Six functions. One organism.
A student correspondent abroad writes about her grandmother's village. A documented endangered language becomes a policy brief on language rights. Everything we do feeds everything else.
News, Stories and Articles
The newsroom tells what is happening. The storytelling tells what it means.
Our primary output is words: news, stories, essays, oral histories and literary writing. Everything else in the institution exists to support and enrich this.
The Newsroom
- Daily news in Nepali, always with a rural lens
- Dedicated Maithili, Bhojpuri and other language desks, not just translation
- Village Desk: community correspondents filing from their own districts
- Policy Watch: tracking how budgets and legislation land in actual villages
- Quarterly investigations, photojournalism and an international desk
Long-form stories
- Oral histories: not topic interviews but whole lives
- Migration stories: village to city to the Gulf and back
- 'Last Keepers': portraits of the final practitioners of endangered crafts and knowledge
- 'Before They Go': extended conversations with elderly knowledge holders
- Literary publishing in Nepali, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi and English, and an annual Dehat Literary Prize
Music
The village sings. It has always sung. We are here to record it, and carry it to the world.
The Himalayan-Gangetic belt is among the most musically rich regions on earth. Our music programme aims to be the most comprehensive effort ever made to document and celebrate it.
- Bhojpuri folk: biraha, kajri, chaita, sohar, jhumar
- Maithili folk: wedding and festival songs and the living tradition of Vidyapati
- Tamang selo, Newari dhime and panchai baja, Tharu drumming and song cycles
- Gurung rodhi songs, Rai and Limbu Sakela music, Doteli deuda songs, Sherpa ritual music, Awadhi folk
- Field Recording Programme, released as albums and an open archive
- Dehat Sessions: intimate filmed performances by rural musicians
- An annual Dehat Music Festival and youth apprenticeships with master musicians
Sports
The dehat plays. And it has always produced champions the world forgets came from the village.
From the kabaddi fields of Madhesh and the Terai to the hill trails that produce great high-altitude athletes, to the village football tournaments that stop a whole valley for a week.
- Rural sports journalism on tournaments, athletes and coaches
- 'Fields of the Dehat': a documentary and photographic series
- A traditional sports archive: dandi biyo, kabaddi, wrestling, archery
- Long-form athlete stories and an annual Dehat Sports Awards
- Research on how rural sport infrastructure reaches, or fails, communities
Think Tank and Research
Evidence is not the opposite of story. Evidence is what makes the story true.
Rigorous, independent analysis on the forces shaping rural Nepal and the region, written to be read.
- Rural to urban migration, province by province
- Language decline and language rights
- The left behind: women, elderly and children in depopulating villages
- The remittance economy and how it reshapes villages
- Land, water and commons under pressure from climate change
- Indigenous knowledge systems and cross-border rural cultures
Outputs include an annual State of Rural Nepal Report, policy briefs, community co-produced research and an annual Rural Policy Forum in Kathmandu.
Archive
Free to anyone, anywhere.
Everything The Dehat produces goes into a living, open-access archive, searchable by language, region, community, theme and time.
- Oral histories with full transcriptions and translations
- Recordings, wordlists and grammars of endangered languages
- An open collection of folk and traditional music
- Photographs, documentary film and field imagery
- Festival and ritual records and a community-verified traditional knowledge database
Students, Diaspora and Education
The bridge between the village and the world, and between the world and the village.
Hundreds of thousands of Nepali students and diaspora members feel a deep connection to rural Nepal but lack the structures to sustain it. The Dehat will be that structure.
- Dehat Student Network connecting Nepali student associations worldwide
- Student Journalism Programme: students become Dehat Correspondents
- 'My Village' Project: documenting your family's village of origin
- Research internships and university partnerships
- Diaspora Membership, a story archive, cultural evenings and a giving programme
- Education: a Rural Journalism Fellowship, community documentation training, a school programme and language apprenticeships