Migration
A Small Step To Development

By Jhabindra Bhandari

DURGA Prasad Poudel, 40, of Anandpur in Chitwan has spent almost twenty years of his life in Terai. His family has been enjoying a happy life since he migrated from Baglung - a hill district in the Western Development Region to the fertile land of Chitwan where agriculture is the mainstay of rural economy. In the locality, there are almost hundred migrant families of small farmers. All of them rely heavily on subsistence farming for livelihood.

Tough

These families were much frustrated due to limited cultivable land in the hills. To survive with meagere agricultural resources was tough. Furthermore, they acutely lacked food security, education, transportation, communication and economic opportunities.

"Here we have easy access to education, health and social services including communication and information. Our socio-economic life has drastically changed now, " says Durga with confidence.
Hence for individuals, migration is often a rational and dynamic effort to seek new opportunities in life. Hundreds of people, especially from hill districts like Baglung, Lamjung, Tanahun, Dhading, Parbat, Kaski, and Gulmi migrate to Chitwan every year. Apart from improved farming, Chitwan is particularly rich in wildlife, tourism, bio-diversity and ethnic diversity.

"We have cultivable lands where we grow crops and vegetables for livelihood. And, we have never experienced any food crisis yet like in the hills," says Heera Mani Kharel who migrated to Chitwan from Gulmi a decade ago.

Migration is, in fact, a complex process that draws attention of demographers, sociologists and economists. It has wider socio-economic impacts on individuals, families and communities. According to United Nations Multi-lingual Demographic Dictionary, migration is a form of geographic or spatial movement involving a change of usual residence between clearly defined geographical units. With the growing advancement of science and technology, migration is increasingly recognised as an important factor for population change and its distribution.

Evidently, migration is taking place all over the world and it may be of different forms. The only cause of rural to urban migration in the country is apparently visible. Compared to rural - urban migration, rural to rural and urban to urban migration are relatively limited in developing countries. The mounting challenges of health care, education, employment, transportation, and communication services in the remote hills have forced the rural people to migrate in the Teari and urban cities for an improved livelihood. The trend of such migration is ever increasing in the least developing countries. In the present context of political conflicts, people have to leave their places of residence for a variety of reasons - causing migration.

Similarly, seasonal migration is on rise for economic opportunities. Interestingly, people migrate to plains due to acute cold weather in the high mountains in the winter and are again back to their homes during spring. There are both 'pull and push' factors determining migration. These largely include social, economic, demographic, political and geographic determinants. As all know by now, rural poverty, unemployment, and lack of agricultural resources are the pushing factors for migration.
The widespread social causes have overwhelming impacts on migration. Marriage is one of the most important social determinants responsible for migration. Similarly, in a very complex situation like caste and class discrimination, poor social security and natural calamities, migration becomes more vibrant. In addition to this, demographic determinants such as age, sex, and population growth and density affect the size and direction of migration. The recent trend of migration indicates that young adult population migrate most for education and economic opportunities. Similarly, geographic and political determinants also play a significant role in migration.

On the other side, international migration is also increasing in this era of modernisation and globalisation. It is found that such migration is largely due to international economic imbalances, poverty and environmental degradation, combined with absence of peace and security, human rights violations and so on.

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report on International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), it is estimated that the number of international migrants in the world, including refugees, is in excess of 125 million, about half of them in developing countries.
The report further mentions that the main receiving countries in the developed world registered a net migration intake of approximately 1.4 million persons annually, about two thirds of whom originated in developing countries in the recent years. This type of migration is believed to have great potential of facilitating the transfer of skills and contributing to cultural enrichment. This entails the loss of human resources for many countries of origin, however.

Migration is definitely a development issue. Like many developing countries in the world, Nepal is also experiencing rapid population growth and urbanisation. In the recent years, attention has been paid to rural - urban migration in particular. Urban cities are regarded as centers of economic growth that offer numerous employment and economic opportunities for socio-economic development. However, experience shows that inequitable allocation of development resources, adoption of inappropriate technologies and lack of access to available land are also giving a push to migration.

Response

In this context, government should adopt sustainable regional development strategies that offer tangible benefits to rural as well as urban people. Side by side, the government should also strengthen their capacities to respond to the pressing needs and choices of urban population.

Media And Rural Sector

By Narendra Pal

DENIS McQuail reminds us: "as an adjective the word 'public' indicates what is open rather than closed, what is freely available rather than private in terms of access and ownership, what is collective and held in common rather than what is individual and personal." Thus, the 'public sphere' suggests those spaces in society that are open, accessible, shared, collective and common.

Model

Assessing media in terms of their contributions to the 'public interest' indicates that the media are fundamentally intertwined with matters of common good rather than just private profit.

In the Nepalese context, the media mostly focus their attention on limited metropolitan and a few growing cities, depending upon the infrastructures, creating an impression that the issues pertinent to these areas are the matters of 'public interest.'

Mass Media's growth in Nepal has very brief history, especially if the growth after 1990 is taken into account. During this period, however, they have not been able to adequately encompass Nepal's difficult rural settings and cover the issues of direct interest to the people there. This could be because the government has not shown enough interest to help the media reach the rural areas or the media's own constraints make them abstain from difficult working locales.

Some people with the kind of 'Media Mania' they have, dominate the headlines and coverage of the national media, leaving the interest of the massive rural audience/readers or viewers away from limelight. As such, a major portion of population has no access to media despite the claim that the present time is 'information age.' The Nepalese rural people, who strive most of the time for insufficient bread and butter sparing no moment to know outside world, are far from benefiting from it.
Nepalese urban areas are media saturated whereas the rural areas are media ignorant. Isn't it a big paradox for 20 million people? We can use media to improve the quality of our lives or we can permit our lives to be seriously disrupted.

Therefore, the mass media have to cater to the rural society with the ultimate objective to encompass/incorporate the interest of one seventh of the nation's population, the total figure, according to Census 2001, standing at 23,151,423. The municipalities share 3,227,879 and VDCs, 19,923,544, of that population.

With the dawn of 21st century, the global media industry is in the midst of rapid change. A wave of corporate mergers and the emergence of new digital technologies are transforming the media landscape as well. We are witnessing the rise of media conglomerates of unprecedented size and, at the same time a dramatic increase in the sheer volume of media content. More than ever, citizens are immersed in a media-saturated world.

Though it is irrelevant to define "nation", but nation denotes sovereignty and definite territory of its own. Nepal possesses both in the true sense. It is also divine truth that balanced progress is possible when planning and its implementation is done wisely and appropriately. Underdeveloped nations fail to successfully complete the projects in time or rather drop them on the way leaving the target far behind. There are also tremendous manipulations taking place in the mean time. If media had not been watchful, public would not have access to irregularities in their surroundings. Thus, the media have a multidimensional duty. Their role has to be concrete and serious and should perform in the public interest.

On the other side of the coin, the media can be thought of developing in dual models. One is the market model, and another the public sphere model. The assumptions of the second model introduce social issues into the discussion by highlighting the public interest role of the mass media. Rural public has the impression that media industry fails to serve its interest, especially in reference to Nepal. On the other hand, a virtual ground on the part of media's being market model is to safeguard the huge investment they make as an industry.

They can achieve high standard by exploring how policy and citizen activism can help produce media that are more responsive to the needs of citizens in a diverse democratic society. Taken for granted that journalists in the least developed nations are mostly in difficult situations in the fields and while reporting, because they have to work under constraints. These contradictions are more visible while they have to cover the rural sector.

There are slogans of Global Village from media point of view. Enormous progress has been achieved in the global media sector, which is thriving on cutting edge technology. There are remarkable reductions in cost, time, and space as well as instant effective phenomenal impacts on culture worldwide. But the case of Nepal's rural scoiety, remains gloomy. What scales could be valid to understand the misery of being away from this facility?

It would be relevant to know about Nepalese Media in a nutshell. Gorkhapatra (print) came into existence on 24 Baisakh, 1958 BS. Radio Nepal was established on 20th Chaitra 2007. Nepal Television started on 17th Magh 2041 and was connected to Communication Satellite on 20th Ashad 2058. These important media have been serving regularly to their best since their origin.
Today media scenario has improved. It is encouraging that the media industry is expanding. Broadcast media like radio, television and cable television, besides Internets are coming up. But the significant question is whether they are willing to work on the public sphere model or market model or adopt a modest course.

To be fair, many parts of the country are deprived of roads, telecommunication, postal and air services. The unemployment problem has been a Herculean one. The rural society is the victim of all these phenomena and has fallen far behind in development. In such a situation, the rural people are least concerned with media services, even though they are essential. They are more concerned for their own sustenance.

Help

If the media can manage media literacy programmes for rural communities, it can be 'a straw to the drowning'. There can be scholarships for remote youths to study journalism to start awareness movement. Similarly NGOs may be of great help for the media industry to expand as well as cover the rural society.

It's Crunch Time

By Narayan Upadhyay

CHEATING is one thing that never goes away. Even if the authority tries to stop swindling through stricter measures, the swindlers keep popping up with noble ideas to trap the people who have high dreams and also high degree of ignorance.

A recent US Embassy report has stated that some people with great acumen to dupe came up with a noble idea. They created an imaginary country- The Republic of Crunch - to lure those who want to fly in to the land of plenty- the US of A.

The con artists said that anyone who posseses the passports procured in the name of The Crunch Republic can easily slip inside America. And some Nepalese, with dearth of lucre but full of dreams in their eyes, made a beeline to get the passports, paying a good sum in green bucks.

When the American Embassy denied them visas saying that there was no such country in the Globe only then they came to know that the dreams to land on the El Dorado were suddenly shattered.
Ever since Nepalese knew that the rich dividends of human toils can be reaped from the foreign soils, they are flocking to the manpower supply agencies which have paved the ways for the mushrooming of the thousands of the manpower supply agencies, a hunting ground for the agents with crooked intent, who pull the wool over the eyes of these simple folks taking advantage of their ignorance.
The people of remote villages have been selling even all of their property, just to pay these agencies so that they can fly or sail to the land of opportunities without knowing that when they come in contact with the manpower supply agents, their days of doom have approached.

The simple folks' deep faith on the agents notwith-standing these agents are out to cheat them, in one or other pretexts. If you are the one who want to go abroad with the help of such agents be warned that they may cheat you in various ways. Selling counterfeit passports with fake visas is one of them. There are other ways a crooked agent follows to dupe an aspiring job seeker.

Instances have shown that these agents, after collecting fees and other expenses, have failed to turn up on the day the job seeker hopes to fly to the land where he is supposed to work. There are cases of providing fake air tickets too. Even after you become successful in making the coveted trip, you might have been travelling with the forged documents, courtesy the crooked agents. This may give you a lot of headaches in the foreign immigration office.

There are other hiccups too. You may not get the job you have been promised prior to your departure. Or, even if you get a job in the foreign land, your salary may fall far short of what you were promised. As a labourer in foreign soils, you are not entitled to any health care guarantee schemes, which may jeopardise your life while you work as a manual labourer. If you are a woman, you should be prepared to face many hazards- from low salary, gender discriminations to sexual assaults.

Job seeking in foreign land is fraught with the dangers of not only being cheated both by the local manpower agents but by the firms owners abroad. Despite this, people still love to go abroad because the need to earn livelihoods is far stronger than the fear of being cheated. The Nepalese really do not feel any crunch when they are promised for a job in foreign land no matter whether the promised land is an imaginary one.