Snaps on the move

Resource rich or poor?

2019-08-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

Left behind or on the margins is how the mainstream development lens would look at the tribal communities who continue to live in forest villages, like this man from a village in Odisha's Kandhamal area. On several parameters that have been defined by those who have access to development, his community would be found wanting, education, health, and economic resources.

But this appears ironical as they live in the forest on the very resources that the developed need so badly. They are resource-rich but poor by definition.

Modern medicine, nutrition, etc apart, the community itself does not find itself to be poor. What they do struggle with is how their methods and world views have become contested and unsustainable.
They cannot grow enough to eat or buy what they did not need until the modern world and market did not hit them.

I often drop my structured and resource-focused approach to see the view from the one who has lived in forests believing that the real space and the mythical space of their ancestors' memories are far wider than the barren hut they sleep in.

A sustainable world would not emerge from science and grand theories but from the very way of life we are trying to or have successfully destroyed.

Inspiration, innovation...

2014-10-17T12:01:00.003-07:00

How do you inspire people with vision and passion, when the issue does not have traction? How much of your choice would be a popular sales pitch and how much of it would be about getting the issue served? Part of professional challenge is how think out of box and pull it off, but a bigger part of it is do you have a vision for it.

For some reason my mind keeps drifting to the Against the Wall photo-exhibition that gave birth a new audience and narrative during the Save Niyamgiri campaign.

The struggle was hope defying, yet uplifting...

When change happens…

2014-07-13T23:08:00.002-07:00

Depending on where you stand the view changes, quite literally. It is a cliché but a useful one… a visit to the ‘field’ can offer more learning on change in motion than reams of pages in the form of reports.

In over a decade-long experience of being a storyteller for social change, I have felt the power of community lens or an ant’s viewfinder to discover in matter of hours what connects and moves people. Each of these visits, some barely a few hours and others lasting weeks, have ended up creating clarity and connect…giving meaning to a more scholarly engagement.

I want to indulge a bit before sharing some reflections from a recent exercise that took us to diverse geography and issues that Oxfam India partners work in.

No matter how many frequent flyer miles you have in terms of community visit, you can never reach a stage of saturation. Moreover, the insights are so organic that you are likely to get addicted to the narratives that change the way we see and pitch issues.

We all have had these moments of reflection, like discovering why a rural community would turn toilets into storage of grains, as that seems to be a pressing need to them than the sanitation lens. Or discovering that manual scavenging is not about toilets but servitude and stigma as that allow certain sections to have free labour for errands and command control. Or that the struggle for entitlements is not just about getting something, it is about claiming the notion of rights…. The list is endless and I have, like most here, an entire repository of anecdotes with visuals.

Now back to the exciting part…

A narrative beyond incremental claims

We visited areas where our partner Navrachna works on forest rights and livelihood…

The village was an aberration as some in the group ended up comparing it with villages in the plains. We were in the tribal heartland of India in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district. The state has a tribal identity that precedes its formation and has been a strong reference point for discussion on resource rich tribal poor of India.

Surrounded by horseshoe shaped hills, the community has an integral link with everything that the forest supports, including stories or legends that mention the place being full of tigers and hence the name…. (You will have to get in touch to know the name of the village and conversation J)

As we sat down in the local school building – yes you are right it is just a room so not to be called a bhawan – and the meeting started, it was clear that the community was not just on to a wish list of entitlements but had gone beyond and that reflects the strength of programming.

The community has on the school wall a map with legends depicting the resource base, memories, medicines and places of worship. They have filed individual and community claims under the forest rights act. That’s not all. They recently carried out GPS mapping of the area with the help of women and elders who know the forests well.

It is awe inspiring to see the files and paperwork that the community has put together and is now advocating with the state departments for formal titles.

But here is the best part…. We often talk about connecting the dots for creating a larger picture, vision or framework, and the community is on to it. They have already planned how they will use the forest area under the claim. They plan to strengthen some of the medicinal plant distribution as access to health remains a challenge and the community feels the forest helps them survive to reach hospitals in cases of emergency. The community also has plans to distribute tiny pieces to families that are landless and poor.

In other words, the community is building upon the traditional and legal claims to rework the larger vision of ‘development’ that is about collective decisions and choice of what works best for them, the forests and our collective future where a tribal India is not an antithesis to an urban India.

A broader worldview

I know we all perhaps do it, but important to highlight that the community is never a passive participant. So we must facilitate a question during these visits on why we are there and how our world’s/work connects.

In this particular visit, the team was asked about what we do with the visits and how we influence the larger picture. We responded to it by explaining how we use all that comes through the struggle on the ground as knowledge and policy inputs to inform the way these schemes are implemented.

The community change stories are programme stories as well – and hence Oxfam India’s change narrative. The subtext can convert into a rich policy implementation vision and innovations that our partners are making on a daily basis.

Postscript: We were in a house that has a path running through it. It is a trail that existed before the house was expanded and the path was not encroached upon as villagers walk through it as a shorter route. Imagine something like this in our private property world.

Learning to rely on commonsense of community

2013-05-14T07:28:00.001-07:00

It is often in the simplicity of peoples' lived experiences that one finds reasons for failure and success of complex schemes that are meant to change and better their lives.

I know this is stating the obvious. But my years of working with rights and entitlements issues have highlighted how quickly this thumb rule gets sidelined. We relish the comfort zones of complexities, value additions and protracted change arguments.

Last week during my travel to Bihar, I was refreshed by the commonsense of the community and its leadership. It was a humbling experience. My confusion or phase of a debate within was stripped away by a commentary from youth who said schemes are not just about what works and what does not. It is also about how it works on the ground, and often with results that were not intended.

From a macro perspective, a decline in wages through the national livelihood scheme for the rural poor is a setback. But a community that braves challenges of hunger on a daily basis, the decline is less important than the fact that the wages will now be earned while working on projects that are closer to home and will ultimately benefit the community.

The community also articulated the opportunity that state programmes create for not just bettering economic indicators, but of enhancing social empowerment. Even the struggle to get community meetings organised on functioning of the schemes is an exercise in bridging the gap.

From an ‘insider-outsider debate, the scheme does not work when it is not giving the figures that we expect it to and we try and fix supply channels, but for community it is not just about the statistics of failure and success, it is about the social processes that it creates.

Someday we need to get these two together, into a synthesis of what are the wider impacts and what is the community's perception of change.

Coming back to the large hall that evening, as darkness seeped in with little resistance by a single light bulb fed by a generator, the stories being shared were positive and incidentally the plots were not about who got what in terms of economic value. The change narrative was much richer. It was about how voiceless got voice, how individuals became a collective and how state machinery was engaged.

Programmes at times need to see change indicators in fragments of outputs, but the community does not.

Between the discussions on how each community was pushing the envelope by challenging discrimination, one could not help but notice an over-sized portrait of Mahatma Gandhi under a roof that had gone through several reinforcements with old wooden log being supported by metallic beams. It presented an interesting metaphor for change and continuity, tradition and modernity.

As a testimony to the lucidity of narrative that only a community can create, do listen to this song on MGNREGA composed by new beneficiaries or as we call them change agents.

Legal literacy TV programme in Andhra Pradesh: An uncommon empowerment tool

2012-07-23T02:52:00.001-07:00

It started as an experiment in villages and semi-rural parts of Andhra Pradesh. But after running for 58 episodes on Sunday mornings for a year, India’s first television weekly programme on secure land entitlements has created an extraordinary story of awareness and empowerment through legal literacy.

Bhoomi Kosam, a dial-in program with a weekly viewership of 60,000 at its peak, grew in popularity with a primetime slot and a dedicated audience of families whose lives are tied with land. Starting with a tentative 15 minute run-time on 23rd January 2011 – the opening show as many as 25,000 tuned in – it became a 45 minute programme.

Million reasons
The idea of a television programme of land issues may strike as a niche one, but when you look at the statistics of legal issues and disputes on land – and with it millions of lives – the reasons or need for a show like this becomes obvious. Close to 17 million rural families across India are landless or have insecure land titles. In Andhra Pradesh alone over 6 million cases of land disputes have been identified over the years.

Bhoomi Kosam, literally meaning ‘for the land’, was born in the context of a crying need. The landless and land insecure families are unable to take bank loans for agriculture. They are not registered as cultivators leaving them vulnerable and at the mercy of private money lenders.

There are two million families who do not have land or are unable to use the land due to legal issues related to title or possession. So what does it means in terms of day-to-day lived experiences?

Imagine not having documents that can establish that the house you live in is yours, or having an address that belongs to three other people or losing all the documents that you had.

The biggest chunk of audience for the telecast catering to Telugu speaking audience was in Telangana – a part of the state that has seen slew of farmer suicides in the past.

Demystifying law
A big barrier for rural families with insecure land ownership and landlessness is lack of awareness and inability to demand justice or resolution. They simply do not know what to do about it and find legal channels inaccessible.

The existing legal and administrative systems are not only complicated but unaffordable for the poor. On an average, it takes 15-20 years for a case to move up to the revenue courts. For those who rely on daily wages to make the two ends meet and no assets to lean on, the struggle to run around offices and court for follow up is a luxury that they cannot afford.

Andhra Pradesh has nearly 200 laws and acts dealing with land, many of them unknown to the people and even to the revenue officials who deal with land administration.

Bridging the gap
The programme responded to an average of about a dozen callers per episode and each episode is divided into four sections. In the first section a generic land issue is discussed with the experts providing detailed information on the subject. These are accompanied with visuals, graphics and video clippings. This five minute-long package is researched by Landesa India and produced by HMTV and usually highlights a real person’s problem pertaining to land.

The problems could be loss of their ownership documents; or incorrect or incomplete documents; land related conflicts or as is often the case, the problem could be that the ownership claims have not been recorded in the revenue records. The land experts on the show explain how the situation can be resolved and provide information on relevant laws, rules and regulations. In the second segment, viewers are encouraged to call in with their queries. Two telephone numbers are repeatedly shown on the television screen throughout the show on which calls are received at the television station. From August 2011, three new sections were added to the programme. These are to explain revenue terminologies and records to showcase solutions and best practices.

The programme has dealt with queries raised by nearly 280 people who called from across the state, from various districts. Most of them had problems related with land for which they were seeking solutions. Many of them are poor and illiterate people who cannot afford an attorney, don’t have the skills or knowledge to navigate the bureaucracy, or understand how they could address their problem. Though meant for rural audiences, it has a sizeable following in the urban centres too.

Impact
“We get very useful information from this programme. This kind of information on land issues is not available anywhere else and it is free of cost” said P. Prasad who was one of callers on the show.

The primary impact of the program has been of providing information and through callers of clearing doubts. Making people aware of their land rights in their language and in a style that is accessible was the unique selling point of Bhoomi Kosam.

Training on legal issues related to land has never been part of revenue administration’s affair in Andhra Pradesh, especially from the perspective of landless and vulnerable communities. Bhoomi Kosam also played an important role in bridging the knowledge gap and was very useful for the revenue officials.

The state government had launched a programme in 2003 to train and work with a cadre of paralegals at the grassroots. One of their key tasks has been to identify land related issues in the villages, facilitate their resolution through legal analysis, case investigation, land surveys and coordination with the revenue department.

Most of these young men and women were the most loyal viewers of the weekly program that updated them on land laws, related problems and solutions. For instance, P. Venkateshwara Rao, a paralegal, heard about the Andhra Pradesh Land Licensed Cultivators Ordinance 2011 for the first time on one of the episodes of Bhoomi Kosam.

The episodes of Bhoomi Kosam have been compiled on a CD, copies of which have been sent to revenue officials, NGOs, paralegals and others throughout the state. These are being used in training programmes as a visual aid to supplement inputs on land laws. In areas with high rates of illiteracy, explaining technical and complicated land issues and land laws with the help of visual medium proves to be more effective than any other means.

Who calls?
The maximum number of callers on the show are from the Telangana region (73%), followed by 21% of calls from coastal Andhra and 6% of calls from Rayalaseema region. About 45% of the calls are from urban areas, primarily from Hyderabad followed by Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam. 55% of the telephone calls are from rural areas. Out of the total callers of 276, 27 are women, a mere 9.78%. Land problems in the state are most acute in the Telangana districts, which is apparent from the fact that majority of the telephone calls are from this region.

Land relations in Andhra Pradesh are very complicated which have led to a large number of problems being faced by actual cultivators. In many areas, especially in Telangana the names of current holders and actual cultivators are not recorded in the land registers, such cultivators are not eligible for institutional finance and a range of other public benefits such as compensation in the event of natural calamities.

Another common problem across the state, and especially in the Telangana region, is the issue of Sada Bainama transactions where the poor have purchased land on plain paper and in the absence of registration of the sale deed are not recognised as legal owners of the land. In each of the Telangana districts about 1 lakh acres is under Sada Bainama transactions.

In tribal areas Land Transfer Regulations Act are not being properly implemented and the tribal are being denied their land rights. In large parts of the state, existing land records do not accurately portray the actual position of land holding and cultivation. Subdivision and fragmentation of holdings, due to household division over generations are most often not reflected in the land records which continue to list the names of deceased.

The television show is not being aired currently and a process is underway to repackage it with more interactive content and wider outreach.

Odisha's district to have land rights centres for women

2012-05-20T13:38:00.001-07:00

In a pioneering policy move to provide secure land rights to poor women, Odisha's Ganjam District administration has announced creation of exclusive centres that will reach out to single mothers, separated women, and widows, across its 22 administrative divisions.

The path-breaking announcement has come after a year long advocacy effort of showcasing gains of a Women and Land Rights Facilitation Centre (WLRFC) in Khallikote Tehsil of the district.

It has been an exciting and painstaking evolution for the lone centre that came up last year on the International Women’s Day, as a joint collaboration between Rural Development Institute – part of international advocacy group, Landesa, and the district administration.

It started just with an idea of creating a sustainable and structured process to reach some of the most vulnerable women in the rural communities. Being marginalised within the family the women are deprived of entitlement schemes and social security benefits.

In the past decade or so, the number of women-headed households in rural India has been on the rise, especially in areas with high poverty, with men being forced to migrate in search of livelihood. Government estimates that close to 35 per cent households in India are now women headed.

Over 80 per cent women in rural India are dependent on agriculture for livelihood, yet less than 10 per cent of all women in India own land; and to make this inequality worse women rarely inherit or own even the land that they live on.

But when you add to this picture, the tremendous change a woman can bring in household income, productivity and improved access to education for children, when they own land, the rationale for her unmediated control of land becomes all the more stronger.

Being marginalised within the family the women are deprived of entitlement schemes and social security benefits.

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report, Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development, highlights that given the same access as men; women could increase production in developing countries by 20 to 30 per cent.

This could raise total agricultural production in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 per cent, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 per cent, or 100 to 150 million people. An estimated 925 million people in the world were undernourished in 2010, of which 906 million live in developing countries.

Many firsts

The decision to set up WLRFCs across the district has many firsts to it in terms of planning. There are specific processes laid out for addressing the challenges that create barriers for women in accessing land.
The revenue system dominated by the male staff rarely has any contact with women, as the land is seen as only men’s domain. To bridge this gap, the centres will have dedicated women revenue inspectors for each centre.

The Anganwadi workers in each village will identify women who are in need and are eligible to receive benefits of the homestead land schemes. Through this the issue of marginalisation that leads to almost non-existent demand for such schemes will be addressed.

Homestead land ownership is often the key piece for accessing several other entitlements for the poor. Keeping this in view, the centre will also enable these women to get caste, residence and income certificates, along with accessing schemes like the pension for widow.

The program will be monitored directly by district team at collector’s office that will also include civil society organisations.

The programme that will be rolled out by the district administration in collaboration with RDI and ActionAid is expected to provide land ownership titles to 10,000 single and vulnerable women in the next one year.

Odisha's district to have land rights centres for women

India Union Budget 2012-13 – A quick-view of agriculture and social sector trends

2012-03-26T12:10:00.001-07:00

India Union Budget 2012-13 – A quick-view of agriculture and social sector trends

India’s national budget was unveiled today by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Lok Sabha. The Union Budget 2012-13 comes in the backdrop of a sluggish growth rate – lowest in the past three years, down to 6.5 or so – lack of political consensus on key demands by the industry and a poor show by the Indian National Congress that leads the ruling United Progressive Alliance.

The national elections are about two years away and logically media/experts have been speculating on a budget that walks a compromise path between populism and need for continued economic incentives to the growth sectors. But by the time the presentation by the Finance Minister was over the markets fell except for a few sectors and the India Inc. has started voicing discontent on far too less in the budget on the radical reform agenda.

Let’s take a look at some of the areas in the budget that lie within the extended realm of Landesa/RDI work.
But before that let’s look at how the Indian economy has been doing in terms of government spending on social sector. As a matter of practice, each Union Budget presentation is preceded sharing of India Economic Survey, which is the most comprehensive and in-depth measuring of economic performance, utilisation and policy focus in different sectors.

The key headline in the India Economic Survey is that expenditure on social services as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased from 5.57% in 2006-7 to 7.34% in 2010-11.

The survey, presented in Parliament by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, said India had faced the global economic crisis without much impact on the social sector. This claim needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, as studies have revealed that food price rise has hit the poor – urban and rural – hard and has pushed many further into hunger.

Importantly, the union government expenditure on social services and rural development, both plan and non-planned has consistently gone up over the years and had increased from 13.38% in 2006-7 to 18.47 percent in 2011-12.

According the survey, the expenditure on social services was expected to be 6.74% of GDP in 2011-12, as per the budget estimates.

Interestingly, the finance minister also said the Indian economy was at the cusp of a revival, as agriculture — and services – have continued to grow at a ‘decent pace’.

With intense focus on service and industry for over two decades for propelling India’s exclusive growth, the above statement is important as agriculture continues to employ the largest number of people in India. And not just that, India’s poverty and lack of development is characterised by its rural reality.

Now returning to key headlines on rural and agriculture sectors proposed in the current Union Budget; allocations to agriculture sector and some key national projects for expansion of agricultural facilities and credit extension have been increased. Along with this, the mixed bag of green revolution experiment will now be extended to north eastern states of India.

Agriculture continues to be a priority to the government. The total plan outlay for agriculture and cooperation has been increased by 18% from Rs17, 123 crore in 2011-12 to Rs. 20, 208 crore in 2012-13.
The allocation for scheme "Bringing Green Revolution in Eastern India" has also been increased by Rs. 600 crore to Rs 1,000 crore based on the success of the programme that led to an additional paddy production of 7 million tonne in the Kharif season of 2011-12 crop year.

The allocation for Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVY) was also increased by 17% to Rs 9,217 crore.
"Farmers need timely access to affordable credit. I propose to raise the target for agricultural credit in 2012-13 to Rs5, 75,000 crore. This represents an increase of Rs1 lakh crore," Finance Minister said.
As India enters the 12th Five Year Plan, beginning April 1, he said the government focus would be on five key areas:

Frame policies that trigger domestic demand recovery
Ensure rapid rise in private investment
Remove bottlenecks in agriculture, energy, transport, coal, power and national highway
Address malnutrition

It is significant that the finance minister has exclusively highlighted the issue of hunger and malnutrition as one of the five strategic areas that the government will be focusing resources and policies on for the next five year plan. The focus on hunger issue, especially child malnutrition, has been coming in from the Prime Minister Office itself.

We know from our grounded work and numerous projections that hunger and child malnutrition is directly linked with food security and control over most basic assets.

Last month, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said a national food security program that guarantees cheap food grains to the poor won't succeed unless the state-run distribution, storage and transport network is revamped.

It has been estimated that at least a third of the subsidized food supply doesn't reach the poor now because of leakages in the state-run public distribution network. Making matters worse, tons of food grains rot in open fields where it is stored after the harvest for want of proper warehouses.

Once the law is passed, the food subsidy bill is expected to swell to 950 billion rupees from 723.71 billion rupees in 2011-12. The Food Security Law is currently being debated in the parliament.

Indian Government is now working on targeting its outlays for the social sector better and has promised an exciting policy tool based on what is called the census lab.

India’s newest landowners remember their landless past

2012-03-26T12:04:00.001-07:00

India’s newest landowners remember their landless past

Ninety eight tribal families living for generations in Odisha on lands for which they did not have recognised claims recently received ownership titles and with it a way out of a life without assets that has kept them trapped in poverty.
From Odisha’s Nabarangpur District, the families were presented title documents on March 16th at a modest ceremony in an emotionally charged atmosphere on seeing their struggle finally leading to secured land rights.
Without ownership claims some of the poorest communities also miss out on a range of social security schemes, including housing entitlements. Landlessness scuttles chances for the future generation to break-free from the cycle of poverty.
Lack of access to legal and administrative channels leaves most tribal communities on the margins of development. This is particularly visible among the tribal communities.
“I wish my mother and father were here to see that we now have a Patta for the land we have lived on,” said Phagunu Mali, a 72-year-old man. He kept touching the crisp land title document he had just received as if trying to come to terms with the tangibility of what the paper represents.
“We have lived in fear for as long as I can remember. Uncertain about what we would do when asked to leave this place. We cannot be evicted now as we have a Patta,” said Chandri, recounting what it is like to be living in constant fear without any legal claim.
“This paper gives us an identity to demand food, education and our own house,” said Sukuru Majhi, a mother of three, hinting at all that a legal asset like land can open access to.
The families that received their titles are from Gadaba, Bhatra, Paraja, Bhumiya and Kondhas communities from Nabarangpur District. They have benefited from a land allocation program initiated under Odisha Tribal Empowerment Livelihoods Programme (OTELP) in collaboration with Rural Development Institute (RDI).
Since 2011, Community Resource Persons (CRPs) model developed and piloted by RDI has been a catalyst in the implementation of government land title allocation scheme.
With young men and women drawn from the community to add skills and capacity to the revenue department, the process of thousands of poor families getting land has received tremendous boost.
“Though most of these families have been living on this land for three generations, they were reduced to the status of illegal squatters. Finally they have Pattas,” said 28 years old Makaranda Majhi, a Bhoomi Sanjojak – as CRPs are popularly called within the state.
“My grandfather and father lived and died on the same land where we live. They longed to see a Patta. But I have it now,” said 65 years old Mahadev, summing up a generational hope that he sees coming true.
The land allocation program is currently covering 1,042 villages in seven districts of Odisha. With the support from Bhoomi Janojaks and the revenue department, land titles have shown an amazing success in improving nutritional status among beneficiaries, besides improving access to credit and demand for education and housing schemes.

Parvinder Singh, is the India Communications Manager for Landesa's global advocacy program. Landesa implements this program in India with its partner RDI and is based at New Delhi.

Change now - Instant Karma or digital democracy?

2011-04-12T02:07:00.000-07:00

As the dust settles from an amazing mobilization for the Jan Lokpal bill by a fasting Anna Hazare that gripped the nation and its Diasporas, sections of civil society media and commentators are attempting to recollect nuances of the campaign, its underpinnings and messaging.

Let a hundred flowers blossom -This phrase defines a basic principle of democracy which often becomes a victim of euphoria and mass hysteria. When we espouse one set of opinions it can overwhelm our senses, so much so that we may choose not to understand the others. As a nation we are no stranger to this and have paid heavy costs in not so distant a past. In this particular case the other side was not of opposition but of engagement in deeper parts with larger picture.

It is more important than ever for the civil society and activists to be clear and watchful of the nature of alliances we make and fellow travelers we walk with for moments of crescendo like the one we witnessed over the weekend.

The television coverage was mirrored by social media and the event played like a broadcast with little space for deeper discussions or analysis. The print media, however, in comparison played a balanced space and has gone into deeper discourses.

The bane of corruption is a reality that most of us with money, to cut-short queues and those with enough to just buy over the processes, have used and detested based on moments of moral convenience. It is also important to make another distinction.

The angst against corruption vented during the course of agitation (or celebration) was not driven by a sense of justice and transparency alone, but was more slanted towards morality and shame. This gave the online avatar of the campaign a heady mix of emotions and made possible political idioms of certain kind more viable.

But before we start digging, it is important to celebrate what happened.

The energy and expanse of the campaign was unprecedented and breaks the barriers of the realm of possibilities of mass protests based in urban middle class. That several hundred million people using social media and decentralized offline actions can join in an issue that was deemed beyond reproach.

This also raises a challenge for the larger civil society and activists, if mobilizations of this magnitude can be created do we have an ability to engage and dialogue with these at a pace and speed that makes it deeper and more engaging.

A petition floated by a US-based online campaign group continues to rake in signatures even after the victory dance. The celebrations on the facebook walls are unending even after the protest has wrapped up from ground zero at Jantar Mantar. This hints at the insatiable appetite the net users have for a campaign that can evoke instant action and clear ask – albeit achievable in immediate future.

The areas of protest, change and language of solidarity have radically changed. Initiated by campaign organisers, the India against Corruption team, Facebook profile badges, missed call campaigns and petitions entered the scene.

For the middle-class in Delhi, the role of participant acquired a larger canvas with many turning into chroniclers. YouTube shows up around 2,000 video results, a lot of which are amateur videos shot by participants.

Some key issues got left out of discussion and focus due to the euphoria generated by the campaign.

The debate on the bill itself for instance – the nuances got sidelined. For instance according to Save Constitution Committee, a Mumbai-based group, the provisions of the Lokpal Bill are against democracy. The group feels the prevailing laws can be effective and if properly implemented, can help curb corruption in the country. As per the Bill, the decision of the Lokpal will be final.

“This is against democracy. Today, we can use the judicial system to challenge a verdict. This will, however, not be available if the Bill is passed as a Lokpal’s decision cannot be questioned,” said Raju Korade, a member of the Save Constitution Committee.

The issue of constitution of drafting committee has also led to a slew of media statements, particularly from Baba Ramdev. He needs no introduction and has for close to a decade now been successful in carrying on with a marriage of faith-yoga-Indian-ism.

We wait for the ‘likes’ to start throwing up critical, mixed and long-lens writing to start appearing on peoples’ walls.

ENDS-

A passion that unites -- ActionAid India Cricket Spot

2011-02-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

Watch Now!

As the nation is gripped by a passion that unites all, the much feted players of the India cricket team and the game of cricket are set to grip the nation like a mass fever. While the 14 nation event with millions riding on the ICC Cricket World Cup, celebrates the mega bucks and the glamour of advertising, the other Team India, ranked by millions of underprivileged children, will continue to silently support and celebrate the game and its heroes like any other day.

Without any of the basic gears, support and audience, this team India rides high on passion and dreams big. For them the game of cricket, with broken bats, improvised wickets and crowded spaces as playground, is not just a great leveler but also an expression of possibilities of change, of something better.

It is this passion that unites and inspires us to dream that anything is possible….Another India with a better future for its children – living in denial, hunger and poverty. It is a collective spirit that makes this unity possible and this is what makes us believe that anything is possible TOGETHER!

ActionAid has created a special spot/moment/promo based on our over 37 years of connecting and joining struggles of children from underprivileged community. It captures the passion and drive of the other Team India as it plays and celebrates against all odds, with stunning pace, visuals and music.

War on the womb: India’s missing daughters

2011-01-25T23:04:00.000-08:00

It is not easy looking at beaming, fresh faces of young girls as you set out to imagine blanks spaces – like the faceless outlines of a human form X-rays or black and white prints of ultrasound scans – to charge yourself to shock them into concern and hopefully a position on the issue of sex selective abortions and violence against women.

In the safe confines of one of Delhi’s prestigious women’s college, the gruesome reality of what it means to be a woman and seek a place of one’s own in a country that kills, burns and rapes it women.

As one of the girl said being a girl child in India is one of the most dangerous professions on earth.

While these girls attempted to cope with the cold statistics of foeticide through moving words strung together as poems and some with power point presentations, what was starkly missing was outrage and sense of urgency.

Looking hard in those eyes that had accustomed to a debatable sense of detachment from the gruesome stories violence against women, one felt the limiting impact it had on them.

Quiet dramatically, and some would say tragically, these girls are in middle of war. A war their mothers were witness to when the weapons of choice to exterminated girls were crude. A fist full of salt would give a new born sudden spike in blood pressure bursting inside the small body would become life less in no time, husk pushed down the throat would choke them and many other similar means.

Their engagement became less detached as we discussed how it is not the poor who kill their girls, it is not a phenomenon that dominates the rural world and it is not the social oppressed groups like dalits and tribal communities that did it.

So standard definition of awareness generation as the core strategy to save female foetuses and stop a war on the womb that has led to extermination of 50 million girls from India’s population, became less believable as the only way to survive.

This needs a fight, not just surviving.

Patriarchy, violence against women and ownership of the struggle at all levels are linked. We discussed how women with no education and massive odds, including threat to life, against them have not only stood up against their men aggressor and passive women conduits to take charge of India’s grassroots democracy.

The struggle for women and girls that starts in the womb and on their wombs changes forms but never quiet ends.

These girls hopefully would go beyond a sense of pain to rage and resolve. We will be going back.

Watch this film when you can:

http://www.actionaid.org/india/index.aspx?PageID=5107

Colours of freedom!

2010-08-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

Photo: PTI

Suspended

2009-09-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

She sat on the edge of a small fort that adorns one of the peaks of the Himalayan mountain range. Looking over the stunning lake and a manicured golf course dotted with patches of pine tree forests from the Pari mahal, the abode of fairies, she was transfixed. She slipped into a daze -- eyes that went still like an evening without breeze.

I had seen this many times in the three days that I spent with her.

"I was here at this spot," she whispered against an evening breeze that made the words resonated in her mouth. She cleared her throat and spoke again,"It was 16 years ago". It came as a surprise as she stayed just about over half an hour drive from this seemingly unreal and stunning Mughal Gardens.

She wasn't in the mood to talk using too many words and explanations. This wasn't her style anyways. But she seemed to be talking to an old friend as she looked deeper and scanned the treetops and the lake that filled the entire view as the sun slipped away.

"This place was accessible to us; the army took over as insurgents started attacking with greater frequency. The civilians were stopped from getting here and many other places of 'ornamental value'." She was back speaking the greying landscape once again.

I turned to two of our other friends who had accompanied us. Both doctors, working with trauma victims in the villages of Kashmir. They too had come here after a decade.

I tried engaging with them, with my NGO mind. About what it meant being separated from one of most beautiful memory. They all had both come here as school kids, when the valley was not resonating with guns.

Each conversation that I had with them carried imagery of past or at best rare optimism about the future, while the present remained paralysed.

Save Niyamgiri Mountain and its Tribal Community from Devastation Petition

2009-07-22T03:50:00.000-07:00

Save Niyamgiri Mountain and its Tribal Community from Devastation Petition

Larger than life

2009-04-18T10:32:00.001-07:00

The sunset was still a few hours away. But a crowd of Meo Muslim men and few young girls appeared restless. But this was not because they wanted to go back to their homes in some of the most underdeveloped parts of India in the desert state of Rajasthan.

They wanted to see how a story, which they crafted, has been told by a group of city-bred folks who recently brought to their villages something that has never come in before. A camera!

Homes in Mirzapur village still have no televisions or radios even today. For the young men here, a film is a porn flick that they have seen while going to attend marriages. Desi porn is often played on portable DVD players placed in the cars these days. These stories when told to the aged men here have established a perception that images of women taken on camera makes their clothing disappear.

These men will give and take lives for keeping the community’s pride, which is expressed through strong restrictions on women on what they wear and how they conduct themselves in social spaces.

Many in this group knew what was going to happen inside the large hall of a blue building that served as a regional centre of an educational initiative working on making schools functional.

“Meo community can turn bronze into gold, can’t they arrange electricity for a few hours,” said a retired college teacher, who now works in the villages inspiring community leaders to demand roads and better schools for the region.

This casual remark sums up the spirit of survival the community has.

Electricity supply had been disrupted for the entire day and no back-up was available.

The result of the camera crew moving around for three days in the presence of a very apprehensive crowd that watched each move, was about to be unveiled.

The story of the first generation of girls going past the primary classes, while negotiating the demands of working on an average eight hours each day and not even talking loudly as it offended the men, was to be narrated to them through a film.

But it was much more than just an inspirational subject. The community was to also asses if the strangers who stepped into their village over five years ago, and were taken in as one of them, have lived up to the faith that was placed on them.

Noor Mohammad, a man with an enchanting smile and stern voice, who, along with his team, has been the driving force of this change.

“One wrong move and these young girls will be locked inside the homes,” he says marshaling his community workers to hunt for a generator.

After one hour as the sun was setting, the bedspread-turned screen lit up with images and voices that the audience knew well. Giggles and nods of agreement started spreading through the room.

The girls turned nostalgic and their eyes lit up. They have lived the struggle and had taken upon themselves to keep it going, but this larger than life projection came as a reaffirmation of all that.

For elders from the community were connected for a small moment with the courage and hard work of the girls. They heard them speak louder than they would have ever allowed at home.

The echoing call from Zaida, protagonist of the film titled “Voices of Change”, that she wants to be somebody and wants to study hit a cord, and the patriarchs flinched.

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A slumdog nation?

2009-01-30T01:03:00.001-08:00

The world’s largest population of urban poor, the world largest population of hungry and undernourished kids and the world’s largest population without schools.

Is it pride that justifies keep these statistics, and worst still the real people who make these numbers, in oblivion, because the growth story on your shinning white collar gets stained.

The worst crime in a democracy is to keep those denied the fruits of it on the margins to make our itchy conscience clean. The bubbles of growth have to be protected from the stench of slums. As smell is hard to forget and wipe out. It lingers and seeps into dreams supported by cushy beds far removed from the slums with airtight air-conditioned rooms.

For those on the streets, the generation next of urban poverty, it is not celluloid that sustains dreams but something much real, the spirit of having lived yet another day without the state or its growth.

Technorati Tags: Slumdog,urban poor,kids,India,Bollywood

Positive and living

2008-11-19T06:04:00.000-08:00

Wipped out

2008-11-11T01:24:00.000-08:00

This boatman in Treveniganj decided to leave his boat as people demanded to be taken across to search for family members. Dozens have lost their lives due to the sinking of boats.

photo: ©ActionAid/Parvinder Singh

Millions have been displaced and thousands gone missing in north Bihar, India, after the Kosi river smashed through an embankment submerging over 400 villages under floodwater in six districts.

Even after two weeks since flooding, water levels are high and claimed new areas, impacting three million people.

Camping in tents, thousands wait for basic amenities as the water continues to be high and rains expected to last through September and October.

Faces from a place not yet consumed...

2008-07-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

Like an animal that has begun devouring itself, the market has found yet another ecological niche. A company wants to turn a mountain into aluminum wrappers, spray cans and weapons. The Niyamgiri hills, in south Orissa, may be ripped open for consumption.

It is home to Kondhs, an indigenous group of people, listed as a special community under the Indian Constitution. They and the mountains have been inseparably intertwined...streams, plants, animals and humans blending into an interdependent world view.

Looking at the city, as the voice from a community, that wants to be left alone with the mountain that they worship as a god, middle aged Kondh woman, Malari, found living on the traffic snarls, perched on the concrete slabs an idiotic and self-defeating life. She has always believed, like her community, since they have taken care of the ecological space of Niyamgiri, it is their world. This fact cannot be refuted by any company or government. This existed before the company or the facilitating leadership.

Ironically, the Constitution is on the side of the Kondh people, and we are bent upon usurping their fundamental rights to life and religious faith.

The environmental destruction mining by the UK based Vedanta can cause has been highlighted by none other than a committee appointed by apex court itself.

When u are busy doing career

2008-07-02T08:40:00.001-07:00

I have been away for long. Drawn by a new assignment, that has challenged me in ways that I had not expected. It is different from what I had done so far, which is to get on with the list of tasks and wrap them up in a breeze. Though I have been hard at doing the task, yet my energies are going into negotiating how my going about the task, not as the end result but the very process itself, is impacting my colleagues. They are coping with change in faces, style and perceptions...

Anyways, the past few weeks have given me bits and pieces of peoples' lives. These are possibly paragraphs in the magnum opus of social change. Change that is giving power to the powerless, rights to the denied and strength to the marginalised.

Dear friends I am coping with much more than the need for powerful words. I am coping with the possibility of giving words to in-describable.

The interface: Man-monkey-art

2008-02-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

Though at the risk of imputing meaning that surely isn't part of this event, I liked this image on my LCD and some how felt like building a story around it. The monkey and her baby, of all places decided to rest on thick sheets of brightly painted human motifs, and that did not disturb the man who would be selling hours, days and weeks of pouring over these lines and breathing life into them.

Did the monkey dream about these paintings that night, about the streams, groves and countryside drawn in these pictures, more like a flight of fantasy away from this market surrounded by monsters of metals that wheel out at great speeds….

I know, this sounds way too close to death by excessive linearity of discourses….but what the heck

Trrrrrrrrrr, mud, paper and a cord

2008-01-07T05:38:00.001-08:00

Unfinished

2008-01-04T08:08:00.001-08:00

The Joy of creating

2008-01-04T08:04:00.001-08:00

Spinning magic on a winter eve

2008-01-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

Mystery of life lies in its simplicity, and we fight day-in and day-out to refute this. The more complex things get, even though they continue to serve almost primordial functions, more reassured we get about its value.

These women were sitting with a pile of fluffy wool. The moment this stuff got entangled in their fingers, before disappearing onto the improvised bicycle wheels, something magical happened, strands of wool appeared. Another bunch of women began giving them shapes. In 30 minutes straight you could see caps or woolen socks emerge.