Are there still reasons to be optimistic about Nepal?

Nepal Now: On the Move

Gyanu Adhikari is co-founder of The Record, the online news portal that published from 2014 to 2024. With 10 years’ experience running a media outlet that not only innovated in its content – offering long reads, history series, and podcasts, for example – but also experimented with funding—using a subscriber model—Gyanu has lots to share about media in Nepal.
But surprisingly, he was most eager to talk about the state of the country—and more optimistic than most people I speak to about the future of Nepal. This episode was first published in 2024. I’m re-posting an episode today for the first time, mainly because I’ll be out of town this week and couldn’t finish a new one fast enough. I chose to feature my chat with Gyanu because it’s one of the most popular I’ve published since 2020 and also because it’s evergreen, since it deals with the media and the future, two subjects that many of us never tire speculating about.
I reached out to Gyanu a couple of days ago to ask if he wanted to add anything to his thoughts three years later. He told me, quote, “I still believe we are on a good path provided we can keep the constitution and rule of law — a secular federal republic will take us far. To speed up the progress, Nepal should be inspired by China and Scandinavian countries’ green transition. Democratizing the energy industry, for example, with feed-in tariffs, and replacing dirty with clean energy in every domain. That’d allow us to leapfrog ahead instead of merely play catchup with developed countries. We are also still badly under-investing in human capital, including in the arts.”

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Music by audionautix.com.
Thank you to PEI in Bakhundole and Himal Media in Patan Dhoka for the use of their studios.

Nepal Now is produced and hosted by Marty Logan.

Chapters

1. Are there still reasons to be optimistic about Nepal? (00:00:00)

2. Gyanu lays out 3 main reasons for optimism (00:03:26)

3. Current politicians deserve much credit (00:08:14)

4. Future is bright for independent media (00:15:02)

5. A bilingual online media is very feasible (00:18:57)

6. The suscriber supported model is promising (00:23:34)