Nepal's "House of Cards"?

Lead actress Gauri Malla will portray Nepal's first female Prime Minister.

(Gauri Malla, main actress)

Is “Singha Durbar going to be a Nepali equivalent for “House of Cards”, with a more positive message?

This morning I came across the news that Search for Common Ground Nepal is preparing new series, in cooperation with USAID and Mila Productions, which will tell a story of a first female Prime Minister of “post-constitutional” Nepal. As parties involved are interested in peace-building and conflict-prevention, a lot of the series is supposed to be about struggling for transparency, accountability and collaborative leadership. Viewers will be also given insight into governmental mechanisms, different tensions and interests that shape country’s politics, and so on.

As the series are about to be released in September, it means some decisions about what “post-constitutional” order to depict were already taken. At the same time, Nepal is making some progress towards deciding on a constitution - this week 4 main parties agreed on a set of very important aspects of the document. They will develop the idea of federal state (a special commission that needs to be formed now will have 6 months to come up with detailed proposal) and parliamentary democracy. Although the expected promulgation of the new constitution is scheduled for mid-July, according to media this seems quite unlikely.

I wonder if there will be the post-constitutional Nepal while the series will screened - and to what extent will the fiction be similar to reality. And if it will shape people’s preparedness for more equal distribution of genders in the politics and indeed promote cooperative and ethical ways. I’m just really curious to see the series and the context in which they will appear in national TV channels.

Not a bad idea?

TV has a big influence for dissemination of ideas and cultural practices … so why not use it, for once, to support good behaviors. Oh, it’s not that new: accidentally, MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” reality TV show reduced teen pregnancy in the U.S., being the second most important factor for this … only the Great Recession itself had more influence [source] :slight_smile:

Any consultation in the pipeline?

… or any channel for participation that we could possibly use to flex the muscle of alternative leadership?

The thing is that now CA rushes - and if that continues, it will shrink possibilities for people to feedback or even get informed about the constitution being worked on/promulgated. The situation overview for today is more or less described here. Before, there was an actual calendar and I think a  month for consultation - at this point, the draft is not ready yet, and they want to finish the process in a month… At first we were thinking this is actually great, there is a crisis that will motivate politicians to act, but now it seems more like they just use the opportunity to skip some important steps and rush the thing while people are living in tents, through monsoon, with no internet.

Anyway, our participation in stirring a dialogue is extremely limited at this point - but reality goes beyond the constitution, and there is a lot of space for valuable citizen-building activism, which will have an impact on many relevant issues that will rise no matter what the actual outcome of the constitution-writing process is. (I might be wrong;)