Reporters Without Borders noted today that Nepalese cable TV operators have been allowed to resume carrying Indian cable channels for the first time since King Gyanendra assumed full powers on 1 February, but it deplored the fact that the measure excludes Nepal 1, the only Indian channel concentrating on Nepalese news, which is still being censored.
The government took the decision to allow Indian channels again on 8 June. Cable operators received letters containing the authorisation on 12 June and resumed carrying the Indian channels, above all Aaj Tak, Star News, Zee News, Sahara, NDTV and Doordarshan, at 4 p.m. the same day.
“This is a move towards normalisation that will add a bit of colour to what is currently a very bleak media landscape in Nepal,” Reporters Without Borders said, while stressing its condemnation of Nepal 1's exclusion.
Sources said information and communications minister Lokman Singh Karki personally called cable operators to point that the ban was still in place for Nepal 1, a Nepalese station based in New Delhi.
Privately-owned and run by a leading Indian journalist, Nalini Singh, Nepal 1 has in the past irritated the Royal Nepalese Army with its content, especially a report last year about how soldiers were ambushed by Maoist rebels. (Reporters Without Borders)
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"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |