Local Governance
New Paradigmatic Shift

By Mukti Rijal

THE government decision not to extend the term of local bodies after they completed their five year tenure has provoked controversy. Legally the decision cannot be faulted as the Local Self-Governance Act leaves room for the government to opt for otherwise.

Best Option

However, from democratic point of view elections is the best option for which there should not be any alternative no matter the situation prevailling in the country. For a fair democratic elections voters should be fully relied up and they alone can defeat the forces that impose obstruction in the exercise of their franchise right. Local election is the foundation of political process. People have greater stakes on local government as the authorities at the local level deliver services to electorate at their doorstep. In a democratic society if local governments in the true sense of the term do not exist of function greater part of popular concerns remain unattended to.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair who gave more clout to local government after being swept to power almost seven years back wrote, "we need a new, a different local government to continue the task of modernisation and development. A new role for new millenium. A role that provides local people and their representatives with new opportunities. At the heart of new local government's new role is leadership-leadership that gives vision, partnership and quality of life to cities, towns and villages".
It shows that the local governments have been given greater recognition and role in the contemporary world and they are regarded as the vehicle of democratic evolution and transformation.

Local governments in Nepal found new meaning and substance especially after the enactment of local Self Governance Act in 1999. The local bodies developed clout and strength as they acquired political significance through massive political competition and education process unleashed at the local level. The government decision not to extend term of local government gained tremendous amount of publicity and even donors were reported not being happy with the step. The central fact behind it is the growing importance attached to the local bodies and enhanced process of political empowerment. Women and disadvantaged groups have found in local governments some space to articulate their aspirations though it is not very effective. Local political recruitment is in high gear and political parties compete in clinching power at the local level. Therefore, the resistance of local bodies against government decision not to extend tenure of local bodies got political overtone.

Besides this local bodies have started to play a major role in development activities with donor agencies going to them as partners. This should be the reason why some donor agencies gave their reaction against the decision of the government to let the local bodies go in a limbo. The strong and enlarged constituency of opinion in favour of local governments has however contributed to generate two positive outcomes.

The first outcome is that the government had to act fast to urge the Election Commission to conduct local elections within the current financial year. The second outcome has been the decision taken by the government to make an interim arrangement for carrying out functions of the local bodies. The local government bureaucracy in coordination with some line agency officials directly related to development has been given responsibility to perform core functions so that the people are not debarred from getting minimum services. It is perfectly an ad hoc arrangement which will finally lead to an early local elections. Instead of this, had there been an interim arrangement manned by local political workers recruited through cooptation, elections could have been put off for some more time under one or other pretext. Political functionaries tend to stay in positions to exert influence without going through political test.

There has been a trend worldwide to redefine the role and functions of local bodies in new dynamics and perspectives. There are certain phraseologies doing round in modern local government literatures these days. Most prominent of them are business-like, competitive, partnership, customer orientation, civic pride and caring. All these terminologies reflect the modern day trend of globalising world that require local governments to act in an innovative and imaginative way. Local governments in the modern day world should act as corporate entities do and devise strategy so that results and outcomes are efficient and effective. A corporate strategy is a set of decisions about the overall direction of an organisation, decisions which integrate its various activities and plan the response to contextual changes in the medium or long term.

Task

In Nepal partisan orientation is strong in local bodies. No matter legal mandates and competencies this has stopped the local government leaders from being creative and innovative. Their primary interest often seems oriented to serve to the partisan interest. The government decision not to go in for extension of the term of local bodies is motivated by political consideration as well. The main task that lies ahead is to exercise local bodies of petty politics and make them democratic entity committed to serve the people in businesslike manner.

Journalism: Genesis And Development

By Dolaraj Sharma

THE history of journalism dates back as early as 59 BC when a newssheet called the Acta Diurna was circulated in ancient Rome. It was hung in prominent places and recorded important social and political events. In China during the T'ang dynasty a court circular called a pao, or "report," was issued to government officials. This gazette appeared in various forms and under various names more or less continually to the end of the Ch'ing dynasty in 1911. The first regularly published newspapers appeared in German cities and in Antwerp around 1609. The first English newspaper, the Weekly Newes, was published in 1622. One of the first daily newspapers, The Daily Courant, appeared in 1702.

Indispensable

At first hindered by government-imposed censorship, restrictions, and taxes, newspapers in the 18th century came to enjoy the reportorial freedom and indispensable function that they have retained to the present day. The growing demand for newspapers owing to the spread of literacy and the introduction of steam- and then electric-driven presses caused the daily circulation of newspapers to rise from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands and eventually to millions.

Magazines, which had started in the 17th century as learned journals, began to feature opinion-forming articles on current affairs, such as those in the Tatler (1709-11) and the Spectator (1711-12). In the 1830s cheap, mass-circulation magazines aimed at a wider and less well-educated public appeared, as well as illustrated and women's magazines. The cost of large-scale newsgathering led to the formation of news agencies, organisations that sold their international journalistic reporting to many different individual newspapers and magazines. The invention of the telegraph and then the radio and television brought about a great increase in the speed and timeliness of journalistic activity and at the same time provided massive new outlets and audiences for their electronically distributed products. In the late 20th century, satellites were being used for the long-distance transmission on journalistic information.

Journalism in the 20th century has been marked by a growing sense of professionalism. There were four important factors in this trend: the increasing organisation of working journalists; specialised education for journalism; a growing literature dealing with the history, problems, and techniques of mass communication; and an increasing sense of social responsibility on the part of journalists.
An organisation of journalists began as early as 1883, with the foundation of England's chartered Institute of Journalists. Like the American Newspaper Guild, organized in 1933, and the Fédération Nationale de la Presse Française, the institute functions as both a trade union and a professional organisation.

Before the latter part of the 19th century, most journalists learned their craft as apprentices, beginning as copyboys or cub reporters. The first university course in journalism was given at the University of Missouri (Columbia) in 1879-84. In 1912 Columbia University in New York City established the first graduate programme in journalism, endowed by a grant from the New York City Editor and publisher Joseph Pulitzer. It was recognised that the growing complexity of news reporting and newspaper operation required a great deal of specialized training. Editors also found that in-depth reporting of special types of news, such as political affairs, business, economics, and science, often demanded reporters with background training in these areas. The advent of motion pictures, radio, and television as news media called for an ever-increasing battery of new skills and techniques in gathering and presenting the news. By the 1950s, courses in journalism or communications were commonly offered in colleges.

The literature of the subject-which in 1900 was limited to two textbooks, a few collections of lectures and essays, and a small number of histories and biographies-became copious and varied by the late 20th century. It ranged from histories of journalism to texts for reporters and photographers to books of conviction and debate by journalists on journalistic capabilities, methods, and ethics.

Concern for social responsibility in journalism is largely a product of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The earliest newspapers and journals were generally violently partisan in politics and considered that the fulfilment of their social responsibility lay in proselytising their own party's position and denouncing that of the opposition. As the reading public grew, however, the newspapers grew in size and wealth and became increasingly independent. Newspapers began to mount their own popular and sensational "crusades" in order to increase their circulation. The culmination of this trend was the "yellow journalism" competition between two New York City papers, the World and the Journal, in the 1890s.
The sense of social responsibility made notable growth as a result of specialized education and widespread discussion of press responsibilities in books and periodicals and at the meetings of the associations. Such reports as that of the Royal Commission on the Press (1949) in Great Britain and the less extensive A Free and Responsible Press (1947) by an unofficial Commission on the Freedom of the Press in the United States did much to stimulate self-examination on the part of practising journalists.

Idealistic

By the late 20th century, studies showed that journalists as a group were generally idealistic about their role in bringing the facts to the public in an impartial manner. Various societies of journalists have issued statements of ethics, of which that of the American Society of Newspaper Editors is perhaps the best known.

Blessed Land Of Mountains

By Bhimsen Thapaliya

WHILE travelling along hills in Sikkim, the rhododendrons and orchids remind one of Nepal. The capital city of Gangtok built on the face of a hill, takes you to Palpa in western Nepal. The Tista is comparable with the Gandaki and the Rangeet with the Rapti. The list may go on and on. There are so many similarities you hardly feel you are outside Nepal. The visible contrast is in road network. On this front, this tiny Indian state has gone a long way.

More than anything else, language is a remarkable binding factor. Most of the people in Sikkim have Mongol faces but they do not speak Lepcha or Bhotia. Though about twenty per cent of the people speak non-Nepali as their first language, there is none who cannot speak Nepali. Indians coming from the plains, who often pretend not to know Nepali in Kathmandu, speak Nepali in Sikkim. Either they speak English or must try Nepali for the local option.

"Hundred per cent of people here speak Nepali, says Sikkim's Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling, "and if you want to enter politics, your mastery of Neapli is a must."

Chamling, who carries the literary title of 'Kiran' along his name and has a poetry work "Bir Ko Parichaya" to his credit, recalls of attending Bhanu Jayanti functions as chief guest last month.
Twenty per cent of Sikkimese people from Lepcha and Bhutia communities speak their own languages as mother tongue. But Nepali as a lingua franca ties them together. A mammoth image of Buddha is being constructed in Namchi, a town in south Sikkim. "Beside the Buddha statue, we are also building an image of the Hindu god Lord Shiva," says Chandra Khaling of Nirman Publications.
The peace and prosperity in Sikkim also reflects the communal harmony existing here, says Chief Minister Chamling. He was a little disturbed to hear from the journalists that ethnic discontents were reported against his rule. It is quite baseless and unfair to talk about communal friction in Sikkim. "Put Gujarat, Sri Lanka and even Nepal in this list and leave Sikkim alone. We are the most peaceful in India," Chamling said.

If one forgets about the borderlines drawn by politics, the areas tied by Nepali language, literature and culture are as vast as the range of the Himalaya- spreading from Satlaj in the west upto Burma in the east. At a recent gathering of writers in Sikkim, literary figures had come from Nepal, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur. The gathering coincided with the 10th anniversary of the recognition of Nepali language in the Indian constitution.

The beautiful hamlets nestled on the lap of green hills, the whitewater streams roaring down the slopes, the lovely waterfalls, the blooming orchids in the forests on both sides of the Tista swirling south- one can hardly resist oneself from being enchanted. Sikkimeses are hill people but they are no more in the clutches of poverty. The impressive web of roads is leading the way to affluence. Sikkim has recognised what is the best for its economic strength. Tourism and hydropower are on top of the priority list. Fifteen years ahead, and we will remain farmers and cattle herders no more, predicts the Chief Minister, indicating a transforming switch towards trade and tourism.

Hilly topography seems to stand on the way of air transport facilities. But a new airport is being constructed at Pakyong, 45 km south of Gangtok. Sikkim is set to show being mountainous is just a blessing.