concrete structures have been practiced since the 20th century because of their excellent properties despite their early corrosion degradation. For the control of such a problem, a design strategy of corrosion-resistant environments of the reinforced concrete structures is highly desirable for extending of a lifetime. The present research work was focused to investigate the effects of the green plant extract-based inhibitors from Vitex negundo and Catharanthus roseus leaves, and one waterproofing chemical (PtS) for controlling the corrosion susceptibility of concrete rebar using a half-cell potential method following the ASTM C876-91 standard. Both plant extracts have good anti-corrosion properties, and hence could be applied as green concrete additives to increase the corrosion resistance of the steel reinforcing bars. The anti-corrosion performance of the steel rebars in concrete is remarkably higher with the additions of 1000 and 2000 ppm plant extracts than the additions of waterproofing chemicals used, based on the shifting of corrosion potential (ϕcorr.) values to a more positive direction than −126 mV (SCE). The results agreed that both the plant extracts could be promising for the formulation of effective, ecofriendly anti-corrosion additives to delay the corrosion susceptibility of the concrete infrastructures.

Sidewalks in the Kathmandu Valley are punctuated with vendors busy selling their merchandise to the pedestrians. Notwithstanding that street vending provides thriving opportunities for earning to the lower class, it takes a heavy toll on their health due to the relentless inhale of pernicious air. Disinterested pedestrians feel their spaces being thronged and contested by the vendors and their customers who generally take more time to make a deal through bargaining. The city police, on the other hand, treat the vendors, in many places and occasions, as the “wretched of the earth” in their routine patrols. The resistance of the vendors is complex and dynamic, and entails layered responses varying from symbolic, talking violence of the pedestrians to the batons of city police. Through interviews and observation, this research aims to shed light on the vendor negotiations, and resistance strategies vis-à-vis pedestrians, and the city police.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launched the ‘People’s War’ from 1996 to 2006. The 10-year long insurgency in Nepal claimed over 13, 000 lives, and left over 1, 300 missing. As the Maoists professed themselves as a vanguard of a rebellion against the structural inequalities, they lured the members of the Dalit community into their ideology, and drafted many of them in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). State security forces, on the other hand, in a rapid escalation, targeted Dalit as Maoists or their allies. The shift in combat strategy of the Maoists in 2001, and the counter-insurgency tactics resulted in an increase of human rights violations against Dalit in the western hinterlands. By a qualitative interviewing of 17 Dalit families, of the two adjoining villages of west Nepal, of which 20 men were killed in two separate incidents by then Royal Nepal Army (RNA) in 2002, this article expounds the broad structural issues, the liberation and security discourses, and the local geography-time susceptibility of the families as the targets of state power enmeshed in the massacres as narrated by the family members, the contexts and grounds that culminated in the two events, and the social aftermath.