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A millennium of contradictions

At last, the new millennium has arrived. Last year the business world earned millions by summoning the new millennium somewhat prematurely. Now, one year later, few may be able to remember the millennium baby’s face or the Y2K terror, but our collective submission to the market has been engraved forever in the annals of history.

It is said that the last millennium created a fright and anxiety in the Christian world. According to Christian scriptures, the world was to end in the second millennium. Naturally many were scared, especially the common, god fearing people who had little in their control except to wait for doomsday.

The new millennium is different in many ways, since it is an era of human strength and achievement. We are no longer helpless even in the face of death – we can challenge it, change its pace, and even control it. Yet, the new millennium brings with it, not new motivation or aspirations, but numerous contradictions. Overwhelming opulence and prosperity on one hand, with widespread deception and impoverishment on another makes it a significant one. While on one hand the life of ordinary people in the fields, mills and streets is becoming more and more difficult, the system on the other are denying their very right to live.

Recently, the Supreme Court directed the closure of polluting industrial units in Delhi. This directive is reported to have caused the world’s largest displacement. 30 to 50 lakhs of people have been dislodged from their livelihood. Strange but true, this order of the highest court of India blatantly violates Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Apparently, after the polluting industries, the axe will fall on small vendors and handcart pullers who are soon to be ousted from Delhi.

For the first time in the last 50 years, the government has reduced the support price of food from its mark of Rs. 60, for which farmers earned Rs. 300 to 400 less than the usual from their produce. While FCI godowns are overflowing, Orissa and several other areas in the country are reeling under severe drought and famine.

Surprisingly, there has been no discussion on these paradoxical situations either in the Press or the numerous TV channels. It is said that the main attraction of newspapers these days is their Supplements. But what do these pages carry? Colourful pictures and advertisements, attractive women, exotic recipes and lavish social life of the rich and famous. In the fierce race of drastic price cuts to increase circulation, the papers, instead of being pillars of democracy, have become the mouthpiece of the elite. Recently, the Indian Express carried an advertisement – in a prominent space – attempting to caste aspersions on the Narmada Bachao Andolan, it was filled with personal allegations against Medha Patkar and other NBA activists. Thankfully, Medha has taken both the advertiser and editor of the paper to court.

And television is full of either religious/mythological serials or family tensions of the elite – their personal vindictiveness, revenge, violence and conspiracies; which is why serials like Jai Hanuman or Saans are top in the popularity list.

It is also interesting that the elite, that for the past 50 years has thrived on all the comforts and facilities of the state, are no longer interested in their own country. A sizeable section now dreams about visiting or settling abroad. On the other side, a vast majority are concerned about the way their country is getting increasingly entangled in economic bondage and are trying in their own ways to develop mechanisms of resistance. Fortunately, a few black spots are becoming visible in the illusory image of globalization.

Globally too, one leg of a series of protests and resistance that began in Seattle, and has come a full circle in Nice, via Washington and Prague. All the demonstrations in Europe were apparently rather aggressive. In spite of numerous attempts to stop demonstrators, thousands gathered in Prague. In Nice, protesters carried posters and placards of Che Guevara in their procession. And al1 these protests were against the hegemony and control financial capital.

The proclaimers of the end of history have themselves come face to face with history. The new millennium is unique in this sense, that now nothing is local or regional any more. While in Germany, former Chancellor Kohl was facing corruption charges, Clinton in America was being hunted for his sexual adventures. More recently, the US Presidential elections proved that them is not much difference between politics in the first or third worlds except the scales.

Although this millennium appears despondent and hopeless, it is in many ways different from the earlier one. A hundred years ago, the Indian people had given a war cry against British colonialism, initiating in the process a new chapter in international fraternity and cooperation. Along with deprivation and dissatisfaction worldwide, the new millennium is also showing the way to new ideas of progress and resistance. The new millennium, though full of contradictions, also promises to be one of new possibilities.

Media News

Communication Bill in the making

The Communications (Carriage and Content) Bill, 2000 is scheduled to be presented in the Winter Session of the Parliament. The draft bill prepared bv the Fali S. Nariman Committee tries to formulate a common law for information and broadcasting, telecom and information technology. The Committee has placed the draft bill for the consideration of the Union Cabinet. With the needed modifications the final version would be tabled in the Parliament.

The Bill has major legal and practica1 repercussions that would subsume the existing Indian Telegraph Act of 1885, The Broadcast Law, the Cable and Television Networks Act of 1995 and the Information Technology Act of 2000.

The Bill proposes the merging of three different ministries – Information and Broadcasting, Communications and Information Technology. It proposes to do away with the separate regulating agencies for Information technology and Information and Broadcasting by entrusting the expanded Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to the Communication Commission of India.

Prasar Bharati review report to be examined

After resuming the office of the Information and Broadcasting ministry following a gap of about two years, Mrs. Sushma Swaraj told the media that she would examine the steps in which the government can act upon the recommendations of the Prasar Bharati review report by the Shunu Sen Committee. She further informed the Press that there are many pending issues before the ministry like that of the entry of foreign media. When queried further, Mrs. Swaraj said that she is against the blind race for globalization. She has assured the Press that the government would come out with appropriate decisions on all of the pending issues. Earlier, while meeting the media immediately after assuming the ministry, she said that her permanent priority is to make the TV a family media ”so that the entire family can watch it with out any embarrassment or hesitation.”

No policy shift in FM broadcasting

A recent press release from the Information and Broadcasting ministry stated that the government would continue with the earlier plan to open up FM radio broadcasting to private agencies in 40 cities. Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, held a meeting with the proposed operators to sort out confusions and thereby decided to extend 15 days for furnishing the bank guarantee. The licensees were to apply for frequency allocation by November 2, 2000 and they are expected to make the stations operational in a year from the date of frequency allocation.

Of the 108 FM private operators who were in the outset the government has decided to forfeit the earnest money of 12 companies, including the big boys of Indian industry like Zee, Dabur and Reliance, since they had not submitted the license fee in time. It is viewed that AIR could collect much lesser than the projected revenue of Rs. 530 crores, that points to the very argument for the whole exercise of privatisation.

Another opportunity

After Star Plus and Zee, it is now Doordarshan that has decided to create more “Crorepatis.” After pondering for a long time, now DD is ready to air a “Crorepati” programme with Kabir Bedi as the host. Though the final telecast dates are yet to be finalised, sources say that DD viewers would be able to see the programme, produced by Cine Vista, in a few months.

Efforts to regulate advertisements

The RR Shah committee that intended to assess the broad outlines on advertisements has submitted it’s report to the Information and Broadcasting minister, Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, in the last week of November, 2000. The Committee was instituted in the light of the Ministry’s effort to take strong exceptions on liquor, cigarette a baby-food surrogate advertisements.

In a Press meeting, after receiving the report, Mrs. Swaraj told reporters that the mechanism to spot surrogate advertising exists, though it is not working as per the intentions it stands for. Citing the report, she pointed out that there are too many grey areas involved in the issue. As expected, the Committee leaves enough room for the government to act upon. The report says that it tends to be difficult to act against genuine products, manufactured and marketed throughout the country. Pointing out some examples, Mrs. Swaraj said that though McDowells soda, Kingfisher mineral water or Wills Book of Excellence may have the intrinsic value of the genuine products, they also play the role of flag-ships of their respective brands. Thus the ‘grey areas’ widen with the brand expansions through playing cards, sponsorship of cultural events, public services etc.

This cultural agenda is quite ironical for a Government that opened the floodgates of liberalisation in an unprecedented pace, where most of the culturally ‘alien’ traits were profoundly invited as per the whims of the global capital.

Awards for Praful and Achin

Noted Indian columnists, Mr. Praful Bidwai and Mr. Achin Vanaik were selected for the annual Peace Prize instituted by the International Peace Bureau, Geneva, this year. The awards were given for their contributions in the international campaign against nuclearisation of South Asia.

DTH gets the green signal

The Union Cabinet has cleared the long pending decision on direct-to-home television services. The decision to permit the DTH enables the subscribers to avail multi-channel television programmes in the KU band directly, with the help of small satellite dishes. According to Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, the government has announced the policy after taking the necessary steps to ”protect national security and moral and social values.”

With DTH technology coming in, it is argued that the quality of reception would become better and clearer. It will also allow a high degree of personal preference. With an initial capital and a monthly rental, the subscribers would be entitled to receive the television programmes directly, by-passing the cable operators/

To protect national interest, the government has drawn certain guidelines. It is mandatory to have at least 51% of Indian equity. Even in the 49% ceiling, not more than 20% of the foreign equity can be Foreign Direct Investment. Further, the policy insists that the earth station should be set up in the India’s geographical territory so that the uplinking can undergo a constant regulation. That way, the advertisemnt and programming code can also be implemented – unlike what happened with satellite telecasting through cable operators. It is also decided that the DTH company should be Indian in management and control.

The licensing of DTH provides the government an effective mechanism for monitoring the channels and their contents. As it ensures proper technica1 implementation, the government can successfully prohibit any channel it deems unfit for telecast. Moreover, it can also enforce its insistence on tele-casting the public broadcaster more effectively than it could through cable operators.

It may be recalled that the government had shelved the idea of introducing DTH for a long time on grounds of cultural invasion. The overall scene in communication, apparently, was also not in favour of DTH The socio-economic transformations that followed globalization, liberalization and privatisation made-most of these arguments redundant. Rather, it facilitated the long contested ideas to barge in.

In a close analysis it seems that the government has many effective advantages from the new policy. For one, it brings a good revenue. Besides it provides a more efficient mechanism for control. However, it is to be seen how the government will manage Doordarshan since the very introduction of D’I'H would amplify a competition among the channels and cable -operators.

DTH – How good?

Advantages

• Can help reach hilly and far flung areas
• More variety, premium, niche channels
• Crystal clear laser-disc quality picture, high fidelity colors, CD-quality sound
• Offers on-screen programme guide, programme booking facility and parental lock.
• Multi-media services like interactive TV, pay-per view TV, home shopping and banking.

Disadvantages

• Small market, projected figure in India, about one million subscribers in a year.
• Expensive technology, More so because set-top boxes are not locally manufactured. Installation cost : about Rs. 25000; could be subsidised up to Rs.15,000, subscription fee. Rs.500 per month.
• Cable networks have upgraded and proffessionalised
• Prohibitive costs for setting up DTH platforms.






Hail the market, shut down the good old institutions

In a significant development, the Expenditure Reforms Comission has proposed to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to skimp itself by reducing its services.

The Commission advised the ministry to wind up or ‘reform’ institutions like the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), Children’s Film society (CFS), the Film and Television Institute of India(FTII);  the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), the Press Information Bureau (PIB), etc.

The Commission has counselled the ministry to hand over DFF, FTII and SRFTI to the film industry. It has recommended that the modalities should be worked out in detail. In the case of CFS, the institution has to be closed down and the functions of the society should be transferred to agencies like NGO’s, that can be funded for the purpose.

It has also recommended to shut down all the centres of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (lIMC), other than the Delhi branch, along with the Research, Reference and Training Division (RRTD), the Photo Division, Directorate of Field Publicity and the Song and Drama Division. It has suggested that the ministry downsizes the P1B and the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity.

The Commission’s proposals should be viewed seriously because the government itself has now and then pronounced it’s displeasure over the public institutions that it alleges are ”unviable to market.”

The ongoing moves, from All India Radio or Doordarshan to plans of selling off the National Film Archives, are to be seen in this light.

It should also be noted that the government is casting off the institutions as a whole in the name of inefficiency, red tapism and economy. non-feasibility; thus foreclosing all their possibilities.






Prominent civil liberties activist T. Purushotham killed

T. Purushotham, the State Joint Secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) and a practicing advocate in Hyderabad High Court, was killed on November 23 at Dilsukhnagar in Hyderabad. The brutal murder of Puruhotham in broad daylight has shocked civil liberties activists and concerned people across the country.

Earlier, in May 1997, Purushotham, who was working in the civil rights movement for the past 15 years had faced another fierce attack by the Green Tigers, the mercenary outfit allegedly created by police. Apparently of late he had shifted his practice from the Mahabubnagar Sessions Court to the High Court due to the impending threat to his life. Actively involving in various civil rights activities in Andhra Pradesh, Purushotham also documented the human rights violations in other states like Kashmir and North East. Recently, he was actively working towards building an all-India civil rights movement by forming a co-ordination committee on civil and human rights with several rights organizations from various states.

Many organizations including APCLC, AIPRF and PUDR allege direct police involvement in the brutal murder of Purushotham. They say that within minutes of the dastardly act, the top officials of the city reached the spot with a huge force and an ambulance, which reveal that the top police brass were very much part of the conspiracy and were waiting nearby for the well – planned murderous act to be completed. They took away Purushotham’s body forcefully holding back the protesters that included his wife Jyothi. It is also said that the police officials had even removed the pieces of flesh and tried to clean the pool of blood in their attempt to erase circumstantial evidences.

With the killing of Purushotham, the civil and democratic rights movement in Andhra Pradesh has lost five of its premier leaders in the last 15 years. The state’s criminal record of killing civil libertarians began in January 1985 when Gopi Rajanna, an advocate and Vice President of APCLC, of Jagityal taluka (Karimnagar district) was shot dead by the BJP activists. Later, Dr. Ramanatham, a popular pediatrician in Warangal and State Vice President of APCLC was killed in his clinic in September 1985 by some policemen who came from a Procession that was passing by Japa Lakshma Reddy, a senior civil libertarian and State Executive Committee member of APCLC was killed in his home in Karimnagar by plainclothes  policemen in November 1986. Later, the Convenor of Warangal District Committee of APCLC, Secretary of Warangal Bar Association and a popular advocate Narra Prabhakar Reddy was killed in his home in Warangal. Out of these murders of APCLC leaders, three were directly done by police while one was abetted by them. Due to this history, the civil and democratic rights activists have strong reasons to believe in the state police’s involvement in the killing of Purushotham.






Taking theatre to schools

The National School of Drama (NSD) is keen that theatre be included in the school curriculum. In a press conference held in New Delhi recently, the director of NSD, Mr. Ram Gopal Bajaj said that the establishment has always conspired to maintain the status quo by keeping theatre away from the academic mainstream.

By teaching theatre to children and by sensitising them to issues, their perceptions will change and they are bound to ask uncomfortable questions and demand for a new world order, which the system wants to avoid, he observed.

He further elaborated on a promotional programme called Theatre in Education, which holds the National Theatre Festival for Children. He stated that the NSD is planning to bring traditional theatre forms to Delhi so that the children in the Capital can appreciate the diverse theatrical traditions in India.






BBC to clone “Yes Minister”

BBC’s popular serials Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister are to be remade in Hindi to be telecast in India. These satirical serials are planned to be on air by next January. It adds to the recent trend of television programmes being modelled on successful programmes elsewhere for telecast in India. In a sense, the national/Bollywood domination of the Indian small screen is slowly giving way to global players. ITV’s internationally acclaimed programme Who wants to be a Millionaire, made in India as Kaun Banega Crorepati, has already redefined the Indian airscape to the extent that it has pushed away the news and current affairs slots from the prime time. Interestingly, the same thing happened with BBC, that resorted to reschedule its 9’o’ clock news to an hour later. Despite strong protests from British citizens, the public broadcaster of Britain too decided to be friendly to the market for its prime time slot.






Teen dies trying to emulate film

Two star struck teenagers tried to emulate a dare-devil act of their screen idols, recently in Bally, West Bengal. In the process, one of them died.

Seventeen year old Sunil Ram and his friend attempted to race across oil tankers parked near Bally station, jumping from one tanker to another as Veeru and Jai did in Sholay. The two class IX students had also decided on the prize for the winner- An Éclair.

Locals said that they saw both climb on top of a tanker and get ready for the sprint. However, the friend failed to muster enough courage and gave up. But Sunil went ahead. Soon he got entangled in a high voltage overhead wire and was instantly charred.

Neighbours said Sunil was a good student and was also very fond of cricket. He was a great fan of Saurav Ganguly and was so inspired by the Indian captain that he began to bat left-handed.






People’s court would approve the right of the valley

“The people wield the ultimate power and the judgement of the apex court is going to be unveiled by the people as what happened in the ruling to suspend the fundamental rights during the dark days of emergency,” observed the noted lawyer Mr.Shanti Bhushan. He was speaking on the Supreme court verdict on the Sardar Sarovar case as the part of a seminar jointly organised by National Alliance for People’s Movement (NAPM) and Indian Social Institute (ISI) at New Delhi recently.

The seminar attended by a cross section of Delhi’s activists, intelligentsia, and media, resolved to continue the fight against the dam mega project since it felt that “the judgement has shaken the confidence of the people in the ability of the judiciary to protect the week and the downtrodden from the onslaughts by the state and the powerful vested interests.” The other digantories who spoke included Ms.Medha Patkar, Retd. Justice Mr.Rama Swamy Iyer, Adv.Prasant Bhushan, Mr.Surendra Mohan, Ms.Nirmala Sharma, Dr. Vandana Shiva and Mr. G.N. Saibaba.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms.Medha Patkar, who is leading the Narmada Bachao Andolan(NBA) for almost two decades, said that the struggle in the streets has never been disbanded or affected because of the judicial proceedings since the NBA had always believed the judicial means as one among the many ways to attain justice. But at the same time, she expressed, the apex court has miserably failed in delivering justice to the thousands of unprivileged tribal population. The judgement defy not only the land rights of a population but their cultural ethos of common property resources as well. Hence, the fight has to cope up even with most adverse conditions as it is a judgement against their right to live, she observed.

In his address, Adv. Shanti Bhushan opined that Narmada dam would never be built since the politicians lack the interest to build it, other than the political mileage attached to it. It is merely the life boat of BJP in the troubled waters and it would be as ephemeral as what they call a Deepavali gift. He also added that the minority judgment by Justice S. P. Barucha would stand the test of the time, and his dissenting note in three member bench would be hailed as the voice of democracy in the future course as Justice H. R. Khanna is now considered for his solitary dissenting mandate on the suspension of the fundamental rights during the time of emergency.

While delivering the brief sketch of the legal fight between the NBA against the three states – Gujarat, Madya Pradesh, and Maharashtra – since 1994, Adv. Prabhat Bhushan said that the NBA’S argument for instituting an independent body to analyse the impact of Sardar Sarovar dam was rejected by the apex court and the court has resorted to a judgment that delivers injustice to the project affected people. He suspects the intervention of vested interests in the judgment on the grounds that, barring the bureaucratic nitty gritties that always played against the NBA, the court has particularly insisted on the NBA in the initial rounds to confine to case per se, as it is least interested in entering to the debate over the feasibility of big or small dams. But in the judgment he argues, the same court has viewed that the NBA could not produce even a single case favouring its argument on the environmental consequence of the major dams – though the final verdict of the court is a testimony forbid dams which goes to the extent of saying that big

dams upgrade the environment. Moreover, according to Mr. Bhushan, this case has also set a legal precedent by applying the ‘rule of laches’ (negligence or unreasonable delay in pursuing a legal remedy) to the Public interest Litigation (PIL) that overlook the very purpose of PIL. By this judgement, he says, the Supreme Court has limited the PIL also in a time frame, while the intention of ‘laches’ is to omit the negligence or the unreasonable delay. Citing this case under ‘laches’ delimit the issue, especially when the affected were hardly informed about the proposed displacement.

In his address, Rtd. Justice Rama Swamy Iyer cited the verdict as one among the worst three judgements in the judicial history of India. He felt that the judgement was explicitly prejudiced and highly unsubstantiated. To his minds, all the progressive judgements that the Supreme Court has made in the last two decades were wiped out with this single judgment. On the other hand, G.N. Saibaba of All India People’s Resistance Forum (AIPRF) described the judgment as an ideologically loaded one. He said that the judgement models on the imperialist regime and emphasized on the lack of the Supreme Court’s ability to judge against monopoly capital. He, as most of the speakers, also pointed out the importance of integrating the Narmada struggle to other movements so that people can assert that power lies with them alone.






Mahasveta Devi’s Voice archived

The United States Library of Congress, as part of its ongoing project to record leading South Asian writers reading passages from their own works, recorded the voice of Mahasveta Devi. The eminent author, known and respected the world over for her extraordinary literature and relentless voicing of her concerns for tribal people, read out passages from Stanadayini and Kunti O Nishadi . This effort in archiving voices of South Asian writers is to mark the bicentennial anniversary of the US library of Congress. “it is interesting for a writer to be able to record parts of her(or his) own work,” she said.






Forging an alliance for Nuclear disarmament

The 600-plus delegates to India’s first-ever National Convention for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace held in New Delhi comprised the most varied gathering of peace activists ever to assemble in India. Feminists, social activists, scientists, artists, speaking Chhattisgarhi to French, coming from near the uranium mines of Jaduguda to the paddy-growing plains of Bangladesh. It was, as former Chief of Naval Staff L. Ramdas put it, a veritable peace fest and an altogether exciting historic landmark. They included 50 delegates from Pakistan, 15 from the rest of South Asia, and about 20 peace activists from Australia, Northeast and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and America. The famous campaigners like Bruce Kent and Jeremy Corbyn from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), representatives of the Aboliton 2000- network, and Japanese activists, besides the Pakistan Peace Coalition were also there among the participants.

The three days Convention, divided into five Plenaries, 22 Working Group Sessions in four broad categories, and cultural events, was the culmination of a one-year long process of meetings and consultations involving nearly 120 groups and organisations, as well as indivisual activists,  in more than 10 Indian cities. It was also the beginning of a new phase in India’s broad based Rainbow-Coalition-type movement for nuclear weapons abolition. It offered Indian peace activists the first national – level opportunity to debate a range of theoretical and practical issues, exchange experiences, and achieve a degree of clarity on aims and methods. It established India’s first- ever Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), a network with a 50-member Co-ordination Committee. It also gives India’s peace movement an organised national presence and profile. Since the 1998 nuclear tests, there have been sustained and growing protests in more than 40 cities against weapons of mass destruction and India’s nuclear policy volte face. These tended to be discrete, and unconnected to a coalition structure with a national (and international) presence, profile and perspective. The flow of the Convention’s deliberations led from an analysis of recent international and national developments, discussions on how to construct a strong moral, legal, political and security- based case against nuclear weapons and their impact; understanding the experience of peace movements regionally and globally; and developing strategies and campaign tools for an abolition movement in South Asia.

The deliberations ended with the adoption of an Action Plan and an Interim Charter, and the election of a Coordination Committee. The Action Plan includes a number of specific programmes and campaigns, including regional disarmament conventions and sectoral meetings of professionals, advocacy and lobbying of political parties, selecting 10 anti- nuclear weapons, schools and colleges in India and Pakistan, institutionalising a Nuclear Disarmament and Peace Week from August 4 to 10 every year, and setting up of a national federation of radiation victims, besides enhancing the South Asian peace movement’s presence in international peace forums.

The Convention ended with a cultural event, in which 12 different ensembles including street theatre by Nishant, folk music from Chattisgarh, Zohra Sehgal’s recitation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, qawwalis  by the Wadali brothers, Baul songs by devdas and Karthik, and sufi/folk music by Parvaaz and Madan Gopal Singh.

Based on a Report on the Convention, by Praful Bidwai






Times, they are a changing!

The recently concluded National Conference on Human Rights, Social Movements, Globalisation and the Law at Panchgani (December 26, 2000 – January 1, 2001) was a truly mammoth affair that not only had a huge line up of workshops and events (7 plenaries, 17 workshops, over a dozen training sessions, a film festival over two venues, cultural programmes and impromptu meetings) but also huge and enthusiastic participation from people from all corners of India, as well as a very important international contingent.

Spanning across two millenniums to the conference is perhaps a precursor to the times ahead. There were nearly 2,500 participants who braved the cold, somewhat chaotic living conditions, strange food and stranger rules of the Moral Re-Armament Centre, to debate and strategise on issues around Human Rights. There were also many young people. If the conference is a measure of the times ahead, one can quote Dylan, that “Times, they are a changing!”

The new year bash had people from different corners of the world performing and finally, on the stroke of midnight Dr. Ramdayal Munda played the drum and led the participants out of doors to dance in the pouring rain. If this too is a precursor of times ahead, we hope that the new millennium will be under the leadership of tribals and  dalits.

In the next issue of AMT, we will carry detailed reports of the event.






Nottam 2001, the touring festival

The Nottam 2001, the touring documentary film festival is planned to be held in February/March 2001. The festival will tour the entire state of Kerala and screen documentary films to an audience that barely has access to such films. Nottam is a non-commercial and non-competitive festival organised with a vision for finding space and audience for issue based documentaries. The organisers, the Third Eye Communications, request filmmakers to send a VHS copy of their new films as soon as possible.

For details, contact :

C. Saratchandran

Third Eye Communications, 101 North Fort Garden,

Tripunithura  -682 301, Kochi, Keralam, Tel: 0484 784 333

E-mail: sarat@satyam.net.in






OTHER SOURCES

What do other papers say?

Invading young minds

Editorial, the Hindu of November 25, 2009

Cinema’s obsession with violence is growing. Most films have a liberal dose of it, and what is even worse is that much of it could have been edited out or not shot at all in the first place. Frames of brutality – cold blooded murder or sadistic rape – mix and run along with perfect love stories or pleasing family dramas or pure children’s fare. With the increasing tendency among directors and producers to allow their heroes or heroines to act out evil, if only to justify the end, the line between good and bad is disappearing. For teenagers and even those younger, this can cause moral confusion, leaving them to often grapple with this dilemma by arguing that their favourite stars can do no wrong. If they kill, they had to. If they drank, drove and ran over someone, they had no other choice. Cinema is full of such predicaments and boys and girls apparently take the easy way out: grab what you can, destroy what you perceive as wrong or as a threat.

There is worldwide concern over the kind of values that cinema spreads. In the US, a Federal Trade Commission report – ordered by the President, Mr. Bill Clinton, after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado

last year – found ”pervasive and aggressive marketing of violent films…”. A spate of similar incidents undermined the credibility of the rating system followed in the US: it was found that films meant for 13 years and plus were regularly sold to 10 and 11 year- old children. Mr. Jack Valenti, Chief Executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, has consistently disputed cinema’s impact on impressionable minds, something with which British and other sociologists vehemently disagree. In fact, the link between Crime and Screen Savagery is now beyond doubt. Teachers in India agree with this, and feel that blood and gore on celluloid completely desensitize children. It may not be far- fetched to suggest here that the disturbing rise in the number of thefts and assaults in the country may have something to do with this.

There is a very simple solution to this. Practise restraint. Those who make pictures must devise a code to make cinema a pleasant experience. Sir Alfred Hitchcock invariably dwelt on the seedier side of life. Yet, he rarely showed a dead body. Was he not able to convey, and convey effectively and dramatically, what he wanted to?

There have been others who have always handled murky themes with understated sincerity and, yes, brilliance.

Perhaps, it is easiest to indicate rancour by putting a knife in a man’s hand, and tinsel town mandarins are well known for such quick fixes. But with societies now in the thick of religious and caste wars, cinema must learn to be far more responsible than it has been in a long time. No one can deny that its power is awesome, that it is capable of wrecking sheer havoc. Its hold over the young is almost mesmeric, as we have seen in the cases relating to India’s ‘Shaktiman’, where especially boys aped the television superman and came to grief. Ultimately, a boycott of such terrible stuff may force its maker to shift gears, but in a diverse nation like India, where interests clash, this may be easier said than done. One can, then, only hope that better sense would prevail: those who wield the mega-phone must learn to rely on their imagination rather than baser instincts.






Covert Censorship

Published as Letter to the Editor, The Hindu, Nov 11, 2000

Sir,

I am a subscriber to VSNL’S internet service with the following e- mail address, skazi@nde.vsnl.net.in.

Since September end, 2000, I noticed that all e-mails to and from me to               Middle East Socialist Network (MESN) could neither go through nor reach me. MESN is an e-group with 123 members across the world who receive messages regarding news and political developments in that region. Its members are largely researchers or people interested in political events and struggles in that region. Anyone can access the MESN website and messages at www.egroups.com/group/mesn.

After futile attempts to set things right myself, I came to know from the MESN moderator that my account had, for some unknown reason, been ”blocked” by my server. On October 31, upon visiting the VSNL office at by VSNL that my account had indeed been blocked. Upon inquiring as to why this had been done without my knowledge or consent, one of VSNL’S managers, Mr. Goel from the Customer Services Section informed me that since ”Muslims have links with Pakistan and because reasons of security, they had taken this step. Upon protesting this covert, undeclared censorship, Mr. Goel, with a grandiose gesture, declared ”We can do any thing.” He alleged that ”some people had complained against me – an allegation which he has failed to prove or substantiate. MESN only e-mails its subscribers, and also has an anti- spamming policy, so the question of anyone receiving any unsolicited mail from MESN does not arise.

My mail was “unblocked” after filing a written complaint and meeting a couple of other managers! Needless to say VSNL is still to account for its outrageous, unwarranted policing and  censorship of my mail. I would like to ask Mr. Goel and VSNL: is this how do you treat your Muslim customers? Are we, once again, to be collectively branded and placed in the ”suspect” category due to the prejudice and communal bias of VSNL officers?

– Seema Kazi
New Delhi

Global Media

The KBC formula more lucrative?

The popularity of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) has crossed al1 barriers, due to a heady cocktail of Amitabh Bachchan’s star persona and our greed to become millionaires. With only one person making it to the million mark, the game, as they say, is still wide open, with the excitement rising day by day. It is another matter that the lone millionaire of KBC, Harshvardhan Navathe, was able to collect only 54 lakhs out of the 1 chore that he won, owing to various tax impositions.

However, riding high on the KBC wave are several publishers who have created their own avenues to make their millions. The market is flooded with at least half a dozen books that profess to provide readers with the right formula of becoming a millionaire. Among the books available are Kaun Banega Crorepati by Manoj Pocket Books (Rs.100/-), Aap Bane Crorepati by Raj Pocket Books (Rs 50/-), Crorepati Baniye by Bhagwati Publishing (Rs 70/-), Aise Bane Crorepati by Oswal Publishers (Rs 9/-) and three books by Diamond Publishers – How

To Win Kaun Banega Crorepati (Rs.60/-), How To Win KBC (Rs 75/-) and Play And Win ( Rs.60).

According to retailers, all the books are selling like hot cakes. The primary takers for these books are the middle aged, and youngsters who are regular buyers of competition books. Although the producers of KBC have taken a publisher to court for using the logo of KBC on it’s cover, it has not made much of a difference. Most publishers continue to use both the logo of the show as well as Amitabh Bachchan on their covers as the show goes on.

Craze for the original show on the decline

While Kaun Banega Crorepati has hit new heights in popularity and mass appeal in India, the craze for the original avatar, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? on the ABC, is reportedly on the decline. In fact the producers have gone to the extent of modifying the show in order to boost its popularity.

According to the New York Times, the overall viewership of the game show has fallen by 16%. A long-time favourite of the 18 – 49 age groups, the show’s popularity with this group has now fallen by 25%. It is but obvious that this age group is the main target audience of ABC’S advertising. But owing to the drop in viewership, ABC is compelled to air its advertisements free of charge.

Despite the decline, however, every night this game show reaches an audience of approximately 2 crores.

And in comparison to similar programmes aired on other channels, Who Wants to be a Millionaire still rules the ratings roost.

25 hours of webcasting by FIRE

On the 25th of November, observed as the International Day Against Violence Towards Women, the Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE), based in Costa Rica, carried out 25 consecutive hours of Internet audio webcast on issues related to violence against women. With this webcast, FIRE wanted to raise a global awareness of the need to put an end to all forms of violence against women and build bridges with a global women’s movement that is uniting efforts to safeguard the right of women to live free or violence.

The 25th of November is celebrated as an International day against gender violence in the honour of the three Miraval sisters who were assassinated on that fateful day in 1960 by Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic at the time. They were killed because they fought against the dictatorship and refused to sleep with him. In 1980, Latin American and Caribbean women at the regional Feminist Encuentro held in Colombia, declared the day of their murder as the Latin American Day Against Gender Violence. Later this day began to be observed as an international day against gender violence.

Through Internet, hundreds of websites formed a virtual bond linked to FIRE’S website http:/ / www.FIRE.OR.CR. Both conventional radio stations, women’s and media organizations listened to and downloaded the sound files in order to re-broadcast in their own radio shows. The 25-hour show included programmes in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalong, German, Chinese, French and other languages. The webcast incorporated prerecorded radio shows sent to FIRE by women radios producers, FIRE’S own productions, on-site interviews of women in Costa Rica who visited FIRE’S radio station in Ciudad Colin on that day, and people from all across the world who called in.

Policing private life in Britain

A major row has started in Britain over a proposal of the intelligence service for having the authority to tap every telephone call and e-mail sent or received by anyone living in the country. The justification of this move is to help the intelligence and police to check cybercrime.

The move has provoked wide-spread anger and is being described as a step towards creating a Big Brother state. Human rights activists charged that it would compromise the privacy of millions of innocent people who would have their personal information accessed by the government agencies. Some officials, including those who believe that the police needs more power to cope with the new technology-driven crimes, are also reported to have expressed strong reservations. Most feel that the proposal would give sweeping power to the state at the cost of individual right to privacy and are demanding that the move be discouraged.

France to save French Identity

France, the self-appointed champions to save Europe from the supposed ravages of American Entertainment, is set to do battle at the Nice European Union summit for the right to enforce the strict system of subsidies and limits on American films and other entertainment that can be put on television and radio.

Promising no surrender on culture, Prime Minister Lionel Jospins said, ”The beginning of the new century will be a time of struggle for cultural rights” Europe, he said, was ”threatened with uniformisation and absorption with the victory of a single (American) culture”.

The French fear that with majority voting being favoured by most European Union states, Europe would soon be made (by Britain and it’s supporters) to give in to American pressure to treat ”intellectual property” and services as ordinary commercial products. This would include entertainment and internet content. Which would put an end to the ”cultural exception” that Europe has imposed in world trade talks to protect it ‘s broadcasting quotas and film subsidies which are currently in operation across the European Union.

Okomedia 2000: Bhopal Express receives the Golden Lynx

Okomedia 2000, the 17th International Environmental Film Festival held at the Friedrichsbau-Lichtspiele, Freiburg, Germany, concluded on October 22, 2000 announcing the award winners in various categories.

The Golden Lynx award for the best artistic achievement went to Bhopal Express. Directed by Mahesh Mathai, the film sensitively portrays the helplessness and trauma that people in Bhopal experienced in the biggest industrial disaster in the world, the Bhopal gas tragedy.

The Golden Lynx award for the best journalistic achievement went to Das Schmutzige Geschaft Mit Dem Weissen Papier (The Dirty Business with White Paper) by Inge Altemeier and Reinhard Hornung (Germany). The film uncovers a series of environmental and health hazards inflicted on people by cellulose production in Indonesia, that serves major paper companies in Germany.

La Cite Animal (The Animal City) by Frédéric Gonseth and Catherine Azad (Switzerland) was awarded the Golden Lynx award for the best nature film. This film shows how people and animals live together in the Indian city of Jaipur. While focussing primarily on animals, the film also provides a deep insight into the social structure of the country.

Endstation Paradies (Terminal: Paradise) by Jan shirring (Germany) received the Golden Lynx for the best children’s film. The seven minute film tells the story of a small colony of rats almost suffocating in the refuse that fills their environment. As they set out in search of paradise, they find out how interference with nature destroys their habitat.

Various other films also won prizes in different categories. The European  Television Prize went to Was in unserem Essen Steckt (What is in Our Food) by Karin Haug (Germany). The Hoimarvon-Ditfurth prize for the best journalistic portrayal of ecological problems for children and young people went to Null Abfall – Losungen fur die Zukunft (Zero Emission – Solutions for the Future) by Jens Ducker and Ulrike Gropp (Germany). The special prize for exceptional work in environmental education was awarded to Uralt – Und-  Doch Modern : Naturstoff Kork (Ancient yet Modern: A Natural Product) by Vadim Jendreyko (Switzerland). The promotional prize of the city of Freiburg was given to Since the Company Came by Russel Hawkins (Australia).

Harvesting Hunger by Krishnendu Bose (India) received special commendation by the jury. The film warns about a crucial problem that the world is likely to face in the near future, that of starvation, Media by Pavel Koutsky (Czech Republic), a five-minute amusing yet critical film on the problems of a new kind of waste, that of information refuse, also received a special commendation by the jury even though it was not strictly an environmental film.

Exhibition faces censorship

The War We Forgot , an exhibition of rare and mostly unpublished photographs of the Bangladesh freedom struggle, organised by Drik Picture Library, was withdrawn from its original venue of Bangladesh’s National Museum, Dhaka, in protest against censorship.

The images collected for the exhibition by world renowned photographers depicts all aspects of war, ranging from images of the conflict, the exodus, the refugee camps the genocide, the Muktibahini in action and at rest, photographs of Pakistani and Indian soldiers, women being trained as soldiers, paintings by children affected by the war, and a rare photograph of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with his daughter Sheikh Hasina, after his return from imprisonment in Pakistan.

The museum objected to a series of images showing the killing of razakars by the Muktibahini, which included the Pulitzer prize winning photograph by Michel Laurent and Horst Faas. The exhibition was finally put up at Drik’s own premises.

Festivals

The Chicago  Underground Film Festival

The 8TH annual Chicago Underground Film Festival will be held on August 17-23, 2001 . The festival dedicated to underground, independent  and experimental film and video, is designed to showcase the defiantly independent filmmaker. Its mission is to promote films and  videos that dissent radically in form, technique, or content from the Indie mainstream presenting works that challenge and transcend commercial expectations. The Chicago Underground Film Festival is competitive and will present awards to best films in these categories: Narrative Feature, Narrative Short, Documentary, Experimental, Animation, Music Video . Audience Choice and  “Made in Chicago”.

Deadline: April 7, 2001
Late Entries: May 15, 2001
For more information, contact
Programming Director, Chicago Underground Film Festival,
3109, N.Western Avenue,
Chicago, IL 606 18, USA E-mail: info@cuff.org

The Digital Film Festival

The Digital Fllm Festival 2001 is India’s first film festival for movies made on a digital platform -  HDTV, DigiBeta, MiniDv or Digital8. The festival seeks to showcase the convergence of digital technology with a new breed of Independent filmmakers who can function outside the restraints of traditional film forms.

The festival is being organised by Digital Talkies, a company dedicated to creating, showcasing and distributing the best of next – generation entertainment. The festival will premiere on the 22nd of February 2001 in New Delhi, and a selection of films from the festival will tour several other cities in the country. ”

A screening panel will select the entries to be showcased In the festival. A panel of eminent judges will decide on awards in the following categories:

Best Short (under 30 minutes duration)
Best Longform (over 30 minutes duration)
Best New Director
Audience award based on audience voting

Criteria:

The film must originate on a digital format .
The film can be alienation or live action
The film can be of any duration
The film can be of any genre, fiction or non-fiction (documentary)

Deadline: February 1, 2001
For inquiries contact:
Siddharth Anand Kumar
siddarthkumar@digitaltalkies.com, or
Ankur Tewari:  ankur@digitaltalkies.com
Fax: 011 3329441
Website: digitaltalkies.com

Events

Who are our best teachers?

The Sacod 2000

The Sacod 2000, an annual film forum of socially relevant films from Southern African countries was held between  October 23 to 27, 2000, in Windhoek, Namibia. Sacod, that stands for Southern Africa Communications for  development, is a network of independent production companies, distributions and filmmakers from Southern  Africa that promotes the production and distribution of Southern African videos and films that contribute to  democracy, peace, popular participation race and gender equality, development and cultural identity.

”The idea behind the forum is to enable adequate exposure to our members, some of whom are established filmmakers while some are developing, to each other’s work, to the newer trends in b0th Southern Africa and in the world, and provide a platform for exchange of views and ideas between each other – in short, to help them make better movies,” summed up Chris Kabwato, the coordinator.

Every year Sacod organsises the forum on specific themes. The theme for Sacod 2000 was Race, Gender and Cultural Identity. It invited all its members to submit entries, from which a selection committee chose 15 to be screened at the forum. Besides, facilitators invited from the region and outside also screened films of their choice.

The films in the forum had a wide range of themes – from a widow’s struggle to reclaim her position in the family and society to the impact of war on wonder, from polygamy in a muslim family to efforts of a community to conserve the architectural heritage of their town, from the life and philosophy of a Malombo musician to that of a community that dwells on the pavements of Cape Town, and much more. There were of course several films on race. There was also a wide variety in the forms of story telling and the methods used by the filmmakers.

A Widow’s Inheritance (Mozambique), for example, was completely dramatised and enacted. How ever, its director Sol Carvalho was insistent that it was more documentary than fiction. According to Sol, the entire story evolved out of an in-depth research and the story was based on real characters and incidents, though it may not have been one woman’s experience. Nokwezi’s Story (South Africa) told the story of the process by which Nokwezi braved all oppositions in the family to visit a health centre to get a pap smear done, a test for cervical cancer. Again this was dramatized, but based on true stories and characters that the director Athalie Crawford came across in her research. While Nokwezi’s Story concentrates on one aspect of the problem of cervical cancer and addresses the basic needs of

convincing women about the importance of a pap smear, Athalie also has made a documentary on the same subject that is more information based. Francois Gonot of Angola created an impressionistic treat in Viajar (Travelling) by combining images of a modern dance form, a dilapidated train station and a coach, depicting different moods and feelings of train travel. Francois doesn’t pretend that the film has anything to do with development. He just tried to make a promotional film (for a contemporary dance unit) more interesting.

The issue of form was in fact a highlight of the forum. Ebbe Priesler, a facilitator from Denmark, an eminent filmmaker and teacher, conducted an interesting session on this aspect urging the need to look for new and interesting ways to tell a story. In his presentation he showed a number of examples from classic and contemporary European documentaries, from Bert Hanstraa’s Zoo to Its Now or Never by Jon Bang Carlsen (Denmark), to illustrate his point. His session was well received by the participants as they too are keen to experiment with form. At the end of the day, the conventional documentaries – information based, using the routine elements of narration and interviews over visuals – received a lot of flak, being described as ‘buring current affairs programmes’.

A number of interesting films were unfortunate to fall under that category. Robyn Hoffmeyer’s Women and War (South Africa), one thought, was an interesting film on the impacts of war on women. Moreover, it is an important film to use. But it was severely, at times unfairly, attacked on various premises, essentially formal. David Max Brown’s Spirit of Malombo (South Africa) was an extremely sensitive and well made documentary, but it used the conventional elements of visuals, interviews and narration. It was judged as ‘just another conventional documentary’. And some others too.

Race and cultural identity were issues that received serious attention, understandably so. An exclusive session was devoted to race, facilitated by Rob Gordon, an eminent social anthropolgist based in the US, and Ebba Kalondo-Lichen, filmmaker from Namibia. Rob’s presentation included interesting facts like blacks in Namibia were allowed to go to movies for the first time only in 1931. Also that Charlie Chaplin’s films were banned in Namibia, a German occupied colony, in the Twenties. He also traced the history of film making in Namibia to the Twenties since when many Hollywood filmmakers chose Namibia to shoot films depicting ‘savages’. This included Tarzan and The Gods Must Be Crazy series. With help of clippings from different films and television programmes, he raised some key issues in the production of films on race and emphasized on the sensitivity that a white filmmaker should have while filming with and portraying issues concerned with black/indigenous communities. Participants were rather sensitive and vocal about race issues, as a result of which certain films received strong criticism of being inadvertently racist.

One film that raised a violent storm was The Long Tears – An Ndebele Story by David Forbes (South Africa). This film is about the art, culture and traditions of a tribe Ndebele in South Africa. Indeed, the film was a ‘conventional documentary’ but was extensively researched and very well shot. When the screening was about 20 minutes old, there was a short disruption due to a power cut. During the interval the facilitator passed a casual remark about it being a problematic film. When the lights were back he asked if the group really wanted to see the rest of it, since there was nothing much to miss. Immediately a section of participants – the more vocal and evolved ones – agreed to move on to the next film. However, another section – the relatively quieter ones – quite unexpectedly put their foot down. They strongly criticised the arrogance of judging a film without even viewing It fully and demanded that the full film be screened and discussed. The house finally went ahead with the screening. But interestingly, at the end of it there was a mixed opinion about the film. Some felt it was an absolutely racist film as it was a voyeristic depiction of an indigenous community by a white man. But many in the group, most of them coloured, felt it was highly respectful of the culture and traditions of the community and that the director, despite being a white man, had taken a lot of pain to portray the hisrory and cultural practices in great detail. Some had also changed sides by then. Yet, even after volatile exchanges, the opinion remained divided. During the discussion, however, it also got established that those who were calling it racist were really reacting more to the form of the film – conventional – than to what it was saying. Somewhere this ‘discussion raised a pertinent point that was missing in the rest of the forum, that the content is as integral to a film as its form and one cannot talk about one while neglecting the other. Also, no matter what the filmmaker has in mind while deciding a form, the audience ts the final judge of what the film finally communicates.

There was also an undercurrent of dissatisfaction about the selection of the films – most films were from South Africa and made by white filmmakers. Also that there were hardly any films from Namibia where some very exciting films are being made. The organizers took the criticism seriously, explaining the causes for such a selection. On the last day some Namibian filmmakers were specially invited to screen their films. Some sessions also raised issues about the responsibility of filmmakers towards the themes or the people they are portraying in their films, where, unfortunately, some filmmakers seemed quite clear that they saw their roles only as ‘filmmakers’.

At the end of the day the forum had many inspiring moments. There was a lot to learn from. But a group of fairly evolved filmmakers screening their work to and learning from each other is one side of the coin that no doubt is important. What was seriously lacking, however, was the other most important part, an audience. For one, the forum was held in a rich brewer’s farm house some 85 km away from Windhoek. The farm had excellent facilities, but apart from a handful of their staff and the participants, there were no humans-in sight. So one did not have an option to show some of the rogrammes that were termed ‘doesn’t work’ or those that ‘worked’ to people other than the participants who were al1 filmmakers. Perhaps it is also important to sometimes step out of our own caste and view our films with the real audience, or who we think are the real audience. They are finally the best teachers.

The other factor that was taken for granted, perhaps because of the very focus of the forum, was the use of such films. It is one thing to make better films, but it is criminal if their life is restricted to a one-off telecast – may be a couple of more in some cases – that hardly ensures their reach to the intended audience. Somehow this aspect, though raised a couple of times, failed to get the required attention. Fortunately, in the penultimate speech, the official evaluator, Keyan Tomaselli – an eminent social anthropologist, teacher, filmmaker and film historian from Natal – stressed on the need for a forum like Sacod to think about use of such films and issues relating to their dissemination to people. One sincerely hopes that becomes a reality, because some of the films shown in the forum were really good and immensely useful, not only for Southern Africa but also for us in South Asia.

The Asian Input Workshop in Kathmandu

Sabeena Gadihoke

The spread of satellite television in the third world has created major shifts in terms of its engagement with the documentary filmmakers. While appropriating ”documentary type” programming, television has mainstreamed and homogenized forms forcing filmmakers to either toe the line or 1ook for funding elsewhere. In India, whre opportunities for funding non-fiction have been bleak for a while, the debate around the need for public service broadcasting has been a pressing one among independent filmmakers.

To initiate a dialogue on such issues in Asia, the first Asian workshop of International Public Television (Input) was held in Kathmandu, Nepal (November 25 to 28, 2000). The workshop was attended by twenty filmmakers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Japan and China. A jury that examined films from these regions determined their participation. Input, based in Canaday is an annual forum for the exchange of ideas among producers, Programmers and Other Professionals dedicated to quality public service television. Besides holding its annual conference that allows filmmakers from across the world to interact with each other, it also conducts regional workshops, thereby providing an opporttlrtity for television and independent producers to reflect on television content and form. This workshop was sponsored by UNESCO’S CreaTV programme, that has similar objectives in terms of encouraging creative endogenous television production in developing countries by providing them with opportunities for training and visibility at an international level. The local collaborating partners of Input and UNESCO in Kathmandu were the Himal Association that has been one of the pioneers in promoting and highlighting South Asian documentary through its festival held every alternate year in Kathmandu and Travelling Film South Asia all over the world.

The Four-day workshop kicked off with welcome addresses by Input coordinators Gaetan Lapointe, Sergio Borelli and Kanak Dikshit of Himal. The latter created a stir by attending the workshop straight from hospital with a neck and head brace after his miraculous recovery from an accident while trekking in Nepal! The objectives of Input were laid out in the opening session and the next three days were structured around screenings of films of the participants. Organised around themes that had been laid down by the co-ordinators, there were lively and often fiery discussions on content and issues of representation, ethics and form. For example, in a session devoted to films that involved attitudina1 changes, we watched Tong Li’s sensitively handled A Man with HIV that followed an H1V patient to his home. One also watched Blue Fireworks by Hisaaki Wakaizumi that framed a story about identity against the  pornography industry in Japan. However, the key issues discussed in these sessions were not about telling a story, but about how the story was to be told. While it was important to break silences, how did one grapple with these issues without resorting to voyeurism or creating stereotypes? Besides dealing with absences, there was also a felt need to continue to engage with issues that have been represented before. Films about the need to educate children, human rights and dowry deaths still needed to be made. How then did one challenge conventional representations and express these ideas anew? This was an issue taken up especially with entries from Sri Lanka that had public service programming, as well as clips from Young Asia Television. Films of protest screened at the workshop raised debates around the pressing need to engage with form and to find a language that was not didactic. Listen to the Wïnd by Tsering Rhitar and Kesang Tseten and Guhar!Help! by Deependra Gauchan and Leena Vihtonen were particularly appreciated for their ability to communicate messages without being top down or literal. Madhushree Dutta’s Scribbles on Akka and Farjad Nabi’s Now that’s More like a Man led to fresh discussions around treatment and perspectives on form. Issues of consent and the relationship and involvement of a filmmaker with her/his  subjects were debated with films like Meera Dewan’s Highway to Hell and Rithy Panh’s The Lands of the wandering Souls. Panh’s other film, Van Chan , A Cambodian Dancer was specially appreciated for its sensitive portrait of a dancer caught between tradition and modernity as did Tsering Rhitar’s The Spirit Doesn’t Come Here Anymore. Censorship and the demands of mainstream television were important concerns for all the participants at Kathmandu.

The workshop ended with an evaluation session that saw lively exchanges between the participants and the coordinators, both of which felt that the other should have been more forthcoming about their views. Having laid this matter to rest, there was a free exchange of ideas about how the next workshop could be structured. Onto of the major points made at the evaluation was the fact that Input could develop into a valuable lobbying group for independent filmmakers and more democratic public access television. In order for this to happen, it was imperative that word was spread about the workshop so that the next one had new participants. The films from this workshop are now to go through a further selection for the international Input conference to be held at Cape Town in May this year.

For more on Input, contact

Rosa Gonzalez. cirtef@rtbf.be, or

visit website: www.input-tv.org

A Festival of an ‘Other’ Kind

Amudhan R.P.

Madurai has been a centre for many political and cultural activities in Tamil Nadu for ages. The 3^rd Madurai  documentary and Short film Festival (15-17 November 2000) is also part of that tradition. The idea behind organizing such a festival is to find space for the ‘other’ kind of films, both fiction and non-fiction.

We are an informal group called Marupakkam, meaning ‘the other side’ in Tamil, based in Madurai and involved in producing issue based documentaries, organizing regular screenings of such films among students, professionals, unorganized workers, NGOs, labour unions, women’s groups and people’s movements. We also help film makers dub films from English to Tamil, to distribute the films and to organize screenings in Tamil Nadu. Since December 1998, when we held the first festival, it has now become an annual feature due to a sustained interest of the audience.

We organised the 3rd Madurai Documentary and Short film festival with help from the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary along with Elavattam – a students action group, Eluthu – an alternate book shop, Centre for Social Analysis, and Friends For Films, all based in Madurai, and Third Eye Communications of Cochin.

We screened the following films at the festival:
Fishing in the Sea of Greed (Anand Patwardhan),
Scribbles on Akka ? (Madushree Dutta),
A Woman ‘s Place (Paromita Vohra),
Resurgence (Vidhi Parthasarathy),
Now I will speak (Sagari Chhabra), 
Goa Under Siege (Gargi Sen, Ranjan De and Sujit Ghosh),
Skin Deep (Reena Mohan),

Leelavathy (Amudhan R. P.),
Lesser Humans (Stalin K.),
Sundari – An Actor Prepares (Madushree Dutta), Oru

Nadhiyin Maranam (R. R. Srinivasan),
Kumar Talkies (Pankaj Kumar),
A Mother’s Lament (Yasmin Kabir),
The Shame is Not Min e (Aren Chadda),
When Strangers Reunite (Marie Botie and Florchita Baucltista),
Jibon (Altaf   Mazid) and several others.

Just before we began posting the invites, there was a nationwide postal strike. We resorted to a door-to-door distribution, wrote to all the newspapers, stuck posters on wails and requested friends to inform interested people. Finally we had 80 odd people from Rameswaram, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Chennai, Tiruchirapalli, Virudhunagar, Nagercoil, Ramanathapuram and other parts of the state.

Friends took turns to introduce each film and initiate discussions after every show. The audience took part in the debate with keen interest and enthusiasm. Discussions also took place outside the hall informally. Many contributed to the festival in various capacitates. Santhosh Kumar K. C. of Campus Circle, Trissur, brought a projector on behalf of the Third Eye Communications, Cochin. As usual, Sarat Chandran rented us a projector for a nominal amount. He also gave us four films to screen. We collected Rs. 25 per head from the audience as donation to run the show. Some happily paid more than we requested. We also had some visitors from abroad. Vidhi Parthasarathy was present during the screening of her film Resurgence . She shared her experience and discussed about the protests against WTO at Seattle and Washington last year.

While evaluating, we felt it is important to continue. Many felt that our effort in Madurai somewhere inspired more such festivals in south Tamil Nadu. We also felt inspired when The Hindu published a story on the festival. The audience stonily felt the absence of filmmakers. So, for the future we will try to press them to attend.

In June 2001 we will organism another festival in Madurai of feature films, the second of its kind. In this festival we are planning to watch films directed by great film makers like Satyajit Ray, Adoor .Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, John Abraham, Fellini, Godard, Bergman, Kurasawa, Tarkovsky and others.

AT A GLANCE

Women In the working world, some statistics…

70% of the world’s poor are women

Women make up 45% of the world’s workforce

Since 1965 the number of women employed in agriculture around the world has dropped by one-fifth.

80% if agricultural work in Africa is done by women.

Around the world, women earn, on average, 75% of what men earn.

Women contribute $11 trillion in unpaid labour to the global economy each year.

80% of the 37 million workers in the world’s export processing zones are women.

Women earn between 20 and 30% less than men who work in these zones.

A majority of the world’s textile industry workers are women.

From 1971 to 1995, the number of garment factories in Bangladesh grew from 4 to 2400, employing 1.2 million workers, 90% of whom were women.

87% of Korea’s banking and financial industry workers who were laid off following the Asian economic crisis in  1997 were women.

From 1997 to 1998, the number of girls and women entering prostitution in Asia increased fivefold.

As many as 500 Chinese women (calged dragonmei, labouring sisters) died in factory fires in the past 9 years when doors were locked from the outside to prevent theft.

In the Unlted States, women are starting small businesses at twice the rate of men,

The number of women working in South America has increased by 16% since 1980.

70% of the 25 million people engaged in craft production in Latin America are women.

Felicitas Villalobos of San lgnacio, Mexico, earns $400 per month weaving pine needle baskets.

Villalobos pays $66 in export taxes each month as required by the North Atlantic Free  Trade Agreement.

A woman in a maquila factory in Mexico earns $200 per month.

Mexico’s official living wage per month is $445.

Sources : International Center tor Research on Women, Women’s EDGE, UNIFEM, the World Bank, United Nations Development Program, “The World’s Women 2000: Trends and Statistics,” United Nations.

(Courtesy: Ford Foundation Report Fall 2000)

Perspective

Unjust films on justice

Kalpana Sharma

Imagine that you had been brutally gang-raped. Imagine that the justice system was so heavily weighed against you that the perpetrators of the crime went scot free. Imagine the humiliation, hurt, anger that you have to live with for the rest of your life. Imagine what it would be like if your story is made into a film – without your consent. Would you feel angry, sad, defeated, insulted? Or would you shrug your shoulders and hope that someone will learn something from the story shown in the film?

We are familiar with these questions because of the heated debates and  legal battles that followed the making of Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen , the story of Phoolan Devi. In the end who won and who lost is not entirely clear. Shekhar Kapoor has become a big name in cinema; Phoolan Devi has established herself as a politician and MP.

But the recent film by Mr. Jaglnohan Mudra, better known for his failed film Monsoon , on the life of Bhanwari Devi has so far not encountered too many questions or controversies. Mr. Mundra probably hopes he will get around this by stating that although his film is based on a true story, it is fiction. Thus, by changing the name Bhanwari to Sanwari and her husband’s name Mohan to Sohan, he thinks the problem is solved.

Unfortunately, it is not. Bhanwari Devi is an incredibly brave woman. As a saathin , part of the now virtually defunct but once path-breaking Women’s Development Programme (WDP) in Rajasthan, she bravely stood up to the dominant Gujjar caste in her village and challenged traditions like child marriage. For this she was punished – by being gang-raped by four men of the village, including the village priest. Her story has been written about in the media in India and abroad. She has received awards for her courage in speaking out and taking the case to court.

After all that, Bhanwari quietly continues to work as a saathin . She has to face the taunts of people in the village who often call her a whore to her face and in front of her children. She has little money; her award money has been spent in fighting her case which is now in the High Court. And she is deeply worried about the ‘pad of Mr. Mundra’s film Bawandar (Sandstorm) on her life, on the life of her children and on the on-going battle in court.

The film, of course, is not as bad as it could have been. Nor is it a particularly good film. The real problem with it lies in the ethics of making films based on people who are still alive without getting their informed consent. The script writer apparently met Bhanwari and even has a photograph to prove that he did. But the very fact that neither Bhanwari’ nor the women’s groups who have supported her, are acknowledged in the film proves that the filmmaker did not consult them fully.

While Bhanwari Devi’s case drew together a wide coalition of women’s and human rights groups across the country, the film depicts women’s groups as superficial, society women for whom travel on work is coterrninus with shopping expeditions. Why should a filmmaker, who claims he wants to show the ”real” struggle of a ”real” woman portray women activists in this unreal light? While it is true that these days, well-funded NGOS are giving the general public the impression that working with an NGO is as good as being a part of the corporate sector, the majority of activists still struggle against the state and other entrenched groups. There is little glamour in the work they do. Was the director attempting to ”balance” the male villains in the film with some female villains?

Even if such pointless stereotyping could be overlooked, Mr.Mundra has committed a far more serious crime. In a scene in which these Delhi-based society types, in their silk sarees and shawls, visit Sanwari in her village to extend their support, one of them asks for the blouse that Sanwari had worn on the day she was raped, inspects it and asks, “Why is it in one piece?” She then proceeds to tear it and to & virtually manufacture evidence.

While doing so, she states that the end is what is important and not the means. Given that the case is still in court, such a depiction is the height of irresponsibility by a person who claims that he is truly concerned about Bhanwari Devi’s future.

But having said all this, the film is tolerable because of Nandita Das. This talented young actress has given a superb, controlled performance in the lead role. She has put a great deal of sincerity and conviction into the role, something that clearly comes from within as Nandita is a feminist and has openly associated with groups fighting for women’s rights and social justice. Supporting her is Raghubir Yalav, another remarkable actor who is not seen often enough in films.

Also to his credit, Mr.Mundra has not exploited the rape scene as would most Bollywood directors. He has also not stinted in exposing the political- caste nexus that 1ed to Bhanwari Devi losing her case in the lower court. For this he might have to face the wrath ot powerful caste groups in Rajasthan.

Bawandar is unlikely to be a box office hit. lt might just slip away, without creating too many ripples. On the other hand, despite its shortcomings, it might move people, open their eyes to the reality of our unjust justice system that traumatises the victims rather than giving them solace and justice. But sadly, for the woman on whose life the film is based, none of this will be of much comfort if in the end the distortions of her story work against her as she continues her battle through the courts.

Courtesy: The Hindu

Society

The Dangers of Being M. F. Hussain: Art and Intolerance

Shohini Ghosh

On December 27, activists of the Bajrang Dal attacked a multiplex in Ahmedabad and destroyed a replica of the sets of Gajagamini thereby forcing the cancellation of the premiere of M. F. Hussain’s Gajagamini. The attack was reportedly a retaliation to Hussain’s portrayal of the Goddess Saraswati. ”We had decided two years back that Hussain would not be allowed to return to Ahmedabad,” said a VHP leader, ”This attack may be a fallout of that decision.” Yet again, the Government of India has done nothing to protect Hussain or the constitutional guarantee of free speech and expression. It is time to question as to why M. F. Hussain poses such a threat to the Sangh Parivar.

In October 1996, Bajrang Dal activists broke into the Herwitz Gallery near the famous Hussain-Doshi gufa art complex in Ahmedabad and destroyed a number of rare paintings by M. F. Hussain. The Dal members pulled dowry the paintings, collected the tapestries lying in a corner and set them afire. As many as 23 tapestry items and 28 paintings including some acclaimed masterpieces were destroyed. In the progress, the vandals also damaged glass panes, music systems and other articles in the gallery. The paintings were valued at Rs. 6 chores. The volunteers walked away from the wreckage with Bajrang Dal stickers stamped all over the gallery. The destroyed paintings were especially precious to Hussain and he had let them leave their home for the very first time.

The ostensible reason for the Bajrang Dal ire was that Hussain had painted the goddess Saraswati in the ‘nude’ and thereby hurt ”Hindu sentiments.” The outrage from the Hindu Right that directly or indirectly supported the Dal’s actions attempted to create the impression that Hussain had come up with a new painting designed to blurt the sentiments of the Hindus. In the immediate aftermath, newspapers perpetuated the same myth by neglecting to check the details.

However, the facts of the matter are critically significant. The so-called ‘nude’ Saraswati was painted way back in 1976 and had been reproduced in a relatively new BJP backed magazine in Bhopal called Vichar Mimansa . One Om Nagpal had written an article titled ”Ye Kasai ya chitrakar?” (”Is he a butcher or a painter?”). Accompanying the article was a photograph of the ‘nude’ Saraswati that V. S. Vajpayee, tile editor had discovered in Dhyaneshwar Nadkarni’s book titled Riding the Lightning . It was a copy of this article that Pramod Navalkar had handed over to the Bombay Police Commissioner along with a letter.

The Bombay police hastily treated the letter as a complaint and registered a case against Hussain on October 8 under sections 153-A (for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc., and acting in a manner prejudicial to harmony) and Section 295-A (for perpetrating deliberate and malicious ants intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.)

In 1998, the Sangh Parivar returned once again to target Hussain. A litho- graph titled Sita Rescued displayed at an exhibition aurated by art critic Suneet Chopra at the Academy of Art and Literature, New Delhi was deployed to create a controversy. The lithograph had been produced in 1984 and was part of a series that Hussain had created for Ramlila programmes run by a Lohiatite socialist group. The controversy began when VHP artist Raghu Vyas drew attention to the lithograph. Ironically, Raghu Vyas had participated in pro-Hussain protests during the Saraswati incident. The attack on the exhibition was led by the belligerent B. L. Sharma ”Prem” of VHP and former MP from East Delhi. According to him the ”painting” was offensive as both Hanuman and Sita had been portrayed in the ‘nude’. Some other VHP protesters suggested that since Sita was perched on Hanuman’s tail it carried a phallic resonance. B. L. Sharma’s protest included physically assaulting painter Jatin Das and intimidating artist Aparna Caur and author Ajit Caur. The exhibitors sought to quell the trouble by renaming the litho-graph series Epic Forms and finally re- placed it with another piece of work that Hussain had done for the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust. However, the threats continued with Sharma threat- ening to burn the place down.

Five weeks after the exhibition in New Delhi had closed down, the Bajrang Dal targeted Hussain’s home in Bombay. On May 1, 1998, Bajrang Da1 activists broke in to Hussain’s apartment at Cuffe Parade and began to ransack the place. As the police arrived the crowd dispersed. Twenty-six people were arrested only to be released the next day after paying a fine of Rs.1000 each. They were charged with unlawful assembly: for holding a demonstration without permission. Meanwhile, lawyer and Shiv Sena MP Adhik Shirodhkar advised that Hussain be charged under section 295 (A) IPC for deliberately and mali- ciously outraging religious beliefs.

Political reaction to the incident was quick. The Left parties, Janata Dal and even the Congress (I) strongly condemned the incident. There was however, an interesting shift in the position of the BJP. During the Saraswati conroversy, the BJP had expressed displeasure over the ransacking while maintaining that Hussain had hurt Hindu sentiments. This time round two significant changes had taken place. Kushabhau Thakre was the new BJP president and the party had just carried out the nuclear tests at Pokhran. On May 16, 1998 Kushabhau Thakre told the press that M. F. Hussain had no right to infringe on the religious sentiments of any other com- munity as in name of ”Freedom of Expression” gods of other religions could not be insulted. Throughout the session Thakre refused to condemn the incident. Venkaiah Naidu, the’party’s general secretary supported Thakre’s statement saying that he advised Hussar not to create ”such perverted work of art” [sic] and ”incite communa1 passons by such paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses.” He said ”Hussain was trying to create commu-nal tension in the country and this would not be tolerated.” The Sangh Parivar made it clear that Hussain had to stop his ”perverted work or face the consequences.

A closer look at the controversy reveals that none of the Sena’s allegations actually stand up to scrutiny. The primary allegation was that by painting Saraswati in the nude, Hussain had hurt Hindu sentiments. Invoking ”culture” and ”tradition” to communalise the issue, Ramesh Patel of VHP said, ”it was an uncivilized way of depicting a religious figure.” Uma Bharti of BJP Pushed the argument ahead by stating that ”it is not only a question of Hindu sentiment but also that of women sentiment [sic]. I would have protested if Hussain had painted Mariam or Khatija in the nude. Goddesses like Lakshmi and Saraswati are the idea of traditional Hindu woman…. I think Hussain is a pervert and needs psychiatric treatment.”

The ‘nudity-against-lndian-culture” allegation was condusively challenged by scholars and artists. They pointed out that the themes and conventions of  nudity are integral to Indian iconography and painting and dates back to the lndus Valley Civilisation. For instance, the Lajja Gauri (a term popularised by historians which loosely means A Woman with no Shame was a popular folk and fertility deity dating back to the 3rd Century Moreover, the famous image of Saraswati of the 12th Century Hoysala period is dressed only in a belt of jewellery. It was further argued that clothing of deities was a relatively recent phenomenon and one that started by the 19th Century painter, Raja Ravi Verma. Allen the editor of Vichar Mimansa was asked why he was not outraged by the ”nude” Dilwara temple sculptures he said: ”In those days it was very difficult to sculpt clothes in stone.”

It should be noted that the attack on Hussain though he happens to be a carefully chosen target, was not an isolated one. On April 26, about a hundred Shiv Sainiks barged into Centaur Hotel to disrupt a concerted Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali Khan. The miscreants had grabbed the micro phone and shouted anti-Pakistan slogans. They also informed the audience that they would not permit any Pakistani artist to perform in India. In the face of Shiv Sena belligerence, Pakistani squash player Jansher Khan cancelled his trip to India. Between April and May 1998, the Shiv Sena stepped up its moral policing. The rock group Savage Garden and VJ Marc Robinson became targets. Marc had violated the Shiv Sena’s code of conduct by kissing on stage and was finally forced into silence as even his employer, Channel V castigated him forjeopardising business interests.

Cultural terrorism and street censorship have been Sena traditions. They have always countered dissent with either violence or intimidation. Nikhil Wagle, editor of Mahanagar, had been physically attacked innumerable times for opposing Shiv Sena politics. The attacks on Wagle included two stabbing while the Mahanagar office has been repeatedly ransacked. Manimala of Navbharat Times was seriously injured with a chopper when she protested against the harassment to Mahanagar. During the Bombay ‘riots’ following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Harun Rashid, editor of an Urdu daily had his house looted and then set on fire. Rashid lost all his property including 3000 books and diaries that he had maintained since 1958 in order to write his autobiography. During and after the ‘riots’ in Bombay the Sena conducted a witch-hunt in the industry. All those  who disapproved of the Sena’s hate campaign were harassed or persecuted. Film actors Dilip Kumar, A. K. Hangal and Shabana Azmi faced harassment and boycott. They were labelled traitors of the nationfor having attended Pakistan Day celebrations at the Pakistan High Commission. Jaydev, Bal  Thackeray’s son said: ”’We, the Shiv Sena are against people who inpite of staying here in Delhi owe their priorities to other  countries. Dilip Kumar and Shabana Azmi are two such film personalities.

The vicious politics of the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna rests on the propagation that all Muslims are traitors of the nation whose loyalties lie with Pakistan. Both Saamna and its predecessor, the fortnightly Marmik , relentlessly propagates  misinformation about minorities. On December 5,1992, Thackeray wrote in his editorial: “The temple should not be constructed because the sentiments of the minorities would be affected. And who are these minorities? The Muslim traitors who partitioned this country and have not allowed us to breathe ever since.” Bal Thackeray’s caricatures for the cover of Marmik represented Muslims as green monsters, green vultures or green serpents. That the Sena lexicon considers al1 Muslims to be anti-nationals and ‘outsiders’ is apparent in Ba1 Thackeray’s response to the ransacking of Hussain’s house: ” If Hussain can enter Hindustan, why can’t we barge into his house? ”

But what makes Hussain the Sangh  Parivar’s target for repeated attacks? I propose that Hussain, not the person,

but the persona pose a threat to the Sangh Parivar ‘s attempts to define cultural nationalism. Hussain is an uncomfortable, albeit inadvertent reminder, that Hindu traditions are not the exclusive domain of the Hindu Right. Moreover, Hussain is reminder that so-called Hindu culture and traditions may actually not be so ‘Hindu’. As Monica Jumeja writes, ”that which we today label ‘Hindu’ has in fact grown over centuries through constant interaction with cultures coming from the outside – Arabic, Persian, Greek – as well as myriad other traditions.” Nothing hurts the Sangh Parivar more than the realization that there is no ‘Hindu’ culture without Muslims.

In fact, the trajectory of Hussain’s life and work is inextricably bound to India’s multiple and synthetic cultural traditions. Maqbool Fida Hussain was born in a well to do working class family in Pundharpur, Maharashtra. He attended intermittently a local art college in endure, When he was 17 he became apprentice to a tailor and also trained to be prayer leader. When he moved to Bombay, he worked as an assistant to a billboard painter and lived in a slum Thereafter, he became a furniture designer and a toy maker. Through al1 this he doggedly pursued painting. 1984 marked an important phase in Hussain’s life when he first saw the Hindu sculptures of the Mathura School. Artist Anjali Ela Menon mentions how 20 years back, Hussain was so electrified by the Ramayana that he did 300 paintings on the epic. This feat, she goes on to point, has never bees attempted by a Hindu painter.

It has been remarked that the vandals who attacked Hussain know nothing about his work. This is probably true. Perhaps, it is equally true that they know enough to realise that Hussain also anybodies a tradition that exposes the lie of Hindutva’s cultural nationalism. Tne Hindutva imaginary of Hindu culture as homogeneous, pure and original is threatened by any hint of diversity. In 1993, BJP and its allies had mounted a vicious campaign against The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) for a textual display of a Jataka story depicting Ram and Sita as siblings as part of an exhibition titled Hum Sub Ayodhya . Once again, the familiar ‘Hindu-sentiments- are hurt’ argument was deployed to bring about six criminal charges against SAHMAT. Thus an organization whose secular credentials had never been in doubt was designated as criminal by the state.

The notion that both culture and tradition are dynamic, changing, flexible, impermanent, porous and often contradictory destabilized the Hindu Right’s notion of a centralized ”cultural nationalism”. The BJP bases its ”nationalist vision” on a ”cultural heritage, which is central to all regions, religions and languages, is a civilisational identity and constitutes the cultural nationalism of India which is the core of Hindutva.” Any cultural praxis that counters this imaginary of ”cultural nationalism” is thereby seen to be in-accurate, wrong, distorted and harmful. Discrediting Hussain’s work as ”perverted” is a way to recuperate an authoritarian hold over the interpretation of culture and tradition. The inability, rather impossibility, of that attempt is Hindutva’s failure and Hussain’s victory.

Yet this victory is embedded in pain as it embodies secular lndia’s great betrayal to its synthetic, plural and secular traditions. Religious fundamentalism on both sides of the border have been threatened by multiplicity, plurality and diversity. Tizeblurring of borders, the cultural mix, the impossi- bility of original claims, the occupation of multiple spaces have been his- torically resisted by all orders that seek to restrict, regiment, and control. The attack on Hussain is post-independent India’s tragic failure to resist fundamentalist and authoritarian forces. Hussain is a synecdoche for the indian Muslim’s painful journey through post-partition India. A figure who reflects the fictive Abul Mansur Kamaluddin in Qurratulain Hyder’s River of Fire .

A recurring figure born through different centuries, Kamal first arrives as the author of a travelogue titled the Marvels and Strange Tales of Hindustan. Born of Persian and Arab parentage, Kamal the ‘foreigner’ merges inextricably with the cross-currents of Hindustan’s political and cultural history. Against the constant turbulence of feudal warfare, Kamal falls in love with the Hindu Champavati, joins an order of Sufi mystics and inspired by the songs of Vaishnav women contemplates the Sufi notion of ”Fana-fi-Allah” through Radha’s desire to be one with Krishna. Finally after travelling through innumerable cities and cultures, he marries a 1ow caste shudra woman Sujata Debi (re-named Amina Bibi) and fathers two sons called Jamal and Jalal. At the age of eighty-five, Kamal is accused of treachery by the soldiers of Sher Shah Suri. ”Your architect son has gone to Delhi to join the Mughal government. Traitor!” they say before they kill him. As death envelops him Kamal tries to think of a reason for this punishment. ”What had he done to be treated thus? ….This was his country, his children had been born here, his dead wife lay buried here. He had put all his energies into making these fields bloom, spent years beautifying the language these men were speaking. He had written songs and collected stories and he was going to continue living right here. No one had any right to call him an outsider or a traitor.” Kamal dies but recurs over different periods in history and is finally compelled to migrate to Pakistan after the Partition. The tragedy of Kamal is that he never ceases to be the ”outsider” even though he never feels like one.

The danger of being M. F. Hussain is that he is both in danger. and perceived to be one. Yet Hussain’s art is not a deliberate protest or a pre-meditated opposition to fundamentalism. It is an organic protest, as it were, of cultural heterogeneity itself. Yet, in this struggle for hegemony and resistance, the intervention of a secular and democratic polity has to be deliberate anti determined. It must come with the understanding that the power to indict and silence is a majoritarian privilege Rarely do speech, expression or representation that hurt minority groups get either indicted or silenced. ‘the routine prevalence of Hindu communal speech is a clear instance. To protect the inelaphoric artist is therefore to not just to protect the man but to protect the vibrancy of cultural heterogeneity itself.

More importantly, cultural diversity is precariously contingent upon free speech. This is because al1 cultural practices present sites of contestation and contradictions. Erasure is inimical to this process.

View Point

Popular films and society – Another viewpoint

Akhilesh Yadav

Shohini Ghosh in her article Another short Paper About Killing (AMT September 2000) had raised a number of important issues. Simultaneously, she also provided answers to many important questions. While agreeing with many of her observations and conclusions, I have a few disagreements as well, However before that, I would like to underline the points that I agree with.

Shohini is quite right when she states the the relationship of violence with society is rather complex. Those who believe that violence in society is being spread only by films are unable to view society in totality. Further, without controlling the elements that give rise to violence in society in the first place, one cannot develop a non- violent society merely by restricting violence in films.

But one fails to agree with Shohini’s observation that popular Hindi films have merely given expression to the violence of the society; or that violence in film is largely an expression of the disintegration of the system and the despondence and spite of the common people.  ”The state was no longer just and benevolent and the popular films engage forcefully with this disillusion,” sbe writes. Further, she states, ”I will argue that it is popular cinema that has most powerfully articulated how bankrupt our judges – politicians and police are, and how miserably, the state has tailed to protect people’s legal and constitional right.”

The perception that Hindi films merely mirror society is limited. By  using this as a starting point it is not possible to understand the crucial connections between popular media and the ethos of  hegemony. And only by following this connection to its torturous end is it possible to glimpse the roles that the different pillars of society – including the media – play to maintain status quo and order. A few questions need to be addressed before we can move into the debate on media effects and its links to violence in society.

Why did the nation-state fail? Was the nation-state unsuccessful in reality? Or is it that the section that had for centuries controlled all political and social institutions became uncomfortable with the various changes in society and so, tried to discredit the political and social institutions? In this context, perhaps it is important to keep in mind that-most of the institutions in India were devised not to govern but to rule. Consequently, most of them never worked for the bertefit of the masses.

In the beginning of the Seventies, the police in India invented a unique term: ”encounter.” These days the term has become a common expression. Often we hear it in the UP legislature or in meetings of the Home Ministry. Initially, it was used to justify the elimination of Naxalites. Kidnapping and murder by tine State were commonplace those days. Some readers might recollect the murders of Rajan in Kerala, or Saroj Dutta in Calcutta. After the Emergency many such incidents have come before us where the police carried out planned and cold- blooded murders. The justification for each of these cases was the same: retributive justice. That irony and the anomaly of the situation wherein the State, with its power of police and administration, needing extra-judicial routes which are necessarily violent, needs no elaboration.

Again in 1970 , some convicts were blinded in Bhagalpur jail. Those days a number of senior police officials had even written articles condoning and endorsing the crime. Their argument was that the legalprocess was too long and many a time the culprits get away from justice, hence this incident should be seen as an expression of frustration of honest officers; that it should not be seen as a crime (retributive justice once again?).

The point then is that the police and the bureaucracy themselves doubt the efficacy  of democratic institutions (or feared its abilities to deliver), worked to put a big q uestion marking the legitimacy of these institutions

The other way of addressing the same point is through a question through the elite and upper classes. India has always been in power, why did they not make any effort to arrest the decline of these institutions?

The decade of the Seventies was not only one disillusions and despair; it was simultaneously a decade of continous expression of democratic consciousness. In the seventies, massive changes occurred in the level of consciousness of the dalit minorities and tribal communities. The women’s movement took roots in the decade. One positive outcome of the developments could have been that a consciousness from below developed a consensusa and made fundamental changes in the power structure. Alternately, the ruling classes themselves recognising the aspirations of the masses, could have taken them into confidence and located ways for more democratic governance. However, neither happened. The mass consciousness did not crystallize into collective expression, nor was there any change in the approach of the ruling classes.

As a result, the Eighties forced the rulers to search for new ideological arguments to maintain and strengthen the status quo, and Hindutva provided the new rationale. Because of this, after assuming power in the Eighties, Indira Gandhi never uttered “Garibi hatao ”. She went on to shock the progressive sections by her extremey communal speeches during the elections. The ultimate result of Indira Gandhi’s communal politics was the army attack on the Golden Temple, following chapter of which was the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The only difference was that it was the army that directly attacked the Golden Temple, whereas the Babri Masjid was demolished in full compliance of the judiciary, police and the media. Here, the decline of the system was not a mere accident, but a premeditated plan of the elite and the ruling class.

If  we try to understand and analyse Hindi films in this larger social and political context, we will find that these films have rot only reflected the reality of the society but, even more importantly, they have continuously tried to construct a consensus in the society. And this consensus, often, does not oppose the rulers, but works in their interest. That the system has decayed, is not altogether a common man’s perception, but that of the rulers, and popular cinema has consistently helped to build a consent for this understanding. It is important to understand the contradiction, that when the struggle for participation in power was on the rise, popular cinema was portraying decadence of power. This can also be seen in another way. In the decades when the elite had even stopped casting their votes there was a steady increase in the participation of dalits, muslims and tribals in the electoral process. One has to understand that the relation between the masses and the system is dialectical.

Secondly, in its formal language, popular cinema has relied on the individual’ s world. Hence the retributive justice too has been very much the individual versus the system. In the decades when collective efforts is the ethos of the decade, the representation in cinema is curiously inaccurate.

The inevitable consequence of this ideology of decadence of the power structure  was privatisation and inviting global multinationals to enter the market. That is why yesterday’s ‘angry young man’ is busy producing Crorepatis. Perhaps for the same reason, with films like HAHK, DDLJ, KKHH, DTPH, etc., a process to build a new kind of consent is in motion. There is no doubt that popular Hindi films have given expression to a wide range of conflicts and aspirations of people in society, but to view them as a ‘mirror’ is not only wrong, but could even be dangerous.

Finally. only by understanding the inter-relations between hegemony and ideology, media and power, and the complex process of consensus building by thé ruling class, can we really understand the real face of popular Hindi cinema.

Reflection

The lost words in a war

Anup Sam Ninan

Newspapers, especially the English language ones, are in multiple competition – with new modes of communication, with new technologies, with changing readership, and more importantly, among themselves, driven essentially by profit motive than editorial quality. When competition becomes the moot point of journalism, the fourth estate tends to lose not only its objectivity but also the set preferences. But unfortunately, there we are. The game started in Delhi, followed to Bangalore, and now to Hyderabad.

A few years ago, the Times of India had kicked off a new strategy of price-war in Delhi to compete with its arch rival, the Hindustan Times. It paid rich dividends, forcing most of the competing papers to curtail their prices. The subscribers soon became consumers. They said everybody gained from the exercise – the circulation inflated, the consumers paid less, the hawkers earned more from a lucrative vending package, and the advertisers got grant concessions. Thus began the happy days.

Now the happy days are showering over Hyderabad. On September 22, The Times Of India launched it’s Hyderabad edition with the same marketing logic of ‘invitation price’. But it had to face the reply in the same coin. The major English language papers in the region – Deccan Chronicle, New lndian Express and The Hindu – have retorted with more rewarding packages. And once again, the war is on.

The debate about the commodification of the Fourth estate has been in the air for some time. But it has not emanated from the ongoing magnetization of the editorial space. Rather, the issue of allowing the foreign print media in has initiated a hue and cry over the danger involved in such an exercise. The debates, rightly, varied from the sustenance of demo- cratic ethos of the Press, to issues pertaining to national security. At the same time, the post-liberalisation phase of the ‘national’ newspapers grossly attuning with globalization that defies all the cultural and political rights of the masses, is being conspicuotlsly over-looked. And precisely hence, the arguments ranging from national security to democratic ethos are being audaciously appropriated by the business interests. It is the same economic logic which is applied here too. The media moguls narrow down the scope of the newspapers to be like any other commodity that mints profit by hook or by crook. Thus, selling the low-priced newspapers directly to waste paper markets is more economically advantageous for the hawkers and newspaper agents, than to sell it door to door or in the news stands. It inflates the circulation in records, fooling a wider spectrum of the public than merely the advertisers or readers.

Moreover, even if one thinks in terms of the market equations when readers’ share in the cost of the newspaper decrease and advertisers fill up the gap, the natural consequence is that the newspaper becomes more inclined to articulate the interests of the advertisers than that of the readers. So, tbe apparent gains that the readers obtain out of the ‘economy’ prices are merely a manifestation of lost words in the altar of editorial quality. And, it is the fate of at least a couple of ‘national’ newspapers today, where the editors are transfigured to executive managers and editorial boards are re-christened to be marketing services.

But the casualty in this war of words, other than readers, is the small newspapers. The real cost of the price war is borne by the small newspapers who cannot afford to make concessions to either readers or advertisers. Hence, it becomes a major issue for tine Fourth estate. The replication of the price war across the country is bound to root out the small but politically sïgnificant voices that are generally unheard in the large corporate newspapers. The all prvading rat races of liberalization are also seeping into the print media in a large way with all its perversions. It is high time to take on the corporate homogenization seriously.

BOOK REVIEW

The Mirror Has Two Faces: Tourism in Kovalam

Sherry Bazliel

Tales of  Tourism from  Kovalam by T.G. Jacob unfolds as a disturbing critique of the development/dependency model based on international tourism, taking the coastal tourist enclave of  Kovalam ln Kerala as an illustration.

After writing Madrigal to Dirge: The Case ofKovalam in 1994, the author was moved to explore the development model based on international tourism being sold in Kovalam. He lived and worked in the area for nearly two years, visiting the tourist enclaves in the state and gathering stories and information from the locals of

Kovalam.

The book covers numerous subjects that are separated into chapters for easy reading, so that one does not have to retrace one’s steps once too often.

We are introduced to the subject of tourism as something that has been promotes widely by the Kerala government and its agencies. All these of facial agencies work together in a coordinated manner with private sector tourism businesses, including international tour operators. The government agencies bring out colourful tourist brochures, leaflets and guidebooks and organism festivals like Onam and Pooram complete with elephants and boat races. All this is done with private backup in terms of financial and verbal support.

Apparently, the employees of the government and its agencies get their salaries for the amount of tourism they are able to generate within a given period of time. The private sector tour operators get huge tax concessions from the government for stating that tourism is the only way for the state to gain prosperity. The media plays a big role in this subterfuge – focussing their sights primarily on the glitter and glamour. If sun kissed beaches and white bikini swathed skin, while totally “forgetting” to write about the evil and helplessness that lurks beneath the surface of paradise. ”The backwardness of the place is cited as infallible proof of the need to develop tourism. Such a nice beautiful place is groaning under the weight of material backwardness when there is the shortcut of international tourism to propel the state straight onto the path of great prosperity without the least bit of effort.” All the state media apparently agrees on this point. Some few do add a word of caution about the possible negative effects of international tourism but the point is not really stressed upon merely seen as just another technical problem that is possible to steer clear of or ”fix” like a leaky faucet. The Malayalam Manorama group of publications is a strong advocate of con- verting the state into a wholesale tourist enterprise. The Malayalam Minorca organizes workshops and seminars on how to plan out the conversion clearly assuming the role of a policy maker.

Tales of Tourism from  Kovalam

by T.G. Jacob

Published by Odyssey

Pages 160, Price Rs. 150

Source: Odyssey,

501/3 IInd Main, Basavanagar,

Bangalore 560037

Consumerism is considered the ultimate in a good life and the tourists are the most captivating live illustrations to the point. As most holidays are centred around eating, drinking, and fornicating, there is little wonder that the mass media has focused their gaze quite steadily on these very subjects to increase their subscription rates.

Tales of Tourism traces the story – if one can call it that – of how a tiny coconut villager abandoned its roots (their early economic activities of tapping toddy, processing nuts into copra and oil, manufacturing yarn and coir), and was swept up in a whirlwind of cheap cameras and cassette players, T- shirts and jeans. Picture this: A local boy goes as a guide with tourists to Portmudi, or Kanyakumari and he returns with a pocketful of cash and consumer goods given to him by them. People in his village come to know about this and want some of the same goodies. So the next time a tourist walks into Ponmudi the villagers go all out to please him, hoping that he would come back again and bring others too, along with their bulgy suitcatiees and suntan lotions. So years pass by and tourism in the place is growing by leaps and bounds – tourists bring dollars, which when converted to rupees translates into a lot of local rich men. Houses now need pates and guards, locks and safes. ‘The joint family system has but almost disappeared. Drug abuse, alcoholism, criminal activities and the rampant flesh trade are the hallmarks of the day. Land disputes, family quarrels, chaos in all social circles is what now remains.

Through various chapters in the book we are introduced one by one to subjects like drugs and tourism, making people rootless: the land question, sex trade and tourism; resistance strategies – which looks at tine political turmoil over tourism, the role of the church in all of this; and the author’s outlook – a perspective on the Kerala of today. Each chapter is full of interesting and quite disturbing facts that even a card holding member of the state could not be fully aware of, leave alone the rest of the country or the world. It is only a partial truth if anyone holds the tourists solely responsible for a racist outlook and the destruction of a quiet seaside village. The author puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the locals whom he holds equally, if not more, responsible for propagating this stream of thought.

The heavily publicized slogan, coined by the Tourism Department Of the Government of Keralam begins with ”Kerala, Gods own Country,” and conclusively ends with ”the guest is  god” … in this case the Gods come with hard drugs, STDS and enough foreign currency to make the monsoons come on time.

Opinion

An Interview with Rajive Jain

Rajive Jain is one of the founders of Cendit (Centre for Development of Instructional Technology). Once Cendit was a force in alternate communications, nationally and internationally, and the final authority on video technology. Established in 1970, there have been many firsts to Cendit’s credit. It was the first to dabble with computers at a time when computers were unheard of. It was the first  to experiment with video in the grassroots. The first cable TV was designed and setup by Cendit. The first to set up a private video studio, the first to experiment with computer animation, first to provide video training, and many more. Here we speak to Rajive about the past thirty years of Cendit’s rich experience and an invaluable contribution to alternate media.

How did Cendit begin?

Cendit was really started to explore the links between communication and social change, communication and development, and more specifically, audio visual media and social change. Our inital work was in the nature of research, to show films in rural areas and to see how people reacted to it, how they felt about it, what the impact of various development communication materials could be in rural areas.

In the early 70s when we started, educational or developmental films were essentially a monopoly of Films Division (FD). So we took a whole lot of FD films to Saharanpur, showed them in villages and talked to people. In some cases, we had somewhat structured questionnaires, in other cases there were just open ended discussions. Through this experiment we learnt many things. We found that most of the FD Films were totally irrelevant. They were made for an am India audience. So they tried to communicate to everybody, and in the process didn’t manage to communicate to anybody All the films were generally made outside Bombay and represented the culture of that area. But people in North India could hardly relate to either the people or the issues.

Then, films are based on a certain language, on codes, and people who are not used to it, cannot always decipher  those codes. For instances we would show a package of 4 or 5 films, some entertaining and some hard core educational films. But we realized that people would differentiate between them, they wouldn’t see them as distinct films . They would take the whole package as one event. They would relate things that happened in one film to those in another, So we had  to revise all our assumptions about media, about communication.

There were also many interesting  experiences from which we learnt a lot. We used to take photographs of people and eventually give them a copy, just to build relationships. I remember, once I took a picture of a person -  I thought it was a very nice picture, a close up – and gave him a print.  A couple of  days later we discovered that he had torn up the picture and thrown it away. So we asked him, “why? Didn’t you like the picture-?” – He said, ”tasveer me hamare haath kate hue the.” (in the picture my hands were cut off). It was a close up! He thought it would have some harmful effect on him. So he just tore up the picture and threw it away.  There all kinds of little, little incidents like this.

Then the other obvious conclusion was that, films are just one input, but it has to be followed up by services. It is all very well to say, you should grow this kind of seed or use this kind of fertilizer, but you have to have the seeds made available. And usually they weren’t.  These films were made purely on a theoretical basis.

Then how did you move on to making films?

We realised from our experience of showing films that for a film to be effective, it had to be localised. Films need to be produced for the specific cultural areas to reflect their concerns, reflect their culture. Fortunately, just by chance, at that time someone lent us one of the very first video recorders. It was perhaps one of the first portable video recorders ever. That gave us the chance to actually record stuff locally and play it back immediately. We found this a remarkable tool. We started to record discussions among people, then play back these discussions first to the same group, and then to other groups in the village. This generated further discussions, we recorded some of those and then played them back again to start a whole process of communication.

Rural villages are not homogenous, they are highly stratified. Now, what, let’s say, a landlord would talk to a landless peasant, is all codified. Only certain issues are talked about and only a certain manner of communication takes place between them. But when we used video as a mediator, a landless labourer could say things to the camera which he wouldn’t say directly to the or landlord. This recording would then be shown to the landlord ands reactions taken. Similarly with men and women, young and old people, the process started all kinds of dialogues. This became almost like a daily television show, but in which everybody was participating, including different villages.   ‘

Then we actually handed over cameras to villagers and let them record what they wanted to, to see what kind of things they were interested in. One of the first things someone did was, he recorded ten minutes of his cow. For ten minutes he just shot his cow! That was what was important to him, that’s what he wanted to do. And other people watched it, and they found it quite interesting.

Was it just a single shot or from different angles?

No, no, he was moving and the cow was moving, so there was some action in it. Although I didn’t find it very interesting, other people did. So it’s again an experience. Another common thing people would do was imitate their favourite actors singing. So one man would shoot and his friend would sing a song from some film. But in some cases people actually started using it to record discussions on issues that were of concern to them, and to start this whole chain of communication.

Then. as I mentioned earlier, we realized that communication by itself was not enough. So we tried to initiate some developmental activities in the area. We got some support for a health project, where we tried to train local people to be paramedical staff or barefoot doctors, along with other similar activities.

But after a while, as a communication organization which Cendit essentially was, we found it difficult to have a group of people based in Delhi and another group based in a village. Organisationally the two weren’t really working out too well. So we let that organization become independent, which is how Disha started, and it is thriving now while Cendit is reducing in size. I think that’s interesting.

What was the situation of rural communication at that time? Was there radio or television specifically meant for the rural audience?

There was no television in the early seventies. I mean, there was a bit of television for a few hours in Delhi, which only was received in Delhi and in the neighbourhood. They had a programme called Krishi Darshan . But again, it didn’t extend really beyond Delhi. Radio again was, and still is, somewhat centralized. It had regional stations and programmes in Hindi, some of which were development type programmes. We actually did some radio programmes for AIR as a demonstration, which were again based in Saharanpur – we had local people express their views on various issues and these were used together with some reactions from ‘experts’. So it wasn’t altogether uninteresting.

Was your exploration into community communication unique in itself or were similar experiments happening elsewhere in the world?

We did have some sort of inspiration from stuff that was happening in Canada at the time. There was a programme called Challenge for Change in Canada, where in outlying, relatively backward complicities, they used media to start process of dialogue between people and the government, both to get the people’s problems to the government and the government’s reactions back to the people. But I think, having actually seen some of those things in Canada, the work that we were doing here was much more real and meaningful. Though it wasn’t sustained long enough to have major effects, but it was at least proving the validity of the concept.

Wasn’t SITE around the same time?

In 1972, yes, they had already started planning for it and discussing about it.

So there was a larger search in India and the world?

Well, the late 60s was a time of big ferment globally in terms of different kinds of ideas, differentials of thinking. There was more and more stress on popular participation. And it was realized that development and development programmes could not work if they were highly centralized, if local people were not involved in it. And, true, while a major part of SITE was to beam instructional type programmes from a centralized place to different parts of the country, but along with this they did this very remarkable experiment, called the Kheda experiment, where they made local programmes for the local population and with remarkable results. Then again, even though it was successful, there was no political will to either continue it or extend it.

Even after the excitement of Kheda, there was a stress on centralization. Do you feel that there are some larger global designs that are also reflected here?

Well, there is a range of fantastic commurticatiorts experiments and very successful experiences in India and globally. But ultimately, the mainstream is decided by political and economic factors. And the economics of media seem to just encourage more and more centralization and more and more homogenization. I mean, now we have fifty-sixty channels available in Delhi through cable, but there is not much diversity, there is not that much difference. Okay, there may be one Discovery, or National Geographic with  a certain environmental type feel. Bul

otherwise you take all the Indian channels and they’ll all have the same sort of song and dance on them, because dominant paradigm is towards globalization, homogenization and everybody pretty much watching the same thing. Only in Indïa, we don’t necessarily watch thee programmes made in America, but we create ouf own programmes which are just like the ones in America. Strangely enough, just last week I had been to a conference on satellite television in South Asia. I discovered that people were still saying the same things that were being said in the early 70s when SlTE was about to start. So nothing really has changed, we really haven’t progressed.

Coming back to CENDIT’s journey, you moved to  Saharanpur’. .

Having done those experiments, we thought we would try and expand it. We thought that it will be useful to show the experiences that we had in Saharanpur to other places where groups were trying to organism people and use communication aids to organist people. So we started working with other organizations. One of the first areas we became installed with was around Delhl with Action India – in Mehrauli. We recorded stuff there and showed thens stuff we had recorded in Saharanpur. Then we showed people in Saharanpur what we had recorded in Mehrauli. We tried to get people to see the commonality of the issues and problems. And soon we started working with many NGOs, development workers and movements all over the country. Obviously, it wasn’t something that we felt we could do just on our own. So training became a major focus, to try and get more and more people to produce their own material. 1 think that has been Cendit’s major contribution and our initiative in training justifies Cendit’s exist encl. We also tried to get into distributîon and networking. In the process, I think we initiated some things with many other groups, including yours, are carrying on –building  and expanding on. Then, while we were doing al1 this, there was a so-called video revolution happening in the country. All over the country there were VCRS and TV sets available which people could use for alternative purposes. A 1ot of cameras also became available. Essentially they were used to record marriages, but the same equipment could be used by the people.

You mentioned distribution that has always been a problem with video. Is it a problem with the medium itself or is it a lack of response from the grassroots?

‘ Well, there has been a gap between the film-maker and the activist. Because they ‘re working with the grassroots. So, even though there are some very good films on grassroots issues, on popular movements, the user still tends to see these essentially as entertainment. Now-a-days in training programmes, workshops, people want to use films but they’ll slot them in the evening after they think the ‘serious work’ of discussion and a11 that is over. Films are not integrated in the programme and normal activities. It is looked upon as a side show.

We were very concerned about this issue in as early as the 80s. We organised a big gathering of activists and film-makers and drew up a programme which we called the Communication Resource Network (CRN).

The basic idea of CRN was to provide firstly equipment to certain NGOs all over the country, provide them with good films, information on upcoming productions, some funds to be able to acquire material and some training so that they could use the material effectively. It did start off. But you are only  dependent on an external funder or governments funder. Funding often depends on an individual in the funding organization. And when that individual goes, the next person may not share those ideas. That particular programme died after some time. But still there are these 25 odd organizations which have equipment and a stock of films. Some are doing good work, some are not.

With the immense spread of mainstream media, with its new images and values, do you see a shrinkage of space for alternate uses of video?

I think so. Now people have the illusion of choice. When we are making our films, if there was television, people could only watch Doordarshan. So they were very happy to watch any thing else, because it was different from Doordarshan. Now with access to 50 plus channels, they ‘think’ they have a choice. They think they are watching different things. But actually they are not. But they don’t want to make an effort to try and hook up a VCR to see some other material. Besides, the whole development world, the NGO world, is changing. I see more and more what at one time were very committed NGOs are now driveway funding fashions. Their priorities keep changing. Today the buzz word is micro credit, so al1 NGOs are involved in micro credit. I am not saying micro credit is necessarily bad, but it is not necessarily the most important issue in a particular area.

What is Cendit doing now, we hear you have  moved on to other things?

We are currently trying to do similar experiments with the internet as to what we did in the early 70s with videotape. We are trying to set up places where people could produce their own knowledge. Through the web you can use a range of media – along with text, you can use images of all kinder photographs, at the moment limited moving images and sound. Now with this big push for computers and computer based communication which everybody is talking about – cyber cafes, cyber dhabas, …Mohallas, …villages -and wiring up the country. And whether we like it or not, whether we think there are higher priorities that come first – we can’t provide drinking water’ so why talk about television? – but this will happen. I think it is very important for people who are engaged with the media, to democratism media, be aware of these forthcoming changes and to see how this technology could be used by popular movements and civil society. And in a way it has a greater potential than video ever had. It is much easier and cheaper to actually produce stuff. Distribution is not really a problem, because if you have access to the net you can connect to it. You just have to know where it is. You just have to have an address. You don’t need to physically send a cassette, you just need to have an address and you can access it. True, it’s a bit the early days of technology, so there’s limited bandwidth, so moving pictures are not as good as people can expect on television. But that will change.

So you are exploring yet another new technology…

Well, technology – yes, but 1 think it is more an element of philosophy behind it, basically a philosophy of decentralization, of local production, of material, of addressing legal issues and local problems.

I think it does have possiblities. This technology has the potential to provide a complementary way of distribution. I am not saying it will replace television, or video, but it will provide another way of distributing material. But at the moment there is very little material available in local languages. Everything is pretty much in English. There is very less which is addressed to rural India. But the technology does make it possible for extreme localization, for  anybody and everybody to produce material. However, very much like when we started off, nobody would give us any money to do all this stuff with video. People would say it’s too expensive, it’s’ not user friendly, you should make flash cards. In the 70s people gave any amount of money for flash cards. Today, people will give any amount of money to make videos, but very few development type of organizations give money to do stuff with computers. And, everybody these days is talking of the digital divide – that’s thc new jargon. But if we are heading towards an information society where knowledge is power and al1 that, it is only a certain, very limited population which is producing all the material that is on the net. And this divide is increasing.

What do you feel after 30 years  of involvement with communication ?

I don’t think our perspective has changed that much. Except, one realises that the alternate is likely to remain alternate, and it doesn’t really affect the mainstream as much as one had thought it might 30 years ago.

When I was 20. I thought we would change the world. Now at 50 plus, I don’t think we’d change the world, but we have planted a few seeds, some have flowered and some have not. But it’s been fun doing it.

New Films

The Children We Sacrifice

61 min, English, 2000

Shot in India, Sri Lanka, Canada and the United States, ‘The Children We Sacrifice- is a documentary about  incestuous sexual abuse of South Asian girls. Through stories by women abused from as young as two, the video looks at the social and cultural resistance to dealing with incest and how it affects victims.

Throughout the documentary, images of childhood innocence and the warm wash of colours visually juxtapose the harsh reality of the home as a source of refuge and source of violation, family as source of comfort and source of betrayal. This is no sensationalist treatment of the women who share their stories of abuse but a celebration of struggle and resilience. It also collapses the distinctions between image-maker and “imaged” by including the videomaker’s own history of survicing incest.

Film by: Grace Moore

Source: Shakti Productions, 8403, 16^th Street

#6 Silver Spring,

Maryland 20910-2831, USA,

e-mail: shaktivideo@aol.com

Born at Home

60 min, English, 2000

Born at Home documents indigenous birth practices in India (rural Rajasthan, Bihar and the urban working class area of Jahangirpuri in Delhi). Poised between social reality and the eternal mystery of childbearing, the film presents an intricate delineation of the figure of the dai who is almost always a Iow caste, poor woman. Exploring gender and class issues, the film raises the question as to why the state ignores the inherited and low-cost skills of almost one million traditional practitioners in the country when dais are known to handle about 50% of births in India.

Film by: Sameera Jain

Source: Sameera Jain, C 400 Sarita Vihar,

New Delhi 110044,

Ph: 91 11 6091098,

e-mail: sameeraj@bol.net-in

Bhaile (Outsiders)

11 min, English,  2000

Bhaile is a documentary on child sex tourism. The film attempts to illustrate the occurrence of tourism-related child sex abuse in India, using as a case in point Goa – a favoured destination for paedophiles, thanks to an excessively greedy tourism industry, a lack of political will, absence of  of specific laws, a lax police force and apathetic locals. Bhaile explores the various issues involved with child sex tourism by speaking with representatives from the Police, the State, the Church, the NGO’s, the Judiciary, beach-shack owners and some children in an attempt to discuss the issues openly and comprehensively among concerned Goans and others elsewhere -its driving force being the innocence of the child.

Film by; Ajay Noronha

Source: Ajay Noronha

1306/D67 Azad Nagar 2, Veera Desai Road, Andheri,

Mumbai 400053,

e-mail: noro69@bol.net.in

Harvesting Hunger

53 minutes, English, 2000

There are over 300 million people in India who do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional requirements. With more and more intrusion of the market economy and increasing corporatization of the Indian agriculture, it is apprehended that millions more will go hungry in the first decades of the new millennium. Harvesting Hunger is a journey into this impending world of hunger and famine, an exploration of the deepening crisis in food security in the country.

The film revolves around four case studies  – Punjab for a study of the yellowing of the Green Revolution, Kalahandi for an investigation into the structural reasons of famine and impoverishment, Warangal for an examination of the debilitating effects of money lending, resulting in suicide deaths, prompted by multinational pesticides enterprises and Bellary for an understanding of the role of giant seed and food processing companies in destroying the very base of Indian agriculture. The film also provides a peep into sustainable agricultural systems, which could be an answer to the present crisis in Indian agriculture.

Film by: Krishnendu Bose

Source: Earthcare films,

B- 91, Defence Colony,

New Delhi 110024

Fax: (011) 4647310 & 462669

E-mail: earthcare1@vsnl.com

VHS price: Rs. 1200

Between the Lines

11min, English, 2001

Since 2000, Delhi is witnessing large scale arrests of people apparently identified as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants living in Delhi. Many have been in detention for months. Families have been separated. Many others have been ‘deported’ back to Bangladesh. But the Bangladesh authorities claim that they are not aware of any deportations. And then there are people who have escaped death somewhere along all this confusion. What is this deportation? Where are these people being sent?

Between the Lines is an attempt to look at such questions. It is about the lives of people disowned by either sides of a line called the ‘border’. It is about human rights that do not exist. It is about people for whom harassment and victimization are a routine, everyday thing… and life is an uncertainty amidst chaos.

Film by: Dr.Parvez Imam

Source: f-20 Communications

E-mail: f20com@yahoo.com

VHS Price: Rs. 150/- indivisual

Rs. 200/0 –organisations

Out of the Shadows

84 min, English, 2000

Out of the Shadows depicts the role and functions of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights( CESCR), the body charged with monitoring implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The ICESCR is the principal international human rights treaty addressing economics social and cultural rights issues.

Out of the Shadows takes its viewers on a journey to Geneva, Canada and Argentina to explore the concerns and work of NGOs engaging with the Committee. In Geneva Committee members talk about the Covenant, the role of the Committee and of NGOS in the committee’s work. In Canada, the film looks at how NGOS have used the Covenant and the Committee to strengthen and extend their advocacy work in that country. The journey culminates in Argentina where NGO’s were preparing to engage with the Committee through developing a parallel report to the

government’s scheduled report to the CESCR in November 1999.

Film by: Gargi Sen

Source: Magic Lantern Foundation.

J 1881, Chittaranjan Park.

New Delhi 110019,

e-mail:magiclf @ vsnl. com

VHS Price: Rs. 1000

When Four Friends Meet

43 min, English, 2000

When four friends meet they share ith the camera their secrets – sex and girls; youthful dreams and failures- frustrations and triumphs. Bunty, Kamal, Sanjay and Sanju, best of friends and residents of Jehangirpuri, a working class colony on the outskirts of Deihi are young and trying to make their lives in an environment which is changing rapidly. Girls seem to be very bold. Stable jobs are not easy to come by. Sex is a strange rnix of guilt and pleasure Families are claustrophobic-And the blur of television the only sounding board.

Film by: Rahul Roy

Source: Rahul Roy, A- 39, Gulmohar Park,

New Delhi 110049, Fax 6960947

e-mail: aakar@del3.vsnl.net.in