‘Hundred Flowers…Hundred Schools’

Editorial

The Nepali media regained its licensing independence when a flurry of newspapers came forth to add to existing mission journalist ranks to strengthen the fleet of multiparty publications. The publicity clout contributed to the discreditation of the ‘panchayat system with reforms’ and organizational activities therein contributed to the inefficacy of the panchayat response which then eased the process of panchayat collapse. The organized partisan camp remains. Strengthened by constitutional provisions introduced in 1990, the media is perhaps the lone investment sector that has been made untouchable by government. Press and publications acts and the right to information concepts have been imbibed in the current constitution as well which is understandable of course. What is not is the continuity granted the media right to government dole introduced in 1959 to help support a media that has a public service role. Large scale investments in media houses that have spread tentacles in all branches of the media — TV, radio and publishing — only naturally, thus, relegated credible media search to the fringes of small-capital weeklies. Even this was rendered difficult under the current constitution where small weeklies such as ours are threatened to be swept aside by the ease of the ‘net and political manipulations of outlets favouring the partisan. Latter-day Nepal must thus see media independence in the plethora of enterprising journalists who pick up he camera and microphone and enter the social media with Google being a primary vehicle. In other words, government reach of outlets have been usurped and more and more sections of the populations have been attracted to the relative independence of the social media as a source of information and commentary.

This relative independence is double-edged though. Web sites, blogs and You Tubes along with an increasing list of TV and FM radio channels added to the fleet of publications have allowed Nepal to cross a threshold in the communications revolution which borders on the incredible. Somehow You Tubers have had to include Kul Man Ghising’s (re)nomination to the Electricity Board amidst questions on the mundane as if he is running for a political post. One notices that certain public personalities have been studiously kept outside public scrutiny as if the effort is to cleanse them in preparation of a more pristine role in the future. Gagan Thapa, a Nepali Congress youth leader and legislator, comes to mind. There are others in this list of course and not all are in politics.

Journalist Rabi Lamichhane or activist Gyanendra Shahi comes to mind among others. They are media darlings in the modern sense when government and the ‘system’ are to be berated. What is more, the tremendous leeway this provides to the range of political analyses available in the Nepali media is mind-boggling and can surely not be without its political fall out. For example, flag-burning is the latest topic that must be disseminated for credibility and the incident is lifted again and again as reportage along with one or the other activist supporting it in its accompanying discourse. Also, the revival of ethnicity as an agenda or ethnocentric politics as a corollary cannot surely be merely perchance. China’s Chairman Mao had Emperor Qin Shi Huang to emulate. Perhaps our ruling party has Mao. And, so, we are amidst a ‘hundred flowers bloom …’ programme. One wonders whether we are aware of how both programmes concluded separated over millennia.

People’s Review Print Edition