Journalists from across the Himalayan region convened at the Hotel Summit in Patan on 22 and 23 June to examine "Media and the Himalaya". The 17 participants arrived from as far afield as Imphal and Islamabad to evaluate the mainstream press' coverage of Himalayan trends and issues.
To facilitate what turned out to be two days of intense discussions, the Himalaya was divided into political regions, each characterised by some homogeneity. The Indian Northeast formed one part, Bhutan another, Sikkim and Darjeeling the third, and Nepal, Uttarakhand, Himachal and North Pakistan completed the chain, while Tibet provided the counterweight to the north.
Although the agenda was specifically geared towards media coverage of regional events, there was a natural tendency among all participants to delve into the issues during the presentations and subsequent discussions. Digression often stemmed from the fact that the journalists themselves were not fully aware of underlying issues in regions other than their own. This fact itself underscored the consensus that the Himalayan zone is getting short shrift from the mainstream media—generally understood to mean the Delhi press by virtue of Delhi's geo-political importance vis-a-vis the region.
The Indian national press was perceived to be over-involved in sensational reporting and neglectful of hill issues. It was pointed out that while coverage about the former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen's 'idiotic' utterances or the Indian Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan's every self-serving pronouncement regularly secured front-page prominence, the plight of environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna, who at that very moment was observing a protest fast against the Tehri dam project, was virtually ignored. This was similar to the Indian press's cursory notice of the 1993 floods that wreaked havoc in Nepal, and of the innumerable other Himalayan news events, trends and issues that were, as a matter of course, ignored.