Civic Education for the Young Generation
Seminars organised by Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies (NEFAS)
Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies (NEFAS) decided to take its
Civic education seminars to Dharan and Biratnagar during the summer of 2004. In spite of the heat and the
rains of the Tarai plains,
participation was encouraging and the discussions generated disciplined remarks on the subject. This is quite unlike many similar seminars where commentators fall easy prey to exhibiting the partisan tone at the cost of the
subject under discussion. In fact, earlier NEFAS experience has been such that Dharan has always produced lively discussions in its seminars, with the gender barrier almost non-existent when it came to participation. However, the heavy rains, the heaviest in Dharan since the onset of the monsoon of 2004, according to locals, did put up that barrier this time. Most of the women could not come to the seminar venue because of the rains which continued almost until lunch time. Even so, the designated chairperson, Lila Shrestha Subba, commended the organizers saying, "You have brought together the ''cream'' personalities of Dharan to one spot." Participation in Biratnagar was no less enthusiastic, and the comments generated no less useful for the paper writer.
In both the towns, political party workers, journalists, non-government organization representatives and mainly teachers and academicians had been invited to join in the discussion titled "Civic Education and the Young Generation". Both the seminars were similar in organization and content. In both the places, Shiva Raj Dahal made his presentation on the subject where he laid out the risks that today''s younger
Generation were being subjected to and the steps necessary to put them on the right track, particularly by inculcating the civic
sense through their school curricula. The human capital flight and the taking up of arms by the younger generation had to be stopped, was his thesis. Providing the economic insight to the problems Dahal raised, the second presenter, Prof. Guna Nidhi Sharma, said that the rising poverty levels and inequities in redistribution of wealth were not receiving the appropriate policy interventions as expected, thus aggravating the problem even further. Another presenter, Bed Raj Acharya, focused his attention to local efforts in raising civic awareness and talked about utilization of local resources for local benefits.
The Dharan seminar was chaired by former deputy speaker of the Upper House Lila Shrestha Subba while the Biratnagar one was chaired by Prof. Pushpa Raj Sharma Khatiwada, both eminent personalities of the two towns. In both the seminars, Executive Director of NEFAS, Ananda Srestha, gave a brief introductory remark before the presentations began.
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