As we are passing through another critical period (oh lord, how many more of these do we have to endure???) of our history again, the media is replete with gossip and behind the scene "news". There are opinions galore. There are myriad suggestions and advice. There are people writing nonsense. There are reporters reporting clueless junk.
Mostly, there are countless reports of straightforward what happened journalism. And these days what happened amounts to: the top leaders of the parties met; they met again and they met again. Or they didn't meet today as they said they would. The news is basically a routine, a schedule of meetings. You can count on the leaders meeting everyday; and as such you can count on each and every meeting reported as another data point, another piece of the puzzle. There is a lot of heat of the moment reportage.
What is missing is any ray of light. Nobody asks anybody what are the issues of contention? There is no real political research to figure out what is causing the bottleneck. Yeah, we do hear occasionally about some vague horse-trading on the identity of the next prime minister; or the number of PLA members to be integrated; or the easiest analysis of all: because India said so.
So depending on the media to do journalism and ASK QUESTIONS is futile. They are too busy reporting exactly when the next meeting is to be held and what the leaders said after the meeting. Who do we turn to for political research, analysis and genuine journalism of asking and answering the actual issues that divide the parties this way?
It turns out, at least for this one instance, a politician is doing the journalist's work.
Gagan Thapa, the only actual youth leader of Nepali Congress (a party replete with creaky old "youth" leaders such as Sher Bahadur, Ram Chandra and oh, my, Shekhar Koirala, the ultimate youth leader!) has published a must-read article in eKantipur.
For a politician this is a not an article about insider gossip or ideology masquerading as a newspaper column. Thapa's piece is a straight up report on the actual points of disagreements between the two major political parties in the Constituent Assembly. This article is the political research and analysis of the first order for all the readers to see beyond the daily back-and-forth, daily meetings and the gossip.
According to Thapa, there are 11 points of ideological, philosophical, and political differences between Congress and the Maoists in regards to the articles of a new constitution. It is safe to assume that the A-Ma-Le sides mostly with the Congressi position. So we have the crux of the debate highlighted in one article. For ordinary Nepali citizen, these 11 issues and others that are to be decided in the CA, are of utmost importance. We need to be ready to discuss and argue on the points of contention that is raised in this article. What kind of a future country and society do the Nepali people want? Do we want the Maoist (Socialist) vision or are we more comfortable with the Congressi (Republican) vision? That is the main debate, isn't it? Going through each of these 11 points that Thapa has presented, as a Nepali citizen and a reader, I have an opinion, I have questions, and I need a moment to reflect and try to understand the implication of each position. As an informed reader, I can make up my mind for or against either party's position on each of these issue.
But until I read this piece of journalism I had no idea what to think because no journalist had taken the time to research on these differences and report the findings like this yet. They were just content to "report" when the next meeting was taking place, as if they were the personal sectaries of the political parties tasked with setting up the daily schedule. Inasmuch as the Nepali political turmoil is caused due to the ineptitude of the political leaders, they are equally aided and abetted by the lack of hard-hitting and informative research journalism from the mushrooming media houses.
Needless to say, quantity hardly equals quality.
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