Media Mail – Volume 3 Issue 11
September 1999
Some stray thoughts on war
The Videsh Sanchar Nigam, which had blocked the website of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn from Indian web surfers since late June, unlocked the site following the de-escalation of the fight between the two countries. One may recall that the Indian government had also blocked Pakistan TV during the war.
However, during the recent conflict between the two countries, Pakistan’s print media played a very positive role. On one hand they criticised their own government for its harakiri, and on the other, they consistently kept their people informed about facts. Dawn was a pioneer in that. The Frontier Post called Pakistan ‘a sick nation’ (May 28, 1999). Some of the edit page headlines of The Frontier Post read: ”World must stop Pakistan becoming a Sharif fiefdom” (Jugnu Mohsin, May 22), ”Rulers lack of touch with reality” (June 16) and ”A diplomatic fiasco” (Farahtullah Babar, June 20).
Many Indian intellectuals and newspapers columnists also applauded the role of Pakistani newspapers during the Kargil crisis. Prem Shankar Jha in an article ”Saluting the Moderates” (Outlook, August 2) wrote, ” it is more vital than ever for Indians to remember that the country (Pakistan) doesn’t consist just of military adventurers, Islamic zealots and murdering ‘Mujahideens’. It also contains people who do not want war with India.. are prepared fin speak (put and be heard, despite the oppressiveness of their government , These people make up the majority of Pakistan.”
It is interesting that Pakistan, with a feeble democracy and frail democratic institutions, surpassed India in this regard. Pakistan had not blocked any Indian Channel or newspaper, but the Indian government showed a great enthusiasm in blocking free flow of information to people. Though India boasts of a vibrant democracy and dynamic institutions, the Indian ruling elites still live with a colonial hangover. They have very little faith on their own citizens.
BJP was so keen to use the war to enhance its acceptability among the masses that in one of its initial party propaganda it projected Shyama Prasad Mukherji as the first martyr of Kashmir. In reality, however, Mukherji died of a heart attack in 1954 while touring Kashmir. No doubt he was an arch opponent of Nehru’s Kashmir policy, but calling him a martyr is a mockery of the brave soldiers of Kargil.
The Congress was also in a panic because of the war. In the past it was the Congress who always translated all wars into votes, whether in 1965 or 1971. This time they were worried that the BJP might do the same. Ironically, while these two main opposition parties continue to compete on who can reap the maximum benefit of the war, international agencies are slowly, but steadily, pushing their way into this region.
The Indian media’s role during the war was utterly dissatisfactory. Two recent incidents have shown the changing trend of news. The Cricket World Cup and Kargil were the same for the media, although one represents entertainment and the other human sorrow and agony. But for the media both are products to be sold by the same market strategy.
Recently a reporter working for a leading newspaper narrated a story. She was asked to do a front – page story by talking to the Kargil martyr Habeebullah’s mother after a peak was named after him. When she met his mother she found her to be like any other mother who grieved for her son’s death. She talked mostly about her son’s aspirations, dreams, food habits, clothing habits. But she did not talk about patriotism or sacrifice. The reporter did the story. But to her surprise she found that the story did not appear on the front page. When she enquired she was told was that she had asked very ordinary questions and had not probed in detail about anything. In other words, she had not dealt with anything sensational, like – how did the mother now feel that a mountain peak was named after her son, etc.? This is how media dealt with the Kargil- no respect for human tragedy, no long-term vision, only move with short-term sensation.
By and large the media had toed the government’s line in war reporting. Even today the real picture and facts about the war, or its fall out, are yet to come in to the open. In this context one can only extend Advani’s words for the behaviour of the Indian intelligently during the Emergency for the behaviour of the Indian media during the war – ”the Indian intelligentsia crawled when they were asked to bend.”
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Press Council to appoint poll observer
The Press Council of India has formulated guidelines on media coverage of the general election and decided to appoint observers. The observers, who will be on ‘purely voluntary basis’, will view all newspapers from the enforcement of the model code of conduct and report to the Election Commission. They will ensure that election campaigns are not conducted on communal or caste lines and do not create communal hatred among the people. Beside character assassinations by making unfounded allegation against candidate or political parties will not be allowed under the guidelines.
The media will be required to observe all instructions and orders issued by the Election Commission, Chief Election Officers, Returning Officer and other officials connected with the conduct of poll and shall not accept or publish any advertisement at the cost of public exchequer regarding achievements of a ruling parts the Press Council of India said in a release in Delhi.
Satellite transmission project in MP
Jhabua Development Communication Project – This satellite transmission project was launched in 1997 by the Development Education Communication Unit of the Indian Space Research Organization (lSRO) in the Jhabua district, Madhya Pradesh, one of lndia’s economically poorest states. The project uses 150 direct reception systems in selected villages with 12 talk-back terminals plus a studio and earth station. Programmes on health, education, agriculture, forestry, Panchayati raj and cultural heritage are broadcast in evenings, supported by afternoon training programmes for development functionaries.
Contact SR Joshi:
sureg@adl.vsnl.net.in
Dilip Kumar’s patriotism under question
The thespian Dilip Kumar was once again at the centre of a storm during the Kargil war. This time because of an award Nishan-e-lmtiaz conferred on him by the Pakistan government in 1998. This award was given to him for his outstanding contribution in promoting friendship and harmony between the people of Pakistan and India through art and culture. Our former Prime Minister, Late Morarji Desai was also given the same award for his initiative in politics to expand the friendship between the two countries.
Immediately after the war began in Cargill Bal Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sainiks, wrote an editorial in ‘Samoa’, the mouth piece of the party. In the editor ial he demanded that Dilip Kumar should return Nishan-E-lmtiaz to prove his patriotism. Thackeray also abused Shabana Azmi and her poet husband Javed Akhtar for their lack of patriotism. But he remained silent about the award given to Morarji Desai.
This was not the first time that Bal Thackeray spewed venom against Dilip Kumar. During the controversy relating to the screening of the film ‘Fire’. Dilip Kumar was abused and attacked by the Shiv Sainiks. He was not a part of the film – his only crime was that he had signed a petition with Shabana Azmi and others to seek the court’s protection for the screening of the film. Bal Thackeray and his goons were so agitated that they dropped all decency and organised a demonstration of semi-nude Sainiks in front of Dilip Kumar’s residence.
During the recent controversy Dilip Kumar told the Press, ”those who want the award to be returned do not even know what it is called. It is not Nishan-e-pakistan but Nishan-e-lmtiaz.” It is really ironic that most of the newspapers also did not know what the award was called and kept calling it Nishan-e-pakistan for a long time.
After being harassed for several days Dilip Kumar decided to meet the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for his suggestion. When he came to Delhi to meet the Prime Minister he told the Press that before accepting to receive the award he had taken clearance from the Government and had even met the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister not only wished him well but asked him to carry a goodwill message to Pakistan. In an article ”Dilip Kumar should keep the Nishan-e-pakistan” in The Statesman, C. R. lrani wrote on 11 July ”the Prime Minister should tell Dilip Kumar it is his wish that the award be not returned and announce to the nation that he has taken this position.”
Not many came out in support of the thespian. He was sad about the indifference of the film industry – ”it has changed over the years. Its ethos has changed, sentiments, feeling of togetherness have changed,” he said. The eminent play-write Vijay Tendulkar had also suggested to Dilip Kumar to return the award. By and large intellectuals of Maharashtra and Mumbai remained silent about the issue.
Among political parties, BJP, NCP (Pawar), Congress, all had initially supported the demand to return the award. However, Congress and NCP backed out later and their spokesman in Delhi condemned the Shiv Sena.
On 11 July Dilip Kumar met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Though the Prime Minister praised the actor and told him that nobody can doubt his patriotism, but he refused to take a decision about the award and left it to the actor. On the editorial of 13 July Statesman wrote ”The Prime Minister disappoints.”
Meanwhile Dilip Kumar has decided to retain the award and that, as far as he is concerned, is the end of the matter.
Kerala plans for Rural Development Network
Kerala’s e-governance initiative is off the ground. The RD-Net, the Rura1 Development Network, unleashes the power of the Internet on the state’s 152 development blocks.
RD-Net should now enable rural folks to access government data, apply for loans and lodge complaints from their remote villages. Last week the government commissioned this rural technology mission. The RD-Net has linked the state capital and the 14 district headquarters to all the 152 block panchayats already. Commissionarate of Rural Development joint Director P C Jain told Rediff ”Rural development across Kerala will not be the same now. We hope this technological feat we have achieved will help in the execution of rural development projects much faster.”
Jain explains that email, data transfer, data downloading, application processing and lodging and settling complaints are all possible through RD-Net. It also provides instant details about all the poverty alleviation and rural schemes of the state and the central governments to the villagers.
- Source: Bytes for All
Community radio project in Karnataka
”Our Voice” (Namma Dhwani), a pilot community radio project, was conducted in Chitradurga district, Karnataka, to assess the possibilities for local participation and programme content. A monthly 30 min. programme was produced and aired on the local FM station of All india Radio in 1998. The project involved participation of local individuals and groups. Themes included water – shed management, girls’ education, women’s health, women’s self-help income-generation schemes and the impact of adult literacy programmes on rural life.
Experimental broadcasts using a portable briefcase-size radio station from UNESCO was to have started from June 1999.
Contact Sucharita Eashwar: voicers vsnl.com
Internet- Radio for the masses
Dr Arun Mehta, a Delhi-based communication engineer and activist, and his colleagues are in the process of setting up the Society for Telecom Empowerment intended as a voice for the formulation of sensible telecommunication policies. The Society also plans to showcase some grassroots projects based on leading-edge technologies. For instance, the community radio project – using Internet radio to take health, literacy and other messages to a populace that is illiterate or does not know English – which will demonstrate the use of the Internet for the poorest.
Under the community radio project, it is envisaged that a village would have a community information centre, with a multimedia PC connected to the Internet. On this community PC, a Real Audio or equivalent server could be installed, which in effect would convert this PC into a radio station, which villagers could use to tape and disseminate audio content. Output of the sound card on the computer could be fed into an amplifier, and distributed over ordinary copper wire to surrounding houses, each of which only needs a loudspeaker.
Or, audio signals can be distributed from the community PC using either twisted- pair telephone wires, or the coaxial cable used by cable TV operators. Homes would need a small Internet Radio, consisting of a simple embedded microcomputer, a loudspeaker, a microphone and a couple of buttons for channel selection.
One Point might be added: radio is currently a very restricted and centralized medium in India, and the government is still to open up community radio licenses to a wide range of groups, as expected.
Mehta’s web-site:
http: //www.cefnet.com/-amehta/
Alterative documentaries: Some Impressions…
Srivani M.
It should be communications that exposes the hypocrisy of the rhetoric in international forums… Communication should be the process that contains the forces of backlash and promotes the forces of transformation and survival… this will involve identifying new actors and constituencies and moving beyond to the real unheard voices’ Rajni Kothari, 1988.
This paper is about some such communication processes, alternative documentaries. Nothing in this paper could be new. They are some impressions I gather as a student studying this genre of documentaries, which I see as integrating the theory and practice of development communication.
Very simplistically, the options are limited.
a) Status Quo – delude ourselves that everything is hunky-dory and find bliss in that ignorance; take refuge in cynicism or actively participate in the oppressor strategy. (I say actively because passively we are all implicated anyway).
b) Intervention believe that all is not well with the world and that we can make a difference. It is the latter thinking that has lead to the denigration of the dominant paradigm of the 60s, which lays emphasis on economic centred, technology-driven and capital intensive development. Instead, holistic paradigms of real development emerged. They problematical notions of citizenship and the state and underlined the need to assist ethnic identities and cultures. Society- specific development, which was people centred, was mooted. The idea that the USA and Europe are not necessarily development seeped into are resisting heads after four months development communication classes and an articulate lecturer. Still while we passionately denounced capitalism with its Coca-cola and Pepsi in the classroom, the canteen had another story to tell.
- “Its only theory” said one.
- ”No points romanticizing poverty” said another.
- ”Development communication is fiction”’ said the thirds me mostly!
The idea of empowerment, gender equality and grassroots struggles were shrugged off as only theory and utopian, till we went to the International Video festival at Thiruvananthapuram in September 1995. We saw what we read in textbooks and seeing is somehow believing! The week long festival showed us that theory and practice are not mutually. The conscietisation, which Paulo Freire talks about has and can happen. It may not have made 12 activists filmmakers out of us, but we began to question what we believed in.
To provide people with truth so missing from the mainstream paradigm is commendable enough, but to actually get questioning what they believe in after years of conditioning is an achievement indeed. And if a Kali kem mari? (A film on domestic violence) can help women in a Gujarati village set up a naari-adalat or if something like a was is screened in an international seminar on medical ethics, those questioning the need and relevance of these documentaries, will get their answer. And these two films are just a case in point and not isolated success- stories. If cane were to undertake a study of such example, the results would be a pleasant revelation to us, and I would venture to say that the intangible effects on the viewer would be much more.
Because logically, if we believe Noam Chomski’s proposition that the mass media can. The answers to these questions would help us tremendously. Besides this the catch them young policy of systematically going to schools and colleges, and any other public space must be fully exploited. Strong networking will lead to greater dissemination.
My pilot studies with audiences reveal that the whole discourse of alternative development is highly specialized and has found place only in the disciplines of sociology, literature, philosophy and communication. It is completely absent from the thinking and mind-sets of those not associated with those fields. This too is a kind of politics of alienation. And the popular stereotype of a jargonized, militant feminist, fashionably eco-friendly elitist is too deep rooted. That we are not a professional coterie but just some concerned human beings must somehow reach home through these documentaries. Otherwise, they will face the risk of being clubbed with parallel cinema, serious fiction or philosophy, which are perceived as opaque and exclusive. Sometimes because of the way these documentaries caricature dominant viewpoints, even the misinformed are alienated.
However, the more important revelations are that these documentaries disturb. As we put it in out university days, they send us on guilt- trips and make uncomfortable truths stare us in the face. They provoke violent questions instead of lulling the audience into complacency and escapism, as our 40+ channels are wont to do. Any viewer would accept without question the news aired and endorsed by the state and market, but are suddenly alive with questions after watching these documentaries. A guilty conscience does prick the mind.
Even if one scoffs at this agenda of the documentaries as bombastic, and expresses disbelief at their changing the world, these documentaries definitely at least document another truth. Which means that much more democracy and pluralism. Struggles at the micro-level, which could be swept away into oblivion by the onslaught of the moneyed big, are now documented. This paper would not have provided any new insights to any of us here. They are just some impressions that I gather, as a student studying this
genre of documentaries. To me they serve the invaluable function of integrating the theory and practice of development communication. The purpose of the paper is to reiterate this fact.
(This paper was presented at a workshop initiating interaction between issue based film makers and users in Bangalore.)
New communication technologies and challenges before mass organizations
“The classical view that media is the fourth pillar of democracy, has become a myth; in reality, media is the fourth pillar of the ruling classes.”
”How are newspapers sold for Rs. 1.50 – many times with free gifts – when the cost of everything else is steadily on the rise?”
“Can we ensure that people have access to communication material without the interruption of unwanted advertisements?”
These are only some of the numerous critical issues that came up in a workshop on ”New Communication Technologies and Challenges Before Mass Organisations” held in Lucknow between August 30 and 31, 1999. The workshop was organised jointly by People’s Media (Lucknow), Vikalp Social Organization (Saharanpur) and Magic Lantern Foundation (Delhi). The workshop was organised to stir up a debate among mass organizations arid concerned media people to critically view the role of the dominant media in order to exercise people’s control, and initiate alternate means of communication between people.
Inflicting a scathing attack on the attitudes of the newspaper industry, C. P. Jha from People’s Media said in his cementation, ” There is more money spent on NOT writing than in writing news.” Talking on how news has become a big business, he cited the example of how every chit fund company has launched their own newspaper with massive circulations, as a result of which small newspapers that dealt with issues and movements were wiped out. He said that these forces are hand in glove with the power structure and are thriving because they have a symbiotic relationship with each other.
”They are centralizing media in order to control information,” he said. ”Take the example of news agencies, who should actually be called ‘wholesalers of news’. UNI alone has some 38,000 client newspapers all over, in all languages. So, if you control the news agencies, you control information. And how do they control the agencies? I’ll give you only one example. People sending telegrams have to pay much higher while news agencies, using the same cables and infrastructure, are given massive concessions by the government. In return they become the voice of the government and establishment. Over the years there has been a tremendous growth of business for the news agencies, most of which are owned by newspaper owners themselves.”
Sheetala Singe, eminent journalist, said, ”why should we allow a public virility service like newspapers to do business? And if they are selling news as a product, then readers – its consumers – should have the right to make them more accountable.”
Eminent political activist Dr. Vinayan cited numerous examples of how media, print or television, manipulates information to confuse the masses.
”After Ranveer Sena’s massacre of dalits, just before President’s rule in Bihar, Sonia Gandhi went to Narayanpur and declared that Rabri Devi had no moral right to rule. Her statement appeared all over the media. The BJP also conveniently declared that President’s rule was necessary to save the Dalits. Ironically, it was the Ranveer Sena who were the happiest with President’s rule. But the media never stated this fact, they never took the real views of the people as to what they wanted,” he said. ”During the Babri Masjid tragedy, the media made sure that the mosque was demolished. Even though 90% people were secular, the media vitiated the atmosphere by projecting the views of only 10% of the people who were communal” he added.
Participants were taken through an exercise to analyse the print medium. They were divided in groups and were asked to critically read and observe the front pages and edit pages of all newspapers available in Lucknow. The exercise revealed the inherent biases of each newspaper which also reflect in the presentation of their news items.
There were also presentations made on new communication technologies like Television and Internet. Tracing the history of television in India since the fifties, it was interesting to note the shift in paradigm. ”In 1959 when test telecasts were undertaken in select clubs of Delhi, the motive for television was education. Later in 1963 there were further test telecasts undertaken in classrooms, again the motive of which was purely educational. Now even the news on Doordarshan is sponsored by some corporate giant or the other,” said film maker Gargi Sen in her presentation. Other participants also expressed serious concern on the present scenario when some 50 channels, all owned by multi-national corporate giants, are invading into people’s bedrooms, using programs only as vehicles to telecast advertisements.
Alternate media practitioners presented how, far from the glitter and glamour of dominant media, they are working with various media in the grassroots in spite of financial difficulties, the constant threat of the system’s retaliation and the fear of being wiped out of existence.
Among those who shared their experiences were Hazari Singh Pankaj, a small town journalist who used the print media to expose corruption of local authorities with land records in Banda, UP. Pankaj has also built up a group of local journalists who regularly write on issues relating to land and forest. Eminent journalists Sheetala Singh and Suman Gupta shared their experience in publishing a co-operative run newspaper Jan Morcha, which has gained a wide popularity in Hindi speaking areas.
Adiyog of Awaaz talked about how they use traditional media forms like vaachan, skits and muppets to spread awareness on issues. Film maker Sagari Chhabra showed excerpts from her films and talked about the effectivity of audio visual medium as an alternate people’s medium. Mahesh Bhatt from Dehradun shared his experience of producing and screening educational videos to a community in the alpine forests of Garhwal where TV has not yet reached. Through issues raised during such screenings, his group, Sarokar, also undertakes development programmes with the community.
A common feeling among participants was that, even though new technologies such as television or Internet may be too expensive or out of reach for a bulk of the population, there is a need for people’s organizations to realise the importance of these and not be reluctant to utilise their positive aspects. As Dr. Vinayan expressed, ”we must remember that it is the imperialists who invented guns but people who fight the imperialists also use the gun. We must forget our traditional view that media like video and Internet are elitist and hence not suitable for people’s struggles. We must use everything that we can.”
There was a universal agreement among all participants that there is need to develop parallel communication channels for the masses. It is necessary that people bring out their own newspapers no matter how small is the circulation or how low cost they may be. People also need to form watch committees to monitor news and take strong steps to ensure accountability of dominant newspapers to its readers. Similarly, even about television, there was unanimous opinion that a public channel like Doordarshan must be made more accountable to the bulk of the population and freed from commercial interests, market and multi-nationals. For this, Prasar Bharati must be made into a citizen’s forum, not one controlled by the government.
As a concrete step towards this direction, the workshop initiated an initial discussion on a draft of the ‘People’s Communication Charter’, which spells out what elements are necessary to make communication a tool of the people, by the people and for the people. As a follow up participants are to review the articles stated in the Charter and adapt it to the Indian situation. Participants will also form media watch committees in their areas and initiate a process of critical evaluation and monitoring of news and television. In addition, an ad-hoc co-ordination committee was set up to coordinate the different follow-up activities outlined in the workshop.
Film South Asia ’99
30 September to 3 October
KATHMANDU, 1 September – Film South Asia ’99, the biennial festival of South Asian documentaries, will be held in Kathmandu from 30 September to October. The festival will bring together the best documentaries made over the last two years in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Altogether 40 documentaries and five shorts on South Asian subjects will be screened in competition over the three and a half days of Film South Asia ’99. Most of the films will be presented by their makers, who will be converging in on Kathmandu from all over the Subcontinent. Among the filmmakers present will be Altaf Mazid (Guwahati), Anand Patwardhan (Bombay), Farjad Nabi (Lahore), Suhasini Mulay (Delhi), Taieque and Catherine Masud (Dhaka) and’ Amitava Kumar (Patna/Miami).
The three-member festival jury is headed by the internationally acclaimed auteur Gautam Ghose of lndia. The two other members are Salman Shahid, Pakistani theatre, television and film personality, and Niloufer de Mel, Sri Lankan academic and social commentator. Three outstanding films will be awarded citations and cash prizes of USD 2000, 1000 and 500 in order of merit. The best film will also receive a trophy.
Film South Asia ’99 is organised by the non-profit Himal Association and Himal, the South Asian magazine’, both of them Kathmandu-based. The first Film South Asia documentary festival, held in October 1997, was considered a landmark event in regional documentary-making. The 15 best films of FSA’97 later went to more than 30 venues around South Asia and the world. Similarly, 15 outstanding films from FSA ’99 will also be travelling, bringing the best of South Asia’s non- fiction films before the cognoscenti all over.
”The upcoming festival provides an opportunity to discuss trends in serious film making as well as to explore ways to enlarge the audience for documentaries all over the region, including through satellite television” says Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of Himal magazine and Chairman of the Festival. He adds, ”The films we received prove that South Asia is producing better and more documentaries. The filmmakers are also keeping the audience in mind.”
The 40 films being screened in the competitive section of FSA ’99 were chosen from a total of 147 entries, almost all of them made in and after 1997. The films incorporate all the regions of South Asia from Sri Lanka’s forests to the Tibetan plateau, the desert of Sindh to the bylanes of Chittagong. The subjects dealt with over the whole gamut from identity politics to personality profiles, from stenographic documentation to existentialist fare. A non-competitive section at the festival will showcase production in various categories, including archival films.
Workshop on the ‘Right to Information in South Asia’
Time to challenge Governments’ hold on Information
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
DHAKA (IPS) – Fifty years or more of freedom have not made South Asia’s governments more transparent or accountable. Instead they cling to a policy of confidentiality on official information inherited from British colonialists, rights activists say.
The region’s more than one billion people are denied the basic right to know the details of government policies which affect their lives and survival.
Far from being a transparent government, there is a wall between the democratically – elected rulers and the ruled, resulting in the people’s exclusion from decision-making processes.
”The secrecy of government that we inherited during colonialism still continues, and the large section of the ptèor continue to suffer because of a lack of information” said former Bangladeshi foreign minister Kamal Hossain.
”There can be no effective accountability … unless the people have the right to informations” he asserted at a three-day workshop on the ‘Right to Information in South Asia’, organised by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
The time has come to challenge the ”culture of silence” that prevails among governments in the region, speaker after speaker from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh said.
Deepika Udagama, a lecturer in human rights at Colombo’s law faculty, said the Sri Lankan experience of democracy has been restricted to participation in elections.
But that is changing, she added. ”Now there is talk of direct participating; now the people want to know what is happening in their governments.”
In the region, only two countries have responded to a grassroots demand for the conceding of the ‘right to information’ – India and Pakistan. In both cases, however, the government bills still have to be approved by their law-making bodies.
The Indian bill, for instance, titled the Freedom Of Information Bill, 1997, guarantees every citizen the right to ”secure access to information under the control of public authorities, consistent with public interest, in order to Promote openness, transparency and accountability.”
It was drafted following huge public pressure for openness created by non-governmental organizations led by the Rajasthan-based workers and farmers group called Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS).
Begun 10 years ago, villagers who form the backbone of the MKSS started campaigning for a ‘social audit’, which demanded a scrutiny on the monies spent for development by village councils. “The secrecy of government that be inherited during colonialism still continues, and the large section of the poor continue to suffer because of a lack of Information.”
Raising slogans like ‘Right to information; a Right to Survive’ and ‘Our Money; Our Accounts’, the villagers numbering in their thousands forced open the financial books that had been closed to them.
”We have forced the government to be accountable” declared Madhusudan Mistry, an NGO activist who said the struggle for transparency in government programmes has been rewarding.
Previously, bureaucrats and politicians stonewalled and dawdled over programmes, the full details of which were not known to people, saying their work could not be challenged.
Interestingly the ‘Right to Information’ demand has been voiced by the marginalised sections of people in the region’s countries.
In South Asia, those below the poverty line, the rural poor, make up a larger slice of the population. Yet since independence in the late 1940s, the effects of development have hardly trickled in their direction. For decades they have stagnated, unaware of the money and the benefits due their way.
Said the New Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights initiative’s director Maja Daruwala: ” This right is vital to the poor of our region. They will be the actual beneficiaries.”
Groups like hers would like to see the government give access to records of proceedings and meeting, copies of decisions, rules and notices, copies of entries in government regisers, copies of accounts, of maps, of drawings and of work sites.
If enacted into law by their governments, South Asia would be complying with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, which states: ”Everyone has a right to freedom of opinion and expression; This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
In addition, the Commonwealth Law Ministers conference in Barbados in 1990 had declared: ”Public participation in the democratic and governmental process was at its most meaningful when citizens had adequate access to official information.”
But the process of putting this ‘right’ in statute books looks set to be an arduous one. Activists at the meeting agreed that one stumbling block before them is the ‘Official Secrets Act’, another legacy of colonial rule.
South Asia’s belief in democracy will overcome the hurdles, participants felt. As Salma Sobhan, prominent Bangladeshi lawyer said: ” The people of South Asia have stood up against the tide of authoritarianism. They will support any idea that strengthens their rights.”
Courtesy: IPS
Internet Radio in Sri Lanka
The Internet is increasingly used for broadcasting radio programmes. The Kothmale Internet Community radio project in Sri Lanka demonstrates that this a particularly interesting approach in rural areas. It uses community radio as an interface between the Internet and rural communities. Officially inaugurated on April 30, the official opening took place after three months of trial period during which a website database http://www.kirana.lk was developed and community volunteers were trained to handle various elements of the project. Nearly three thousand rural people attended the opening ceremony, and for many of them it was the first exposure to computers and the Internet.
This project combines new information technologies with conventional radio medium. It includes
(i) Radio programme to ”Radio Browse” the Internet. Information is interpreted in 1oca1 language, with community broadcasters interpreting information from selective Internet sites. This makes the Internet accessible to those who do not understand English
(ii) Community radio function as a mini Internet Service Provider to the community with free Internet access. Besides its own Internet Cafe the community radio has provided two free Internet access points at Gampola and Nawalapitiya community libraries.
(iii) The community radio also develops its own computer database, deriving information, which are often requested by community members, from the Internet. Much of the information in this website is available in local language. A collection of CD-ROMS will be made available at community radio for community use.
Source: Bytes For All
Internet is not cheap!
According to recent studies, for most of the world, Internet access is a rare and costly thing. Monthly charges for circuits between Asia-pacific countries are much higher than monthly charges between those countries and the US. There is a limited availability of local call rates for dialup services, and of course there are the inescapable facts of poverty and purchasing power. For example, in Ghana, an account with Africa Online costs $50 per month, almost twice the monthly income of most Ghanians.
Source: Bytes For All
Internet incites suicides!
Internet websites dedicated to ‘suicide’ may be creating a ‘group death instinct’ and encouraging vulnerable young people to take their own lives.
In an article published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr. Susan Thompson, a senior house officer in child psychiatry at the Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham Mental Health NHS Trust, said that young people were most vulnerable to the influence of suicide sites on the Internet.
”Research already indicates that individuals who access the Net are psychologically more vulnerable, with higher risk-taking behaviour, substance misuse and depression scores than most people. Most are also 18 to 24 year-olds, a group with high suicide rate and little peer support.” Dr. Thompson said.
It is impossible to say how many suicides have been influenced by the Internet. Dr. Thompson cites the case of a website put up by an American group that views suicide as a positive act for all. Follow up research on three people who posted suicide notes on the site’s bulletin board found that two succeeded in killing themselves with the encouragement of the group. The third failed and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
The amount of information relating to suicide on the Internet is enormous. A search using the keyword ‘suicide’ on any of the popular search engines yields 50,000 to 100,000 sites. These range from websites detailing particular individual and group suicides such as the suicides of Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence and the Heaven’s Gate Cult, to sites relating to research information on suicide or advocating specific means of suicide.
Courtesy: Alexandra Frean,
The Times, London
Internet growth lags in Third World
NEW YORK – The idea that the Internet is the fastest-growing communications medium is false, said a Syracuse University professor. ”It could take a hundred years for the Internet to reach diffusion levels similar to that of the telephone,” said Milton Mueller.
The growth of the Internet in the United States overshadows the reality of the rest of the world, especially in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Mueller said. It’s the nature of a technology that is based on services in contrast to television or radio, which can be used afterbeing plugged in. ”When you buy a service, there are long, extended diffusion curves” he said. ”There is a distinction between that and buying equipment.” The struggles in the developing world are more basic. ”If you don’t have roads or electrical powers it’s hard to do anything with a computes”, he said. ”Americans are just not appreciative of how early it is in the development of this technology.” Part of the barrier to the spread of the technology is political and closely tied to monopolies in the telecommunications industry, he said. In Haiti, Mueller said, ISPs are skirting the country’s telecom monopoly by building wireless local access networks and using satellite and microwave technologies.
Haitian Internet providers are also servicing a largely rural population by opening small telecasters – central points where users pay small charges for short periods of access to do things such as download and send e-mail.
” This a model that may be imitated elsewhere” Mueller said. lf developing countries can remove the political and economic barriers to the growth if the Internet, the economic ‘opportunities for growth will be huge, he said.
Source: Bytes For All
Knock, Knock, Knocking on Hollywood’s door
We have arrived!
Somnath Sen
Check out the following names: Darshan Bhagat, Nisha Ganatra, Jay Chandrashekhar, Nagesh Kukunoor, Manoj Shyamalan. All Indians? True. But the answer that does get you the cigar is that all of the above are also filmmakers based or working in the US. Most of them Generation X-ers.
All of them part of a growing population of Indians who’ve stepped into the exciting, uncertain world of filmmaking. These young men and women are joining such stalwarts as lsmail Merchant, Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta who have created a truly international identity for themselves through their films.
There was time, not so long ago, when one rarely heard of Indians working in Hollywood. A Jag Mundhra here, an Ashok Amritraj there. Today, especially in the film centres of New York and Los Angeles, there is a wide array of Indians who are forging an identity for themselves in tine world of films, television and related arts. Indians are making a name in every aspect of films, right from Productîon to Distribution and Exhibition. In Hollywood today, there are Indian screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, editors, graphics experts and even agents to represent them.
Well known director, Krishna Shah, who is also a founding member of IAM (a group of professionals from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in American Media) says that today, it is even possible to crew a small budget film exclusively with Indians right here in Hollywood.
How are things different today than say ten, twenty years ago? More opportunists says Kavi Raz, an actor and director who was the first Indian actor to star in a TV series – St. Elsewhere. ” I did not take up many roles in mainstream American media because of the turban wearing, thick-accented stereotypes propagated in those characterisations. Today, though, more thoughtful roles are being written for us. We are more visible.”
Opportunity comes with visibility and by taking ownership. As with any ethnic group, till there is general visibility and acceptance, Indians can expect to be relegated to stereotypes outside the umbrella of political correctness. In an excellently researched article in the ”Little India” Lavina Melwani says that, ”…perhaps the most famous Indian on television is an animated character Apu from the hugely popular animated series The Simpsons…” Apu, of course, is the ”chocolate-hued, heavily-accented convenience store worker who seems at first glance to be a bundle of stereotypes, but turns out to have a strong personality”
Although Indians pride themselves in being educated and having the highest median income among all ethnic groups in the United States, it wasn’t until Indians started appearing behind the counters in convenience stores and behind the wheel in taxicabs that they slowly started to enter collective American consciousness. Average Americans tend not to acknowledge an ethnic group until they are caricatured in popular media.
”Many Americans will typically have an Indian as their doctor or work with Indian professionals in the work place. But average Americans tend not to acknowledge an ethnic group until they are caricatured in popular media” opines Anirban Roy, a documentary filmmaker and a graduate of the Visual Anthropology department at the University of Southern California. ”Which is the reason that there is not a single Indian doctor in ER but Indian convenience store clerks and taxicab thrive and prosper on prime time.”
Mirroring that sentiment is Kiran Rao, a former Microsoft employee who is pursuing an acting career in Hollywood, ”Just a few years ago, a casting call for taxicab drivers would bring in big built Italian men wearing small caps. Today it is Indians.” But things are changing, Rao admits. One of his actor friends recently got a major love – interest acting role in an upcoming Nicholas Cage film – far removed from 7-11s and taxicabs.
Babu Subramaniam, one of the directors of ER has a slightly different take on the ER issue. ”Only someone who understands the Indian diaspora experience will be able to write about them with any credibility. Until we start to write ourselves into such roles, we won’t see Indians in the mainstream media. No one else will or can write about us.”
Krishna Shah concurs, ”The only way to see the best face of Indians is to be instrumental in putting it out there. There is no question about it. Write, write, write. That is the only way to have any control over how we are portrayed.”
Many Indians, still think of themselves as immigrants, holding on to their culture long after making America their home. For these immigrants, coming from an avid film- watching culture that also makes the most films in the world, Indian films are a staple of and an antidote for the longing for home. Go to any star show and you will see sell-out crowds. This love for films is naturally internalized by the children of these immigrants and exhibits itself through their expressions in film.
The confluence of Bollywood and Hollywood? At a function to felicitate him Shekhar Kapur admitted to being in love with Hindi films. ” I really want to make another Hindi film soon with the requisite song and dance.” In fact, he said, with a twinkle in his eyes, ”I made Elizabeth like a Hindi film.” After such encouragement, is it any wonder that we Indians feel empowered to storm Hollywood?
- Somnath Sen is an accomplished Director and a graduate from USC’S stellar Graduate Film program.
This article originally appeared in India Journal magazine.
Penal ‘common sense’ comes to Europe
US Exports Zero Tolerance
Loic Wacquant
As gigantic industrial and financial mergers are sweeping across the United States and Europe political leaders everywhere are vying with each other to think up and implement new bays of cracking down on crime. The mainstream media, often forgetting that urban violence is rooted in the generalization of social insecurity, contribute with their own biases to defining these alleged threats to society. Many of the remedies commonly proposed (‘zero tolerance’, curfews, suspension of social allowances to offenders’ families, increased repression of minors) take their inspiration from the American model.
For the past several years a moral panic has been welling up across Europe that is capable of redirecting government policies and reshaping societv. It points to ”juvenile delinquency” ”urban violence” and the ”disorders” for which ”sensitive neighbourhoods” are the breeding grounds. These terms swell the speeches of politicians, they saturate the daily papers, they invade television.
These notions did not spring naturally. They are a part of a constellation of terms and themes from the United States that have insinuated themselves into the European debate and serve as its framework and focus. They owe their power of persuasion to the prestige of their originators. Yet these terms do not reflect the real problem namely, the redefinition of the aim of the state, which is withdrawing from the economic arena, asserting the need to reduce its social role while enlarging its penal intervention.
Like a father who has been lax, the European welfare state would now be duty bound to become ”lean and clean” to ”downsize” and then deal severely with its unruly flock. This means making ”security” paramount. It means the withering away of the economic state, dilution of the social state, expansion of the penal state. Civic ”courage” political ‘modernity” even progressive boldness (marketed under the name of ”the Third Way”), would now demand that governments embrace the most worn out law and order cliches and measures.
We would need to reconstitute the chain of institutions, agents and discursive supports by which the new penal common sense aiming to criminality poverty is being internationalized.
This process originates in Washington and New York City, and reaches Europe via London. It is anchored by the complex formed by the organs of the American state that are entrusted with implementing and showcasing ” penal rigour” The media and the commercial enterprises that partake of the business of imprisonment are also part of this process.
The private sector makes a decisive contribution to the conception and implementation of public policy through neoconservative thinktanks. The same parties, politicians, pundits and professors who yesterday advocated ”less government” as regards capital and labours are now demanding ”more government” to mask and contain the nefarious social consequences of the deregulation of wage labour and the deterioration of social protection.
In 1984, Manhattan Institute, founded by Anthony Fischer (Thatcher’s mentor) and William Casey (CIA director during Reagan’s first term as president) to apply market principles to social problems, launched Losing Ground, the book by Charles Murray that would serve as a ”bible” for Reagan’s crusade against the welfare state. This book misinterprets data to ”demonstrate” that the rise in poverty in the US is the result
of the excessive generosity of policies meant to support the poor. Such support, it claims, rewards sloth and causes the moral degeneracy of the lower classes, and especially the ”illegitimacy” held up as the source of all the evil.
The Manhattan Institute was soon consecrated as the premier ”idea factory” of the New American Right. In the early 1990, it organised a conference on ”the quality of life”. lts dual premise was that the ”sanctity of public space” is indispensable to urban life, and that the ”disorder” in which the poorer classes revel is the natural breeding ground for crime.
Among the participants in this ”debate” was the star prosecutor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, who had just lost the mayoral elections and would draw from it the themes of his victorious campaign of 1993. He adopted the guiding principles of the police and criminal justice policy that would turn New York into the world showcase for the doctrine of ”zero tolerance” that gives the forces of law and order carte blanche to hunt out petty crime and drive the homeless back.
Again it was the Manhattan Institute that vulgarized the ”broken window theory” formulated in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. This so-called theory maintains that by fighting inch by inch the small disorders of every day, one can vanquish the large pathology of urban crime. This theory, though never validated, served as a criminological alibi for the reorganization of police work spurred on by police chief William Bratton.
The primary aim of this reorganization is to soothe the fears of the middle and upper classes those who vote by continually harassing the poor in public spaces. Three means are deployed to achieve this goal: large increases in the manpower and equipment of the police, the devolution of operational responsibilities to local superintendents with mandatory target goals, and a computerized monitoring system that allows the ongoing redeployment and almost instantaneous intervention of police forces. This results in an inflexible enforcement of the law, particularly against such minor nuisances as drunkenness, disturbing the peace, begging, solicitation and ”other antisocial behaviours associated with the homeless”, according to Kelling’s own terminology.
City authorities and the media credit this new policy for the decline in the crime rate posted by New York City in recent years. In doing so they ignore two salient facts: the decline preceded the introduction of these police tactics by three years, and crime has also dropped in cities that have not applied these measures.
On the British side the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies, and the Institute of Economic Affairs (lEA) disseminate neoliberal ideas in economic and social matters, as well as the punitive theses elaborated in the US and adopted by prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair. In late 1989 the lEA orchestrated at Rupert Murdoch’s initiative a series of meetings and publications around the ”thought” of Murray. Murray implored the British to cut back drastically on their welfare to check the emergence of an ”underclass” of alienated, dissolute and dangerous poor, close cousins to the hordes said to be ”devastating” American cities in the wake of the ”lax” social measures taken in the 1960s.
This intervention was followed by a blizzard of laudatory articles in the British press. It led to a collection of essays in which Murray ruminates on the need to bring the weight of the ”civilising force of marriage” to bear on ”young black men who are essentially barbarians”. Alongside this is a chapter in which Frank Field, then in charge of welfare within the Labour party and later Blair’s minister of welfare reform, advocates measures designed to prevent single mothers from having children and force ”absentee fathers” to assume financial responsibility for their illegitimate offspring. Everything was forged around the idea that the ”the-undeserving poor” ought to be brought back under control by the state, and their behaviour corrected by public reprobation and by increasing the weight of administrative constraints and penal sanctions.
This is the theme, canonized by Blair, as the ”obligations of citizenship”, that justifies the institution of forced wage labour under conditions that exempt from social and labour law individuals ”dependent” on aid from the state in 1996 in the US and three years later in the UK.
Zero tolerance is in effect the necessary police complement to the mass incarceration produced by the criminalisation of poverty. Bratton told a symposium, in which eminent British police officials were taking part: ”There is growing agreement between British and US police forces that criminal and subcriminal {sic} behaviour such as littering, abuse, graffiti and vandalism must be dealt with firmly to prevent more serious criminal behaviour from developing.”
These notions have directly informed the 1998 Law on Crime and Disorder, easily the single most repressive legislation on juvenile delinquency of the postwar period. And to avoid any equivocation as to the target of these measures, Blair justified support for zero tolerance in these candid terms: ”If is important that you say, “We don’t tolerate the small crimes.” The basic principle here is to say, “Yes”.
From the UK, the notions and measures have spread throughout Europe, and is thriving only because it is has the approval of the authorities of the importation countries. This approval assumes a variety of forms, ranging from the jingoistic enthusiasm of Blair to the shameful and awkwardly denied acceptance of the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin.
In those areas where the state has given up on bringing in firms and jobs, it will put up police stations, perhaps in anticipation of building prisons later. The expansion of the police and penal apparatus can even contribute to the creation of jobs through the surveillance of the rejects of the world of work: in France the 20,000 ”adjunct security officers” and 15,000 ”local mediation agents” who are supposed to be massed in France’s ”sensitive neighbourhoods” before the end of 1999, represent a 10th of the ”youth jobs” promised by the Jospin government.
Sir Edward Gardiner, head of the Commission on Domestic Affairs, was able to discover the virtues of prison privatistaion and steer the UK towards for-profit imprisonment. He later joined the board of directors of one of the main firms that compete for the booming and lucrative punishment market. Another medium for the diffusion of the new penal common sense in Europe is official reports. These works rely on the support of reports produced under analogous circumstances and according to similar canons in those societies taken as ”models” or singled out for a ”comparison” that typically boils down to projection. In reality, these programmes have no measurable impact on delinquency, which they merely displace.
In Sophie Body Gendrot’s ”Cities Confront Insecurity: From American Ghettos to the French Banlieues” is an exemplary specimen of false research on a false object, pre-constructed by the political journalistic common sense of the day, ”verified” by data gleaned from news magazine articles, opinion polls and official publications and ”authenticated” by a few quick trips to the neighbourhoods incriminated.
A new penal common sense is being propagated in Europe that centres on increased repression of minor offences, the hardening of penalties, the erosion of the specificity of the treatment of juvenile delinquency, the special targeting of populations and areas considered ”at risk” and the de-regulation of prison administration. All of this is in perfect harmony with neoliberal common sense on the economic and social front, which it completes and bolsters by disposing of any consideration of a political or civic kind in order to extend the economizing mode of reasoning, the imperative of individual responsibility the flip side of which is collective irresponsibility and the dogma of the efficiency of the market into the realm of crime and punishment.
- Loft Wacquant is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and researcher at the Centre de sociologic européenne du Collage de France.
This is an edited version. For the complete paper write to Media Linkages or to Bernard Bel: andreine@wanadoo.fr
South Asian Workers in Silicon Valley
Raj Jayadev
”Hurry up Line 1! You are not here to talk, you are here to work! GEE-VAAAN, WHAT’S THE HOLD UP?!” The tone and ferocity of her words always carried a certain violence. They were intended to elicit immediate obedience, the way a prison guard uses a night-stick, or a slave master would a whip. Jivan had only been at the plant for a few months, but he had grown accustomed to the daily harassment by management, so he simply did what was commanded of him and went back to stocking the conveyer belt with printers. ”You know, in lndia workers would not stand for this treatment”, Jivan told me while hiding a rebellious smirk from the supervisor who just finished barking at us.
Jivan and I had taken a minute’s rest to talk about our lives outside the plant. It was a minute we beltway well-earned and certainly due to us. Our line had met our daily quota of 846 components already, yet our only reward was the humiliating scolding from the supervisor and the promise of more back-breaking work at even faster pace. I t was near the end of another monotonous and dehumanizing day on the assembly line in Silicon Valley.
Jivan had come to the US a little under a year ago from Kerala where he ran a metal s’hop making machinery parts like bolts and screws. Just as my parents did over 30 years ago, he had come to America for the educational opportunities of his children. Jivan says that he plans on returning to lndia after his two boys finish school, just as my parents promised themselves when they first came from India. In the highly volatile and unstable labor market of what is being touted as the new economy, Jivan has found himself trying to stay afloat and provide for his family by entering into the only work which has remained consistent to the Valley for the past twenty years: low wage electronics assembly. In the Valley, low wage assembly and manufacturing has been the unstated anchor of technological and economic growth. Perhaps explaining its rather hushed existence, it is a labor niche which has been created and reserved for immigrant workers of color. It is a niche which sits at the bottom of the rung, a place where others would not and do not go for work. Although it is grueling work physically, mentally, and emotionally, it offers sub-livable compensation to its hidden workforce. The work is ironically the base of one of the most prolific profit generating industries in modern times and is located in one of the world’s most powerful financial hubs.
A profound characteristic popular psyche has accepted about the lnformation Age is the presumption that technology is produced by some sort of divine intervention- so advanced that it requires no actual assembly or manufacturing, features its predecessors of the Industrial Era found so essential. Yet every computer, printer, and technological wizardry in between bought at the local Radio Shack is birthed in what is usually a very inglorious assembly line production site. Electronics production requires so much labor, that the high-tech industry employs one out of every five wage earners in the Valley (Economic Development Department). For the over 200,000 people laboring in the manufacturing sector, 70% of whom are Asian (San Jose Mercury April 16,1999), working conditions do not match up to the industries public image. Contrary to the charismatic Intel commercials displaying workers in fabrication labs dancing around in choreographed bliss, the real work environment in anything but a party. Fabrication labs and other high-tech production sites have proven to be dangerous, abusive, and shockingly never seem to play danceable 70′s disco. In actuality, the clean reputation of the modern high-tech industry is riddled with some of the most archaic expressions of naked exploitation. Electronics manufacturing plants and their ill – fated surrounding low income neighborhoods are saturated with carcinogens, acids, and highly toxic gases. (Hawes, Workplace Hazards for High- tech Workers, 1996). Toxicology studies have shown that the clericals in common industrial use have damaging affects on the brain and immune, endocrine and central nervous systems. These studies report findings for less than two percent of the 80,000 industrial chemicals that have been comprehensively tested for potential long-term effects on human beings.
(Hironaka/cuadros, Environmental Justice Starts in the Workplace, 1996) For all practical purposes, workers themselves on the line are the laboratory animals being experimented upon to determine the synergistic results of combining these unknown chemicals. The by-product has been industrial occupational illness rates three times that of general manufacturing. (Eisenscher, Silicon Fist in a Velvet Glove, 1993)
Although exploitation of the immigrant experience is nothing new to California or the Silicon Valley, its cancerous growth as a defining feature of the industry’s economic ”success” has never been more obvious to its growing low-wage contingent workforce. Once known as the Valley of Hearts Delight for being the most productive orchard crop region in the United States, Silicon Valley high-tech manufacturing is rooted in a practice of using immigrant working communities as fodder to feed its uncompromising demand for cheap disposable labor. Beginning with the Mexican Americans who once picked fruit in the fields of the Valley, the electronics industry has managed to meet its ever increasing number of production orders by filling its chemically intensive semi-conductor fabrication rooms and assembly lines with array of hard working communities of color. Call it the industry’s interpretation of affirmative action. Not surprisingly, the view of the unintentionally diverse blue-collar workforce is lost from the safe distance of management’s window. From that seat of perspective it is just a blur of slightly varying shades of brown skin.
Brown hands working with an unusual anxiety and endurance for 8 to 12 hours a day. It is as permanent a fixture to the factory image as the white wails and graying ceilings. A closer inspection unveils a worker demographic composite naturally mirroring the immigration history of the area. Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, and Ethiopian women and men of alleges have joined the Latino Working community to create a globally represented workforce in the very centralized geographic region of Silicon Valley. For high-tech tycoons of the new economy, it is a set-up which offers all the advantages of low- cost third world labor in the convenience and luxury of the United States. As a result of current immigration flows, high-tech sweatshops have been supplemented in the recent years with the presence of a new addition: the South Asian worker.
The twist of fate for the thousands of South Asians on the line, is that the treatment which Jivan said workers would never stand for in lndia is being forced upon them in the U.S. because of their immigrant standing. Being an immigrant employed in high-tech manufacturing now means that you are classified as a ”low-wage temporary worker”. In Silicon Valley this identity means that you make $6.00 to $8.00 an hour in one of the most unaffordable places to live in the country, have no job security, and no health insurance in an extremely hazardous work environment. Many temporary workers start a job thinking of the workplace abuses as the burdens of a transitional reality, something to put tap with for now, but will soon end once a better job is found. Due to the lack of the paradoxical ”good assembly job” many temporary workers become stuck at the same plant, at the same position and (nay for years. a punishing extended sentence which slowly eats away at morale and hope. Thus temporary work becomes permanent in all the worst ways and none of the good ways.
The rocket like ascendance of a portion of South Asian engineers and business people into Silicon Valley royalty has been both a captivating and surprising tale of immigrant entrepreneurial stewardship. Captivating for the phenomenal amount of wealth, 16.8 billion in sales when combined with the Chinese and surprising because most of these South Asians have come over in just the past two decades (Mendoza / Associated Press, Immigrants Find Success in Silicon, July 2, 1999). The fact that there are over 20 publicly traded companies each with sales in the millions founded or ran by Indians in Silicon Valley seems to have given tangible evidence to the ”model minority” paradigm. Of course such myths are allowed to perpetuate if the reality of the rest of the South Asian American existence is given a blind eye, thus also avoiding the exposure of an embarrassingly two-faced relationship of opportunity and exploitation with high tech industry.
While our community and the mainstream media has recognized the increasing number of South Asian engineers at the top of the computer field of Silicon Valley, the very acknowledgement of thousands of South Asian workers at the bottom of the high-tech food chain has been suspiciously absent. Surely denying the existence of an entire sector of a community is an unhealthy practice unto itself, but if maintained at this rate has the potential of dangers well beyond the seemingly neutral intentions of indifference. In short, given the ”third world” reality which South Asian immigrants face on a daily basis in Silicon Valley shop floors, the position of our community must mature into an active ally of the broader immigrant labor movement if any concept of change is to be expected.
The issue of community intervention becomes even more Pressing given the anti-union history of the Valley. While most industries of such size have union representation to rely upon as a voice for workers rights, Silicon Valley has put tremendous energy and resources into keeping the industry ”union-free” Having the foresight to see how a union could disrupt the patently unfair labor practices of his industry, Bob Noyce (the cc-founder of Intel) claimed in his 1984 book entitled Silicon Valley Fever that, ”Remaining non-union is essential for survival for most of our companies. If we had work rules that unionized companies have, we’d all go out of business. This is a very high priority for management.” The industry obeyed this commandment religiously throughout the booming business expansions of the past two decades by implementing rapid response union busting campaigns to diffuse any energy that hinted of worker organizing. Without union protection or a community support network, a worker such as Jivan in Silicon Valley is left in a battle for workplace justice that pits himself alone against an entire industrial complex fully stocked with money, political clout, and ludicrously effective media campaigns. The romantic struggle of the under-dog looses its charm when one takes notice that these unfair odds is the harsh reality directly resulting from his and our community’s absence.
The rising number of South Asians in the manufacturing sector of Silicon Valley is an alert to animate the collective South Asian American consciousness. We must focus on our well being in the workplace, because we are being focused upon. Particular energy must be concentrated on dissolving the separations between labor and community organizing. They are manifestations of the same struggle. This becomes even more apparent when industries, such as those in Silicon Valley, target and sacrifice specific ethnic groups to maintain astronomical and unshared fortunes. Describing the status of management/labor relations at his company a cc-worker of Jivan said, ” They (management) think we/re mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us shit.” Illuminating and exposing the dark corners of Silicon Valley is intended to foster a unified critical awareness among workers, 1abor groups, and the community. It is a vital step of a protracted struggle to bring justice to the high-tech in Silicon Valley.
HealthWATCH (Workers Acting Together for Change) is an association of immigrant workers in Silicon Valley and a project of the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health.
For details contact: Raj Jayadev Health WATCH Organizer:
jayadev3@hotmail.com
An Interview with Anna Leah Serabia, Women’s Media Circle, Philppines
Anna Leah is a journalist, activist and an independent film maker from Philippines. Earlier she used to produce radio programmes. Then she shifted to TV. Some years back she started producing issue based programmes independently for the Philippines TV. Not only her programmes are popular she shows how spaces can be created within the state-controlled media.
Anna, we are really fascinated by your experience of working in the mainstream mass media. Why did you want to do that?
We started as an activist group during the Marcos era going from place to place giving lectures on women’s (festivity as opposed to pornography. After several months of doing this I found that I was repeating myself. A large part of the audience was composed of people like me who knew what 1 had to say. 1 did not want to continue talking to people who already knew, rather I wanted to talk to people who didn’t know, who needed to be informed. I saw that the best way to do this was to use the mass media. This is the reason why I started thinking of doing a radio programme.
How did you fund yourself, were you teaching somewhere, were you working?
I was a journalist. Once in a while when I ran out of money I would ask my family. They were happy that, was doing something like this and were happy to support some of my expenses for the radio programme. So it was more like a personal mission on my part. It was fun. However, when I see it now, even after 13 years we are still spending our own money, advancing money for the programmes that we are doing. Its the same thing but on a different scale.
Why the concern to work with women specifically?
There was nothing on women. All the NGOs or groups that were working on different issues and politics at the time of the Marcos protest movement were concerned mainly with politics and Marcos and censorship, power, economy, etc. I could relate to these intellectually but I couldn’t relate completely because there was something really missing. I wanted to talk about health, abortion, divorce, violence, but there was no forum for that.
Why did you shift from radio to television?
It was a logical shift. The people who managed the Marcos media ran away, people who were excluded from that group started taking over the TV stations. I thought if they can take over 1 can produce. It was a natural thing. I thought I could have a talk show and a magazine show on the radio, why not on the TV? I thought why not have Programmes On Women? We lobbied with the government and they agreed that we cannot have a woman president without having air time for women. In fact for the first six months they actually paid us for doing the programme. After that paid producers were told either to stop or do programmes on their own. Of course I could have taken the easier option of getting back to my writing but I didn’t want to lose my audience. It was so hard to build it al1 up, get success, and now that I had it I had to decide whether to work hard or give it all up, I decided to work harder.
Were you able to locate funding?
Yes. Two things were working for us. One was the issue of gender. The other was the freedom of expression. We were able to locate funding in bits and pieces, like we would get money for one or two monthly or two weeks. Continuously we were looking for money. Its the same now, thirteen years later.
What about people? Did you work alone?
Initially I was the only one. Then I invited a friend to join us. Of course we had the crew of the TV station. I had to pay those people. But I had to do everything – I had to do the research, 1 had to write, I had to be my own secretary, 1 had to look for sponsors, 1 had to invite the guests myself, I had to do everything. It was like a ‘do it yourself TV’. The first year it was okay to be a ‘do it yourself TV’ but in the second year we couldn’t continue that way because we would really be failing in comparison with those people who were professional media people, kicked out because of Marcos. It was so easy for them to catch up, they knew the medium. Also, the commercial ‘I’V could get funding or is easily subsidized. So I had to get training of how to use the camera. 1 had to train myself because nobody wanted to train us. I had to learn how to direct, I had to learn everything.
During the change over from Radio to TV I asked a friend to teach me how to produce a TV programme. She gave me two weeks and I had to stay with her all the time and follow her everywhere she went. On the third week she gave me a camera operator and asked me to go and do it. It was fun. Finally when we got our schedu1e for air time she gave me a list of what we need and it was a lot of money – for the set, tapes, props, etc. I had to think very fast as to where 1 could get money for even one programme. I was able to convince a foundation run by my grand mother to make a documentary on them. So the money we got for the documentary was also used to make the TV programme. All the time we were juggling, trying to get money from here and there. Still it is the same.
You were saying something about constraints of a weekly programme….
Our funding is for making programmes once a month. In Philippines TV you cannot have a once a month programme. You either go daily or weekly, or you don’t go at all. The only way to sustain advertising is by going on regularly, which means at least weekly. We have no choice. So if I cannot organise money in that order, I have to go off the air. Often if we cannot produce a programme every week we replay. They don’t care as long as we pay for the air time.
How much in percentage goes in paying for the air time?
About 25 to 30%. A one hour programme costs about $4,000, and the air time costs around $800. Actually we pay slightly less than the usual because it is government media and they understand that we are doing good work and have less money. But they won’t give it free. 800 is the minimum.
Are you also trying to get free air time?
Yes. There is in fact a provision in our General Appropriations Act that all government companies should give 5% of their resources for women’s or gender programmes. I am trying to tell the TV station that they don’t even have to spend the 5%, they just need to give us the air time and charge the 5%. But they are not able to go around it unless the government implements the law as strictly as possible. A lot of companies, including TV stations can ignore the 5% law.
What programmes are you are doing now?
We started XYZ since ’95, which is a magazine show for young women. Before that was a women’s programme called Woman Watch. That was a public affairs show, mainly a talk show with some video. Sometimes we do documentaries. But we also have to do fund raising, production, training, advocacy and lobbying. We also publish and I write.
Who do you train?
For the TV programme, with XYZ, I have to train people. Because itls a programme for young people, I have to get young people and train them. 1 don’t really know how to train since I am not a trained person myself. So I train them on the job. But training in skills is one thing. Training them in perspective is much more difficult. They are young and didn’t grow up like me. They didn’t come from the movement. They were not activists. Their political history is completely different. For instance, how to ask questions? I have to constantly watch out and keep telling them. So, how to ask questions, how to approach a person, how to invite a person, or even how to write a letter. Even the hosts we have to train, like how to look at a problem from a gender perspective.
But you also train outside your productions team. Don’t you train the police?
That is like an extension. The TV programme is really to give information. Beyond information is action. The action must be informed action. Domestic violence is hardly talked about. My sister came to me one day. I was ten years as a woman activist. 1 never knew that she was undergoing this torment. One day she couldn’t stand it anymore. She called me and was crying on the phone. I was so shocked. My sister is a doctor. She is more demanding than I am. She is more assertive. I thought if this could happen to my sister, who is educated and from the upper class, her husband is a human rights lawyer, what could be happening to the less privileged? One of the reasons why I am doing these things is that I don’t want it to happen.
So we did a TV programme about domestic violence and I created a public service announcement of 30 seconds. The response was immediate. People started calling up the station and asking me for all kinds of advice. I told them 1 am not a lawyer. That’s why I had to call on the other NGOs to help me, that ”I can’t handle this. For education and information you have to help me. You have to create the response.” That’s the reason why we had to put up a hot line, look for counsellors, we had to go to legal advocacy network with lawyers.
One of the reasons why we had to deal with the police was that women who were contacting us on the hot line were complaining about the police. Even when we train the police or health workers, I have to tell them that ”You don’t ask a woman why she was beaten up. You are then asking her to give an explanation on something that happened to her which is not her choice. You have to ask her what were the things that made him do what he did. You can’t ask her why she was raped. What can she say, because I was wearing a short skirt? That’s not the way. ” We couldn’t go on this way, we had to train the police.
This was in 1991, by 1994 we couldn’t maintain the violence against women project inside the Women’s Media Circle, it had to be separated. So it’s a separate foundation now. Now we also train health workers, the military. Sometimes it is only gender sensitivity or just gender awareness, but I always try to push in gender justice and violence against women.
I am not satisfied with gender sensitivity, it’s a very superficial thing. You cannot have sensitivity if you don’t have the justice perspective.
Do you feel that there is a Philippino women ‘s perspective that is distinct from the western women’s perspective?
I didn’t go into the women’s movement by reading books. I grew with my own experiences. So theories came to me much later. When we are doing something I realise that there is a theory behind it. We always start with experience, we look for a theory or a name later. When we cannot find a name we invent it. Then we realise that in the west or America there are similar problem with different names and we read and see if we can take it. That’s why I have a hard time understanding how western feminist theories can conflict with ours. In a sense I am an illiterate kind of feminist and I learnt all my feminism much later. Only now I am reading about radical feminism and anti-pornography feminist. I think 1 look for things that are applicable to us and not the other way around.
New Films
EK Naya Savera
(A film on Child Sexual Abuse)
12 min, Hindi, 1999
The film explores the realm of child abuse, specially, sexual abuse and rehabilitation of such victims. It also focuses on ways to prevent such incidents and the need to educate the community- specially children. Two case studies have been presented to show how an NGO -AFD in association with CRY and Delhi Police, is involved in a continuous awareness and rehabilitation programme, specially in the Juggi clusters and pasties in Delhi through it’s projects Ummeed and Pratidhi.
Film by: IMAK Communication Far. Ltd.
Source: Association for Development
23/4, MLID Flats. Behind Model Town III, Delhi 110009
Ph (01 1) 2227259, 7161085, 2058718
VHS Price: Rs 200
The Power of the Image
(A 12 part series on the cultural, social and historical construction of Bombay Cinema)
The Power of the Image is a series that looks back at both the past and the present through a journey across the last five decades. Moving through the exciting world of popular Hindi cinema, the series attempts to map a cultural landscape of hopes and losses, transformations, changing values and traditions. The series looks at changes over time, with each episode analysing a particular theme. The series begins from the assumption that in many ways Bombay Cinema is able to articulate the aspirations, desires and hopes of its audiences. Why do some films become box office hits? Why for example is a film like Sholay a hit in the 70′s and Hum Apke Hain Kaun in the 90′s. Why and how has the image of the villain changed? Why has the psychotic image become popular today? What has led to the disappearance of the vamp? These are some of the many questions that the series attempts to address. A set of 12 Films is available on two VHS tapes.
List Of Episodes:
Tile Tapori as Rebel
The Legacy of the Angry Man
Tlxe Journey from the Village to the City
The Ambivalent Mother
The Villain in Melodrama
The Enigmatic Double
Comedy as a Weapon of the Weak
The Return of the Family
The Illusive Courtesan
The Question Of Identity
Whatever Happened to the Vamp?
The Power of Poetic Justice
Series by: Ranjani Mazumdar and Shikha Jhingan
Enquiries: Counterimage
207, Eros Apts. 56, Nehru Place, New Delhi 110019
e-mail: rm249@is8.nyu.edu or medias@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
Chaliyar – The Final Struggle
31 mins. English/Malayalam, 1999
1958: The Government of Kerala persuades the Birla Group to open a factory in Mavoor, North Kerala. Their vision of a modern industrialised Kerala was founded upon more and more Mavoors. The GRASIM rayon pulp factory is open for the last 36 years. Thousands of workers earn their living trading future lives for the present. Fumes wing their way to the neighbourhood villages spreading diseases and death. Effluents gurgle into the Chaliyar river poisoning everything on its way to the sea. At a time when environmentalism was unheard of, a man leads his people to save their river and their lives from the killer factory. Their dream is to see their river come back to life, and fishes leap in tile sun. What is happening in Mavoor and Vazhakkad is not a local problem that ought to be resisted and solved at the local level. A river, her people and a factory which gobbles all our precious natural resources and pollutes our land and lives, form the principal characters of this film.
Film by: P Baburaj 8 C Saratchandran
Source: THIRD EYE
Sreeniketan, Lgkshmi Nagar
Pattom RO Trlvandrum-695004
E-mail: sarat101@yahoo.com
A Neo-realist Dream
24 min, English subtitles, 1999
Even before the release of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, a college student in Kerala had made history by making India’s first neo-realistic film ‘Newspaper Boy.” The film went unnoticed, but it brought to the fore a new and exciting work of art. The director of the film, P. Ramdas, who made the film with his student friends was only 22 then. He later withdrew himself from films to practise as a lawyer. But his heart is still into cinema and at 67 he continues his research on the medium with the enthusiasm of a true student ; This documentary is an attempt to explore Ramdas’s experiences, thoughts and views on cinema with ‘Newspaper Boy” as a backdrop.
Film by: Pradeep Nair
Source: Film Buff
Vasanthi Mandiram, Kottayam – 686014, Kerala
Fax: +91 481 562006
e-mail: webnet@mdz vsnl.netin
Naka, Naka, DuPont Naka
24 min, English, 1999
DuPont, the world’s largest Nylon manufacturer, paid an estimated $ 1 million a month in fines and law suit settlements for environmental and public health infractions in 1989 in the US. In 1988, the multinational giant decided to set up a plant near Ponda in Goa, to manufacture nylon 6.6. But the local people revolted.
This film recounts the dynamics of the anti-Dupont movement and examines the caribous issues from the villagers’ point of view, the villagers give their reasons for their hostility and how they eventually forced DuPont to leave Goa.
Film by: Partha Sarkar and Reena Kukreja
Source: Other Media Communlcations (P) Ltd. ,
25 (FF) Navjeevan Vihar, New Delhi 110017.
Fax: (0 11) 6198042, E-mail: admin @del3.vsnl.netin
VHS Price.. Rs 500 (ind), Rs. 1000 (org)
Mountain Hymns
26 min. English, 1999
Over the centuries, indigenous people have evolved elaborate systems of rituals, beliefs and cultural practices to nurture environment, protect it and ensure its sustainability. This film attempts to document some of these cultural systems that are prevalent in rural communities in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh. The film highlights the strategies used by people to regulate the consumption of natural resources while ensuring that these resources are distributed equitably.
Film by: Partha Sarkar and Reena Kukreja
Source.. same as above