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Members of the Nepali Congress picketed Birgunj Metropolitan City’s office for two hours on Sept 2. The members, led by the party’s city chief Bijay Sarraf, also met the mayor and submitted a memo demanding the proper management of waste.

Sarraf says, “The situation of waste management in the city has worsened in the past few months. The city doesn’t pick up waste daily. That’s why we picketed the office for two hours and submitted a memo to the mayor demanding that he take action right away.”

But Mayor Bijay Sarawagi says he has already made substantial changes to the city’s waste management in his four years in office. He says, “Before I became mayor, city residents could see heaps upon heaps of waste not just inside alleys, but also on the main road. Visitors used to call Birgunj a city under garbage. But things have improved a lot. But we need to do more.”

Two years ago, Birgunj handed over the responsibility for its waste management to Prithvitara-NK International JV, a private company, under a public-private partnership model. Under the deal, the company has to manage waste produced by the city for four years. The company has also been allowed to charge residents a monthly fee for its services.

Mayor Sarawagi says the step has helped manage waste in the city, but lack of support from the residents has slowed progress. According to the city, as more than 30 percent of the city’s residents don’t pay for the service, the city has waived the contractor’s obligation to pay Rs 240 million to the city. Under a revised agreement, the contractor keeps 50 percent of the money paid by households and gives the other 50 percent to the city.

“We tried to manage waste by hiring a private company after similar models worked in Biratnagar and Bharatpur,” says Mayor Sarawagi. “But the residents of our city didn’t cooperate,” he says. The city has distributed bins to each household in its 32 wards to segregate degradable and non-degradable waste.

The city has been urging residents to give their waste to collectors who come on tractors or pull carts. But instead, they throw their waste in the sewage line, complained Sarawagi.

The city even introduced new legislation to discourage haphazard disposal of waste. The new law contains provisions that can be used to impose fines of Rs 500-100,000 on those who dispose of waste haphazardly. But the law hasn’t been implemented effectively, even two years after it entered into force.

Not many people get to see the newspapers from the day they were born. When I got the chance to see the edition I wanted, I was both amused and intrigued. 

As I sifted through the hard-bound collection of old newspapers, I found it. The edition of Gorkhapatra did look a little different from papers today. Once I read the headlines, I was hauled into a different time. Some 30,000 houses in the rural east had just got electricity, a bus service was shut down in Rautahat after one of its buses splashed some mud on a pedestrian with the driver being seriously beaten up by villagers, an ordinance regarding animal service was being discussed and Girija Prasad Koirala was the prime minister. 

Even more exciting was stumbling upon a copy from 19 March 1955, with the front page detailing the last rites of the just deceased King Tribhuvan (pictured alongside). How did it feel? Surreal, almost like I had hopped on a time-machine.   

There were rows of Gorkhapatra and The Rising Nepal archived at Gorkhapatra Sansthan. The institution, located at New Road, is the publishing house for these dailies and other widely read magazines like Madhurparka, Muna, and Yuvamanch. 

As I spent time at the archive, leafing through much older editions, it was evident that I was amid a trove of invaluable resources. Bimala Khadka, the head of the archive section, informed me that the library is usually frequented by journalists, researchers, students, and government officials. “The place is usually filled, or at least it was before the pandemic. The pandemic has affected footfall,” she mentions. 

We’re used to viewing colorful, ad-laden articles today, mostly on screens. Navigating Gorkhapatra pages from more than a hundred years ago is in no way comparable. The fonts on these pages aren’t easy to discern, the parlance is archaic, and there aren’t many parallels you can draw to the world around you today. This perplexity is accompanied by the looming reminder that you cannot be too careful turning the pages that have and will outlive you. There are perhaps few to no other resources that reflect the times of the yesteryears like these papers do.  

Gorkhapatra frontpage, 25 April 1941

Ramesh Parajuli, a researcher who frequents the archives to learn more about the past, says, “The older editions are essential to learning about the governments’ decisions and actions.” Since its inception in 1901, the institution has been owned and operated by the government. Being a state-run media house, it has chronicled governmental pursuits. Parajuli says that accessing such news pieces helps in triangulation and verification. 

With such extensive resources at its disposal, Gorkhapatra Corporation is also aiming to diversify its audiences and make its resources more easily accessible by digitizing the archives. This would make accessing information streamlined. Gorkhapatra already has an impressive following online. According to Shiva Kumar Bhattarai, acting general manager of Gorkhapatra Sansthan, the online site currently receives more than 700,000 daily visitors. Having the archives digitized would make information much more easily available. The digitization has been in the works for the last three years and is expected to be completed soon. Until then researchers will have to use physical copies or view microfilms. 

An indispensable legacy

Gorkhapatra is the oldest national daily of Nepal. It was launched as a weekly in 1901 and became a daily 60 years later. It is currently the sixth oldest newspaper in South Asia.

This age is reflected well on the archived papers as time has colored them yellow. I remarked about this and learned that it was not only because of age but also that at one point, to make Gorkhapatra look cleaner, the whiter paper started being used. Catering to as many Nepalis as possible, Gorkhapatra is also printed in Kohalpur and Biratnagar, as compared to just Kathmandu in its early days, with a total circulation of more than 50,000, in addition to its many online visitors. 

According to Gorkhapatra’s acting GM Bhattarai, even though the institution is government-owned, it is always attempting to report credible and factual news that serves the public. “Gorkhapatra is the voice of the public and is trustworthy. We always publish factual and authentic news.” 

In a way, this conveys that there is an awareness of Gorkhapatra’s position as a state-owned media house. 

Researchers like Parajuli are aware of how in the past, the institution’s position has had a bearing in its reporting. Gorkhapatra has been scrutinized and criticized for being the governments’ proponent. For example, Gorkhapatra did not report the execution of the martyrs of Praja Parishad in 1941. Parajuli also mentioned that more recently it has relegated news of the opposition to smaller spaces on the paper. 

Bhattarai's avowal to factual and unbiased reporting should be taken as a sign of hope following these blips in the paper’s past, however, not without a probing eye. The legacy of Gorkhapatra lives not only through its publications and archives but also through many senior Nepali journalists who have at some point in their careers been affiliated with the institution. 

Gorkhapatra’s contribution to Nepali media and history is prolific. Its publications have promoted journalism and literature for more than a century and continue to do so in an age where there’s stiff competition from other, private companies and other forms of media. Its archive is pivotal for research about Nepali social and political history. Gorkhapatra’s legacy is thus, undeniable and one that deserves great acknowledgment. 

Raj Kumar Sah completed his Bachelors’ degree in agriculture a year ago. But he is still unemployed. The resident of Jahda Rural Municipality-3 has been sending applications to various employers, but none has been accepted. Every time he receives an offer, it is turned down for one reason: he doesn’t have a citizenship certificate.

 “There’s no option for me other than to stay home and imagine what it would be like to land a job opening advertised in the newspaper,” says Sah, one of the many people across Nepal who are victims of the state’s policy to ask for citizenship certificate from its own people when they want to work in the formal sector.

 “I chose to study agriculture as I thought the sector is full of opportunities,” says Sah. “If I knew that I wouldn’t get citizenship, I would have abandoned formal studies and learnt some other skills to help me earn a living,” he adds.

Amar Verma of Dharan Municipality-9, Sunsari is also troubled by the same problem. As Verma was good in studies, his parents wanted him to become a doctor. They even sent him to India to complete his high school. After that, he was preparing for the medical entrance exam when he found out that he can’t apply for a scholarship without his citizenship certificate. “The two years I spent preparing for the exam went to waste. I wasn’t even eligible to fill the application form,” he says.

Krishna Mandal from Biratnagar-1 dropped out of school in the ninth grade to learn driving as he realized it would be difficult for him to get his citizenship certificate. Although he has been driving around for the past four years, he can’t apply for a license because he doesn’t have a citizenship certificate. “Our father got his citizenship based on birth and mother based on lineage,” he adds.

Thousands of youngsters such as Sah, Verma, and Mandal have been deprived of numerous opportunities as they can’t apply for citizenship. They can’t even go abroad for work.

According to prevailing laws, children of citizens who got their citizenship under special and time-bound campaigns in the past based on their birth in Nepal, can’t get citizenship. They have been lobbying with the government at all levels to make changes to the law.

Ajay Paudhar, president of the struggle committee for citizenship, says they have no option but to launch an agitation demanding citizenship.

Although the erstwhile Oli government passed an ordinance to allow children of those who got their citizenship based on their birth in Nepal to also get citizenship, it was struck down by the Supreme Court. The Citizenship Bill under consideration in the legislature has also been stuck as parties fail to reach a consensus on its provisions.

Dhaka international film festival’s ‘West Meets East Screenplay Lab’ has selected the screenplay of a Nepali film, Putali Ko Sapana, as one of its grant and mentorship contenders. The lab, which was launched earlier this year, chose Kiran Pokharel’s script along with 11 other movies for the occasion.

Among the 11 screenplays selected, only three will receive grants and mentorship from the lab. The first, second, and third placeholders will be provided $5000, $3000, and $2000 respectively and the film concepts will be showcased at Dhaka’s ‘Film Hut’ program.

Putali Ko Sapana centers on a young girl questioning her gender identity as she finds herself trapped in an endless guerrilla warfare in the hills of Nepal.