Leading local initiatives

Staying away from one’s hometown means living with a longing. A perpetual nostalgia that one has to carry along, and which creeps into whatever one does. A search for belongingness that makes one yearn to contribute in making the place better. News from home brings some solace. And thankfully, internet helps in filling that emptiness by bringing news instantly. Some say, may be because of this, it has made the world smaller. But that’s not the only reason why the world can be said to have shrunken.

Recently, when I read about another Community Radio launched in Walling (my hometown) of Syangja District, it was one such comforting occasion. The town already had one, running for last few years. And the district now has three FMs. Am I proud? Am I happy?

This one looks purposeful and promising. They even have launched a website. I immediately visited the website of the radio, www.radioawaling.org. It aspires to play a vital role in reaching out to the grass root level to increase awareness in organic farming, ecology, environment and sanitation. It also wants to address - again straight from the website – co-existing problems of environmental degradation and global warming to add a brick to the global concern from the local level.

I realize the glee is not only because it is about my hometown. There must be many other places in Nepal with such initiatives. But it is about understanding the world in general and identifying our place, stand and role in it.

Long period of remaining outside the heart of the world has probably the same effect on a society that being away from hometown has on an individual. May be, we miss the world. May be, we seek a world where we have a say.

What better way can there be to share the world than sharing its concerns, worries and problems and trying to find solutions in local initiatives. Asserting our belongingness and working on it.

It says loudly - we are very much part of this world and we want to contribute in making it better.

The environmental issue is no more a distant rhetoric for us. We can justifiably keep that deep grudge within us of paying price for the industrialization of the west but we cannot escape the effects.

Indignation will not help. Initiative will.

And what can a simple local FM radio do? It can raise the issues – actually, trickle them down – amongst the people who have the primal connection with the land. After all they are the people who live, work and depend on the land and the forests. And they are the ones most affected by a delayed rainfall or the melting glacier.

Children will grow up with a consciousness for environment and concepts of organic farming will be translated into household culture, for a local radio can reach even those who cannot read and write.

But all this comes at a price. And in Nepal, given the political situation, the bridge between these local initiatives and the global will is non-existent. They seem to be motivated enough to work despite the missing link though they know; it could have been possible a lot more easily.

The members of the NGO, AGECO Nepal, who are running this radio, tell me the problems are aplenty. Looking at the crude and complex language of the information in the website, which is meant to grab attention of international organizations, I had already guessed so.

What better way can there be to share the world than sharing its concerns, worries and problems and trying to find solutions in local initiatives. Asserting our belongingness and working on it.

But going through the list of Board Members of the organization fills me with some hope. The Chairman, Mr Jaleshwar Pandey, is the principle of one of the most successful schools of the area, is chairman of a bank that has expanded into lot many branches in the region in just a few years and is also an author of couple of books.

Apart from that, there is a hint of positivity of local politics in the list. At a time when the leaders at the national level are not able to come to an understanding even for critical matters and are lingering the country in darkness, the local members of the political parties seem to have some sense of what matters most.

The ex- Deputy Mayor of the place who belongs to the congress party and previous Mayor Candidate of the CPN-UML sit together in the Board as members. Though the leaders at the national level seem to be away from any type of congruence, in Walling at least, politicians are showing a perfect example of harmony. An example of what politics should be.

Their actions seem to speak loud – ‘there can be differences in a multi-party democracy, but there has to be a converging point for a common interest at the local level and the national interests at the national level’. Simple lessons that go unnoticed and ignored in the fight of real politick.

The distress that the politics at the national level causes, I try to overcome by the solace at the local level.

The Chairman, in his inaugural broadcast said, “A person’s happiness isn’t ensured by his achievements in materialistic terms or his fame or position but by a positive approach towards life and the world. Only involvement in good work and helping in noble causes makes one’s life peaceful and happy.” And thus, he asks for people to help in whatever way they can.

They are even planning to launch a community TV channel in the near future.

Dreams are high. Limitless. But they need wings.

Are the angels listening?

dinkar.nepal@yahoo.com