Rural Communication divides in Nepal

SLC is the most excepted examination for Nepalese to get release from School life. SLC means School Leaving Certificate examination. As a student, learning about results are the most anxious moments in life. When the result is of SLC examinations, the issue becomes more serious.

How would anyone feel, if s/he have to wait for weeks to learn about his/her results once it is published. It would be an awkward feeling to imagine you in this situation, but this had been normal practice in Nepal for decades. Waiting for your results had been the most impatient experience for students in remote parts of Nepal. They either had to track for two-three days to the reach suburb cities and get hold of state-run vernacular daily Gorkhapatra which was authorized to publish the results to learn about their fate or wait and curse their misfortune. This is purely a case of communication divide between haves and have-not’s.

We know about Bangladesh, where SLC (Bangladeshi name SSC) examination results are available in Mobile SMS. So that any one can get the SSC result from any rural parts in Bangladesh within few minutes of its publishing. The results are also available in Internet, which is covering the whole world. Last couples of years Bangladesh has started result announcements via mobile SMS and internet to make peoples life hassle free.

What about Nepal? Why we are using back dated process to announce results? Good news for Nepalese! The scenario has been changed. This year, with the changes in the country, there had been remarkable changes in this sector also. The SLC result was better that last year (passing percentage increased by over 12 percent). Entry of other communication and media players in publishing result to ease this communication divide was a remarkable feat. As the Controller of Examinations, Harka Prasad Shrestha said to the Medias that, the SLC results will be hassle free due to these initiatives was true in some sense, but not entirely.

But something is better than nothing.

This year Nepal Telecom as well as other telecommunication services along with media houses provided the SLC results through SMS and website. It was made available via websites of the ministry of education and department of education ( www.moe.gov.np, www.doe.gov.np) and other media houses like www.ekantipur.com among others. Also, the results were published in daily newspapers including Gorkhapatra, The Kathmandu Post and Annapurna Post.

In this endeavor, it also came to learning that some local community radios used their airwaves to bridge this communication divide. They broadcast the results of the students and saved them from cursing their misfortune. As we move ahead in the 21st century, we really look forward for more efforts to eradicate this communication divide.

Author: Hempal Shrestha from Bellanet, Nepal

Category: ICT for Development, Knowledge for Development, Voices of Youth