Sajha Sawal is a weekly debate programme broadcast across Nepal on radio and TV. It provides dialogue between those in power and people who have been traditionally excluded, including rural communities and women.Sajha Sawal is broadcast every week and the programme continues to break new ground and features most of Nepal’s top political and cultural leaders, bureaucrats and industrialists. The programmes are recorded across the country to reflect ethnic, cultural and caste differences.Sajha Sawal is aired nationwide on more than 250 community and commercial FM stations and on Kantipur TV. The programme goes on air every Sunday at 9 PM.
Bidhya Devi Bhandari, who is largely credited with ensuring that a third of politicians in Nepal are now women, was deputy leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), and had lobbied for the new constitution to require that either the president or vice-president be a woman. Nepal has been trying to shift from a male-dominated society, where women are mostly limited to working at homes or on farms, to one in which women have equal opportunities and legal rights. As a close ally and party colleague of the Prime Minister, Khadga Prasad Oli, Ms Bhandari had been considered the favourite for the largely ceremonial job.
Bidhya Devi Bhandari, who is largely credited with ensuring that a third of politicians in Nepal are now women, was deputy leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), and had lobbied for the new constitution to require that either the president or vice-president be a woman. Nepal has been trying to shift from a male-dominated society, where women are mostly limited to working at homes or on farms, to one in which women have equal opportunities and legal rights. As a close ally and party colleague of the Prime Minister, Khadga Prasad Oli, Ms Bhandari had been considered the favourite for the largely ceremonial job.
