Rural Development

MINISTER for Forest and Soil Conservation Gopal Man Shrestha reiterated the commitment of His Majesty’s Government for the uplift of social and economic condition of the people living in rural areas through accelerating the pace of local development. Inaugurating the 17th general meeting of Village Service Family in Syangja district the other day, Minister Shrestha said that since the all-round development of the country cannot be attained without the development of the backward and remote areas, the government has placed more emphasis on carrying out development works in the village and local level. Nepal is a rural country with more than 75 per cent people living in villages and country’s development depends upon the level of development in the rural areas. Realising this need, His Majesty’s Government has accorded high priority to local development. The allocation of more than 70 per cent of the national budget to the development of rural areas is an ample example of its commitment and seriousness to local development. The government has adopted the policy of encouraging and enabling local people and local authorities to carry out development activities. Thus, the concept of decentralization has been implemented. Experiences have shown that planning, designing and implementing development projects from the centre have not been successful in catering to the developmental needs of the local people. Only local people know what their needs are and can properly and effectively monitor the development activities in their areas. Moreover, decentralisation builds capability of the local people and their representatives, empowers them to identify their needs, and plans, designs, operates and monitors development projects in accordance with the need of the local areas. After the restoration of multi-party democracy 11 years ago, the government has given more emphasis on decentralization and empowerment of local authorities. The Local Self Governance Act has empowered local authorities to carry out all these development related activities and sought to genuinely promote decentralization. However, local representatives have demanded more power and authority for making decentralization more effective and meaningful. Since the prime objective of democracy is to strengthen people’s power and make the people master of their own destiny, genuine decentralization translates this objective into a ground reality. An accelerated pace of rural development is, therefore, a must for the sustainable development of the country, for which more focus has to be laid on creating human resource at the local level and building capacity of local bodies and people’s representatives.

Film South Asia-2001

FILM South Asia-2001, a festival of South Asian documentaries, go underway in Kathmandu the other day. Altogether, 45 documentaries from Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are contesting for the four-day festival. Similarly, over two dozen film directors from all over the world as well as a large audience from South Asian nations are participating in the film festival. This is not the very first time that such a film festival has been held in Nepal. Nor, for that matter, will it be the last. In fact Nepal, with its myriad natural, historical and cultural charms coupled with the needed infrastructure to screen the films for the discerning audiences, can be a ready venue to hold one or the other film festival. This time round it is playing host to the Film South Asia-2001 Festival for documentaries. As all know by now, there are different genres of films—and hence different categories of film festivals. Be that as it may, films, among other existing tools of the mass media, have a marked advantage over others in that they can deal with various aspects of societal issues, problems and challenges in a more detailed way, manner and scope. That is why a film show, inspite of being given a run for its popularity by the idiot box’s ability to show a wide variety of programmes beamed through satellites, still continues to draw audience. Another reason for a film show’s appeal among audience is that viewing the story unfolding on a big screen with all its gory or glory is far much appealing to that of seeing the same film in the idiot box. And the more relevant the film’s message on contemporary issues, problems and challenges, the more the audience. The same seems to the case with the Film South Asia-2001 Fest.

Among the different genres of films, documentaries have their own unique niche in the film world. It could be for this very reason that documentaries still continue to have their own hold and appeal among the audiences. One main reason for this is that a documentary tries its best to portray reality— moles, warts and all. This, needless to point out, could sometimes be quite unpalatable, if not downright debatable to some sections of society. But surely that is what a documentary is all about: to sensitise the audience about contemporary societal issues, problems and challenges.