The Democracy bus on it's first tour
Images of the bus
Jakob Bak Pedersen
17. June 2008
On May 26, the very first day of the campaign in Palpa, the Democracy Bus came to Damkada village in the model VDC of Madanpokhara. Being a model village, means that developments of schools, eldercare, media and infrastructure have been taken to a level of excellence in the district in order to learn from real life practical experiments. While the Bus silently parked near the stage, all participant were welcomed by students and villagers, forming lines of celebration, holding up signs saying "welcome to democracy", clapping and giving tikka and mala.
From the way children of all ages, including students of three schools, one campus, kindergarden and blind section, were lined up and celebrated the arrival of the Bus, you could easily imagine expectations to be high. The level of participation was also next to overwelming for our team on the Bus, who learned a lot in theory, but now were to "walk the talk", through the test of practical civic education. Lessons were to be learned on how certain media works best for certain democracy messages. Non-violence in schools, for instance, was advocated directly from stage which made some teachers comment, that obviously everyone knows that you should not hit children! Sensitive issues like caste discrimination later during the campaign found more indirect media, such as posters and theatre.
When villagers from all walks of life joined in, we soon found the Bus itself completely hidden behind the stage activities! At later stages in the Bus campaign the different activities would be increasingly held in different venues, as civic education, theatre and democracy documentary all fit different audiences.
Schoolgoing children on this day came home even more exhausted than usual.
The performance culture was were high, here a young rising star singing a lok-git (folk song) adjusted to the theme of "loktantra-git" (democracy song). Another two youngsters performed a classical theatrical piece on the crow and the fox - both of them blind and very bright students.
Some children were mostly interested in getting as close to the Bus action as possible! A local politician later remarked that democracy may come in a bus, by bicycle, aeroplane or any kind of vehicle - but the important part is that it arrives and allows the people to play a central role.
From Palpa, the experience now is that bringing a bus all the way from Kathmandu may have been confusing to villagers - especially in times of fuel shortage! The bus itself was never the message of this campaign in itself, it was only a means to create a level of attention around the democracy and civic education message. These activities will be followed up upon by MS partners in Palpa.
The democracy theatre became very popular during the campaign in Palpa. On the first day in Damkada however, it was a bit difficult to manage the sound system to fully please the huge audience, so microphones were in use on stage. The theatre touched upon issues such as: The importance of the villager's own initative in development, corruption and "aphno manchhe" (nepotism), basic social rights and responsibilities.
