Household maintenance in Tharu slums
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After demolishing the old house, some are carrying wooden poles and some are burying the poles. The women are busy with fencing and lip pot work. In Ramnagar Tharu Basti of Belauri Municipality-5, they are currently engaged in the work of demolishing an old house and building a new one.
After bringing in winter crops like wheat, mustard, and lentils, they are busy building houses using their free time. In Tharu community, it is not only the time to build a new house, but also to demolish the old house. That's why all the women and men of Tharu settlement seem to be busy at the moment.
'There is no farming work now, we are all at leisure, this is the time to build a new house and repair the old one,' said Jagdish Choudhary of Belauri-5, 'After building the house, we start farming.' That is why they are going to demolish the old house and build a new one. In the Tharu community, which mostly depends on agriculture, it is customary to do most of the work from farming to the neighborhood collectively.
In the Tharu settlement, the trend of making concrete houses instead of traditional ones is increasing. It also makes the houses made of wood and mud look very rare . Traditional houses made of wood and mud look very attractive and are suitable for both cold and hot weather. Chowdhury says that traditional houses are less visible as wood is less available and expensive in recent times. 
Women and men of the Tharu community building a house in Ramnagar, Belauri, the southern region of Kanchanpur. Photo: Bhavani Bhatt/Kantipur
'This is our tradition, it is still going on now,' said Rajmati Choudhary, a local of Ramnagar, 'Men work with wood, women work on lippots.' Because of this, there is a problem in building a house .
A house coated with white mud brought from the deep part of the river or lake looks very attractive as if painted. But now it is very difficult to get such soil . Even for red clay, you have to go far. Women make lippot by mixing sawdust with soil . Which makes the fence like a solid one and even the rain can't affect it much .
Due to the fact that young people have gone abroad for employment, the manpower to help build houses in the village is very less. This work has also come on the shoulders of elders.
