At Last, a Village Voice
Townspeople in Nepal have over 300 newspapers, both good and bad, to choose from. But, so far, the people of the country's 50,000-plus villages, with over 90 per cent of the population, have had none directed specifically at them. That deficiency has now been corrected with the debut of Gaun Ghar, a wall newspaper which is emerging as an important source of information on change and development for the villager.
Posted on the walls of village schools, banks and tea shops, Gaun Ghar seems to have hit its target readership. Men and women on their way to the fields or forest increasingly stop by to go through the tabloid's large type and easy script. Children on their way home from school test themselves on what the latest Gaun Ghar has to say. The twenty by thirty inch poster sized newspaper sometimes does not get pasted and is passed hand to hand.
The newspaper focuses on development issues of special interest to the farmers. It carries special features on subjects such as health, sanitation and the status of women. There is a comic strip across the bottom of the page. "We write and rewrite to make the sentences simple and the ideas clear and direct," says Assistant Editor Kedar Sharma. "We travel all over the hills and come back with first hand news, which makes the copy more interesting," says Sharma.
The push behind Gaun Ghar came from its Editor Hem Bahadur Bista and Bharat Dutt Koirala, Executive Director of the Nepal Press Institute (NPI). In Koirala's words, the idea was to provide the rural people with a newspaper "in their own language." The sheet began publishing in April 1987 with the support of UNICEF, Agriculture Development Bank (ADB) and NPI. The newspaper costs NRs 6 per copy but is sold at a subsidized rate of a rupee each. Voluntary groups such as Action Aid buy Gaun Ghar at cost price and spread it around. Distribution is done using the effective network of ADB's Small Farmers Development Programme.
Two years of experience, says Koirala, has shown that Gaun Ghar provides farmers with an opportunity to use their literacy for a purpose, that is, by reading about 'ways to make their lives more productive'. 'Without a paper like Gaun Ghar, people will lapse into illiteracy. The whole rationale of education and adult education then gets wasted.'
This rationale seems to be working for 150,000 villagers who read Gaun Ghar in the 5,000 hamlets where it is now posted. Recently, a farmer from Jhapa in west Nepal installed an innovative water pump after he read about another farmer using it in Chitwan in central Nepal. It thrilled the editors of Gaun Ghar no end.
Himalaya Today
This new quarterly news magazine deals with the economic, social and environmental issues facing the people of Himalaya, but its major focus is politics. Due to the geo-political significance of the Himalaya, the importance of a magazine such as this cannot be over-emphasized. The maiden issue appeared in June 1988. The chief editor of Himalaya Today is Dil Kumari Bhandari and its patron is Sikkim Chief Minister Nar Bahadur Bhandari.
Articles in the September issue (Vol.1, No.2) deal with, among others, the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling, prospects of Sikkim's industrial development, child labour in Darjeeling's tea gardens, genesis of the insurgency in India's north-east, the Tehri Dam in Garhwal, and Indo-Nepal migration. The editorial is on the Gorkhaland accord, and there is a book review section.
Himalaya Today, with its political focus and in-depth coverage of the Indian Himalaya, is sure to help promote understanding of this neglected region. The magazine costs IRs 10 per issue. Contact: Central News Agency, 23/90 Connaught Circus, New Delhi 110 001 – Sudhir Sharma.