Friday, June 20, 2008

Future of Stray Animals at Kathmandu

" I am innocent, my owner left me in the busy street... I didn't know where to go? I didn't know who was going to take care of me?" - June 2, 2008




"I died on the street, still no body cared" - June 19, 2008

No Petrol!!! Is there any solution?

Who is going to talk about these issues? Where are so called civil society leaders?
Per Bottle NRS 150.oo only

No Petrol, sleeping while waiting

Our Past, present and can be our future, we need to think very seriously. Youth should be more serious. We need to take action.




Thursday, June 19, 2008

Civil Society in Nepal

Mainly three actors are categorized as responsible agencies for nation building viz. state, market and civil society. Currently, in Nepal the State is very weak due to the unstable political changes which are rapid and unavoidable creating the anomalous situation all over the country. In fact, it will take time to come to the normal situation, which is quite explicable.

In Nepal, due to lack of strong governance the state of impunity is increasing day by day with the poor functioning or absence of the social security system as well as no control towards inflation. Thus, in such situation where the market itself is weak there arises no question of investing personal property for establishing new industries or other business.

Civil society with their forms, features and function opened to broader extent than any I/NGOs has an active and imperative role in the social transformation. In Nepal, though civil society most of the time perform as watch dogs seldom raise voices for people. In the current context of Nepal civil society should have seen presenting strongly and strategically pro people however they are limiting their roles for power and money which might make them hyperactive towards political issues.

Majority of the civil society in the country are party aligned and are very political rather than social. In other words, we can say that the political parties are leading the social and civil department of the political parties through the civil society. Currently, in the political debate about the position of the President of Nepal, some of the major parties proposed names from civil society actors as future President. This can be understood as the clever alliance between the people of Civil society and political leaders. Rather than working for people are so called visionary leaders from Civil society are again showing their greed for power, position and politics. Not a single civil society has yet remarked on shortage of fuel or outcry pro people against implications of inflation where each day prices of commodities prices are increasing like nothing. Similarly, no civil society is against garbage and litters at the street at the Kathmandu valley, does any one agitated against the Municipality to take responsibility? No, when it comes to the matter of position and politics they are ready at the street and collect money for supporting livelihood of ex-king but have they ever fund raised or just provided their expertise to control traffics or air pollution?

In Nepal, civil society leaders are generally very familiar faces yet they are trusted by general citizen for advocating for their rights. However, the general mass should also be able to asses their representative rather than blindly following their so called civil leaders who doesn't have ethics and moral. They are not raising their voice when issues are affecting daily life of the citizen. In this background we can conclude that civil society in Nepal is not yet visionary and strategic rather are politicized and popularized. To be very specific they are not representing citizens rather are representatives of political parties. We all agree that Civil society should raise voices on the political issues which should favor for people but they should not limit their role as political agents but should open up being critical, essential and real change makers!


Now it is a high time for the emergence of new groups who really represent the citizen not the political parties’ agents.


Author: Niraj Khanal
Editor: Deepti Khakurel

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Blogging again...

Dear all, I am back to blogging after a year. As Nepal moved through the great political turn over, I personally feel that every Nepalese should express their feelings and provide inputs to the policy makers to revive the nation. At the same time I believe all of us are equally capable of giving valuable suggestions or at least a feedback on nation's issues. During informal discussions with my friends, colleagues and relatives, generally I find them very critical on their views and some of their thoughts and ideas are very creative and unique. Though having better ideas, we don't open up easily rather suppress our feelings without the knowledge of such places where we can/should share our feelings.



To all those who shared wonderful feelings with me, I suggested them to write article and publish it to newspaper. However, most of us are not used to writing despite of the fact that how good attempter we are when it comes to giving speech. This is because we never try to write. I also don’t enjoying writing but writing is the only means through which our thoughts become visible and aspirations to others. I have suggested some of my friends and colleague to start blogging, though I myself was not doing since a year. Now from today onwards I have started to blog, I will express myself, I don’t know whether I am right or wrong. And I look forward for all of yours critical comments and suggestion on my writing and thoughts.



Start blogging because all of ours voice counts.