Photo Courtesy: Routine of Nepal Bandha

“Routine of Nepal Bandha” is one of the most popular Facebook page with a high number of followers. This page is handled by a group of youths consisting of five members and among them four are student doing their bachelors and the other one is a journalist. Members of DWIT News had a short interview with the initiator of Routine of Nepal Bandha, Victor Poudel, who said that he contributes the most (among the admins) to the page. The popularity of this Facebook page can be inferred from the number of likes the page has - 227,251, which is a very large number.

If you have liked this Facebook page, you must be aware about the reason behind its popularity. Through this page, people get updated with most of the events about our country and it is even faster than any other media. People wait for the status of the “Routine of Nepal Bandha” to confirm any news or event that is going around.  These days luckily, we don’t need to suffer from every day strikes, but few years back bandhas were very common in our country. Therefore, to let people know about the bandhas and the situation of different places due to the impact of bandha, “Routine of Nepal Bandha” was started. It does not limit itself to the schedule of   bandhas only these days; anything, whether it maybe sports or a beautiful photo from different parts of the country and even jokes are shared.

Here is the interview with Victor Paudel, one of the administrators of “Routine of Nepal Bandha”.

What is the main idea behind opening this Facebook page?

Actually I had a few other pages in which I was involved prior  to opening “Routine of Nepal Bandha”. This is not my first page. Few years ago there used to be uninterrupted strikes from different parties which used to create many problem to normal people and there was no official site to announce about the strikes. Next thing is, medias were not allowed to formally announce bandhas through national television, therefore, I thought to open this page to give information about the routine of Nepal Bandha.

There are five of us - four are undergrad students and one is a journalist. Victor Poudel ,Suman Subedi, Kiran Kafle, Prajjwal Acharya and Kushal Adhikari are the names of the admins that are involved in this page. Most of us are doing bachelors on computer subject like BIM and Computer Engineering.

How long have you been involved with this page?

We had initiated this page from 2011 but got involved actively only since 2013 onwards. I was involved in other pages like comedy, football pages and used to work as a part time reporter in one of the popular football websites.

What is the source of information for your page? You even have news that are not published in any media or newspaper.

Earlier, we used to struggle hard to gather information. We needed to contact respective authorities or party members to confirm about bandhas but once we started getting popular, people from different places contacted and shared news with us and supported our work.

Talking personally about you (Victor Paudel), why are you so much dedicated in running Facebook pages?

Frankly speaking, at first I started just for the sake of fun. When I found people giving positive response and getting something of value from the page, I enjoyed updating more and more and helping people in a way by sharing information. I consider this as a social work from my side to the people who benefit from it. I am in loss in terms of monitory value and it sometimes spoils my studies because I'm busy updating information in this page.

Last time when there was an earthquake at 1 am, in order to update the authenticate news, I had to spent 2-3 hours due to which next day I was unable to attend my classes.

How do you categorize it; solely non-profit organization or do you have some kind of financial support/income from this page?

I repeat again, it is a social work from my side. I am pleased helping people and making them aware about the current issues of our country whether it is anything informative, fun or entertaining. We get nothing besides their happiness and satisfaction. We do not do it for the money.

I think there is nothing wrong to ask for money to publish anything good, what do you say about it?

Yes, there is nothing bad with that but we have never asked for money in anything till date and we publish or advertise only things that convey good message in the society and we do it for free.

You have 227, 251 likes at present, have you ever imagined that you would reach to this level of popularity?

No, I had never thought that I would make it this big at the beginning. Once this page crossed 50,000 likes, I was rather interested with it and worked hard everyday. The rate of people liking this page is increasing every day; the number of likes when you prepared questions were 227,251 and now it has reached to 234,420 within a week.

My target is to make it to 5 lakhs by the time I complete my bachelors. It all depends on how I handle this page. I have many dreams for this page. Let’s see what happens.

Will it be okay to say that you never want to involve any money with in your page?

We have never thought about that till date nor have people approached us to do as such.

What kind of benefits people take from your page?

People get information about different events that are going on in our country. Next, we sometimes share jokes, and beautiful photos to get rid of the monotonous posting of daily routines. We also share missing people information, the need of blood to the people and we are successful in all of these. We were able to find missing persons and blood donors for people many of the time. This makes us very happy and proud. We cannot compare such things with money.

Lastly, do you have any things for your followers?

Thank you for supporting us. Keep following us; we will try our best to give more and more in coming days.