Posts filed under 'conference reports'
pictures from the submidalogia#2 conference which took place from october 12 to 15 in olinda, Pernambuco (a written report is upcoming):
picture by ronaldo eli
picture by klara brunet
picture by klara brunet
picture by klara brunet
picture by ronaldo eli
picture by klara brunet
picture by ronaldo eli
many more pictures on flickr.com. video clips are available at estudiolivre.org (in Portuguese, also includes a report in Portuguese).
October 26th, 2006
Report on Day 1 of the seminar – Free Speech & Fearless Listening: The encounter with censorship in South Asia 22 February 2006
The first day of the seminar began early with Heiko Seivers from the Max Mueller Bhavan welcoming the participants and the audience to the seminar. He explained that the reason MMB was partnering with DFA and FFF on a seminar on censorship was because Germany is not completely free of censorship too. So, although the main focus of the seminar was South Asia, it was also an opportunity to widen the scope of the discussion and raise issues of concern in Europe and Germany.
Rahul Roy spoke on behalf of Films for Freedom and the Delhi Film Archives. He began by thanking MMB and Sarai for their support in making this event possible. He described FFF and DFA as a peculiar political formation born out of an all India movement against censorship that existed without a bank account, office or office bearers and yet, had managed to organize many large and small events, screenings and protests. Pressure from FFF had also forced the government to appoint a ministerial committee to finally bring Indian films on par with foreign films, as far as freeing them from censorship at film festivals was concerned. Organising screenings was one of the strategies being used by FFF to fight censorship and this remained at the centre of the FFF vision.
Rahul spoke of the awareness that filmmakers increasingly have that they are not alone in facing censorship, and therefore they need to forge bonds with others who suffer from being silenced in order to understand how censorship functions. He tried to explore why the seminar had a South Asia focus by talking about similar experiences across the region, whether it’s a film not being given a censor certificate in India or news from conflict ridden areas being blanked out in Pakistan. He spoke of the logic of capital which would seem to make borders more porous in the South Asia region. This would affect not just people and their livelihoods but also modes of representation and so, the seminar could be a way of understanding the realities of censorship better as well as finding a space to dream about a shared resistance.
This was followed by the first panel, Reports from the Region chaired by Amar Kanwar. Prasanna Vithanage, noted filmmaker from Srilanka, spoke of the situation in his country where the war between the majority Sinhalese governmnent and the Tamil Tigers had affected even art criticism and polarized artists. The demand for censorship was coming not just from the state but also from the Nationalists with articles appearing in the newspapers asking for films to be censored and filmmakers who are against the war being called traitors. One of the ways to discredit filmmakers is to label them as foreign funded and the films as being made for festivals and foreign audiences. To counter this, filmmakers in Sri Lanka are taking their films to the grassroots and showing them on DVD across the country. Prasanna also talked about the The November Movement in which filmmakers, artists and art lovers in Sri Lanka got together in November 2005 to create a space between ultra nationalism and neo liberalism.
Jitman Basnet, a journalist and lawyer who now lives in exile in India, spoke of crisis in Nepal and the continued repression of political leaders, activists, journalists and lawyers. Nepal is today polarized between the king on one hand and the Maoists on the other. More than 1500 people have been detained under the Public Security Act. The ban on press freedom is complete and restrictions remain on the freedom of movement. In this context, the immediate need seems to be the restoration of democracy.
Hasan Zaidi, writer and filmmaker from Karachi, presented the Pakistan scenario. He began by clarifying that there is quite a vibrant press in Pakistan and the current media boom is witnessing the mushrooming of private FM and TV channels, something which had not been allowed before the current regime. He called this phenomenon Killing through Ambiguity since while on the one hand this was happening under a quasi military dictatorship, on the other, the restrictions on the media were quite strict under earlier politically elected governments. He said that the government was reacting much more to TV than the press because there is a lot of money at stake and pressure can be put on the owners of the TV stations, if not the journalists. The mode of censorship seems to have changed as well. The proliferation of cable makes it possible to simply block a channel. So, Indian channels had been taken off the air for threatening the cultural sanctity of Pakistan and the BBC was taken off the air when a rumour was circulated about the possible telecast of the Prophet,s cartoons. He also spoke of pressure from non state actors who force the government to react and the situation remains ambiguous because it is unclear where the censorship is coming from.
Nem Davies from the Mizzima News Agency Burma, presented a short interview with Burmese writer May Nyien now living in exile in Thailand. May Nyien spoke of leaving Burma because she could not work freely both as a teacher and as writer. The military junta in Burma tore pages from magazines where her stories had appeared because they dealt with the hardships of common people like farmers and teachers.
Tenzin Tsundoe, from Dharamsala, spoke of his experiences in Tibet where he had been imprisoned by the Chinese government for having crossed over illegally. He talked of newspapers and radio bulletins that tried to create the notion of the ideal Tibetan citizen who eschewed Buddhism and the Dalai Lama and believed in the new development. He also spoke all the media in China being controlled by the government and of hardly any reports coming out of Tibet. In this context, he introduced the work of Woe Ser who is currently underground in Beijing as well as the work of singers and music video artists who were using subversive words and images to get their message across. He showed a music video by Nam Kha and Ba Gocha in this connection.
Tenzin also spoke of censorship that comes from corporate control and self censorship that has not allowed Tibetans to question the role of the Dalai Lama for years. But, according to him, things have begun to change in this respect.
Tanvir Mokammel from Dhaka presented the scenario in Bangladesh where censorship comes not just from the state but also from non state forces such as the Islamists. There is no censor board for video films and so, filmmakers who try and make films on video to avoid being censored often face being charged under criminal laws.
The second panel was on censorship related law, Framed by Law. Usha Ramanathan, a Delhi based lawyer chaired the session. Lawrence Liang, Bangalore, talked of how the fundamental right to freedom of _expression was actually bound by many restrictions and so, to use the law to challenge censorship means the acceptance of those restrictions as well. In this connection, he presented his theory that it was necessary to move away from looking at censorship from a Prohibitive model, in which the law curtails freedom of speech, to a Productive model in which the law constitutes or produces a way of seeing. He explained this by using an example of Hate Speech in which the court when asked to censor hate speech actually ends up recreating the same categories of what it means to be nationalistic or anti nationalistic as the hate speech itself.
Sara Hossein, a lawyer from Bangladesh, presented the legal scenario in Bangladesh which is legally still a secular and democratic republic and where the constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression, albeit with restrictions. She spoke of how the Supreme Court was the one institution which was still functioning in Bangladesh but even that was beginning to change. Litigation to fight censorship is quite rare and often the arguments are made on technical grounds rather than challenging the larger issue.
The panel presentations were followed by a short discussion in which Hasan Zaidi spoke of the Kara film festival choosing to not to go to court to take legal sanction for the festival since there was always the possibility that the court would rule against them and that could mean stopping the festival completely. Sanjay Kak raised the issue of filmmakers engaging in a conversation with the law because of their right to public space and demanding that right as a political act. Shuddhabhrata Sen Gupta pointed out that the first amendment that curtails the freedom of speech in the Indian constitution had come in through a set of legal processes and so, it could also be expunged through another set of legal processes.
The post lunch session saw a more detailed engagement with the law. The panel titled – Court Encounters was chaired by Prashant Bhushan. P A Sebastian from Bombay spoke of the need to have censorship for hate speech and Sara Hossein spoke of two particular cases in Bangladesh which had been argued from the position of freedom of _expression. Prasanna Vithange then talked about his experience with courts in Sri Lanka. It was apparent from the session that across South Asia, the courts are not always a means of fighting censorship. This was emphasised by Lawrence who spoke of the need for non juridical responses to combat contested areas like hate speech. Both Shubhradeep and Shuddha questioned Sebastian\s position on hate speech but unfortunately, these could not be taken up since Sebastian had a flight to catch and had to leave for the airport.
The last session of the day was Silences from Srinagar and Shillong chaired by Sanjay Kak. Aijaz Ahmed, journalist from Srinagar, laid out the media scenario in Kashmir where voices have been gagged for the sake of national security, propaganda and the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. He talked of stories of the disappeared which amounted to the censoring of human lives. He spoke of large areas of Kashmir going totally uncovered in the media and the presentation of the official version of events. He also spoke of a kind of pre censorship which exists because journalists have to be cleared by intelligence agencies before they are hired.
Tarun Bharatiya, poet and activist based in Shillong, presented the scenario in the North East with freedom of expression being bound by an “illiberal bharat” on the one hand and autocratic regimes set up to oppose bharat on the other. P G Rasool, writer from Srinagar gave a detailed account of how information is controlled in Kashmir and of the growing organic relationship between the media and the government. Robin Ngangom, Manipuri English poet based in Shillong, spoke of writing the poetry of survival in the North East. He called it the art of witness and spoke of how the writer must fight for the liberty to tell the truth as he knows it. The session ended with writer Arundhati Roy speaking of the difference in the presentations from the two areas with the North East presentations talking about the dual guns of the state and the revolutionary whereas the ones from Kashmir had reflected only the suppression by the state.
The day ended with the screening of Black Box, directed by Andres Veiel.
this report was prepared by Samina Mishra
February 22nd, 2006
The four-day conference on the campus of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) brought together many key persons from the tactical media movement of Brazil and some of their counterparts in the Brasilian government.
The movement is converging from roots in free radio, free software, hardware hacking, art and social movements. It is currently focussed around a large-scale project master-minded by Claudio Prado and supported by the Ministry of Culture: ‘Pontos de Cultura’ (Culture Spots) which is aiming to empower up to 600 cultural projects with free software-based multimedia production and publication facilities.
One of the main purposes of the meeting, aside from taking stock of where the movement stands, was to discuss a proposal by the Sarai / Waag Exchange to set up a media center in Brazil as a new node in their exchange network.
There is a video documentation of the conference available. Transcripts of the discussions are currently being prepared. Submidialogia #2 is planned for October 2006 in Recife.
Mídia Tática started after a call in June 2002 from Next 5 Minutes to hold a tactical media lab in Latin America. Three Paulistas (Giseli Vasconcelos, Tatiana Wells and Ricardo Rosas) replied. A network formed bringing together various branches of of media research and practice, including media art, alternative journalism, a strong computer recycling movement and a free radio movement. Radio Muda located in the central tower of Unicamp having started in 1990, is the oldest and arguably the most influential of them, getting generations of students involved in media theory and practice, spreading the experience after their graduation to all parts of Brazil. Submidia / Radio Muda, namely activist Paulo Lara, was hosting the Submidialogia conference.
The call from the Netherlands resulted in a group of more than 300 people, mostly from São Paulo, working together to organise the first Tactical Media Lab (TML) in Latin America. It took place on a shoe-string budget in the alternative cultural space Casa das Rosas, on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo in March 2003. Under the theme of ‘Digital Inclusion and Networked Communities’ it drew 6,000 participants and a strong echo in the press.
The TML was followed by three Autolab workshops in the suburbs of São Paulo. From January to July 2004 partly funded by Unesco, about 300 young people from the favelas were taught computers, web technologies, sound and video editing, all based on free software and recycled hardware. The Autolabs were concluded by two festivals: findEtático in November 2004 for discussing the experiences in the labs and in autonomous media production, and Digitofagia in October 2004, the largest festival on media, arts and technology so far that took place in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (at the Museum of Image and Sound), Recife, Salvador and Belo Horizonte.
In early 2003, the media movement really entered a new phase. One focal point bringing together diverse groups and communities was the TML, another one was Claudio Prado. The close friend of Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, and his self-styled Coordinator of Digital Policy realised that something was going on with a strong free software movement and the arts and activism going digital. With the blessing of Gil he went around and approached many of the groups about a third generation digital inclusion project to be proposed to the Ministry of Culture under the name ‘Pontos de Cultura.’
What most of the world knows as ‘digital divide’, in Brazil is reformulated as ‘digital inclusion.’ The first generation digital inclusion projects were about getting computers to the people. The second were about access to the Internet. A success story here are the Telecentros, free public Internet access centers running on GNU/Linux platforms, that were initiated by Sergio Amadeu, then working at the Governo Eletronico of São Paulo. The third generation according to Prado is now about empowering people to produce their own digital cultural expressions and share them with the world. Because the PMDB-run Ministry of Communications is trying to get any digital inclusion project under its wings, the Pontos de Cultura are not actually labeled as ‘digital inclusion’ but as a ‘cultural diffusion’ project. This is not the only reason why the term ‘digital inclusion’ is disliked by everyone in the Mídia Tática movement. Another line of argument is: Felipe Fonseca, O fantasma da inclusão digital, Nov 20th, 2004
Based on the experience of the Autolabs, together with people like Alexandre Freire, then with the free software development group Arca, and visual communications people like Tatiana Wells and Ricardo Ruiz, Prado developed the project. There was an open call to cultural institutions and NGOs that could apply to become one of the Culture Spots. Schools, community centers, libraries, cities, samba schools, video groups etc. are all eligible to apply. When selected by a large advisory board under the auspicies of the Ministry of Culture, each of them receives a multimedia kit that includes a computer for editing, a server, photo and video cameras, microphones, a mixer, scanner and printer worth about 25,000 R$ (~9,000 €). Along with it they receive a suite of free software programs for editing, serving and streaming. The core team is developing a series of workshops to teach the people at the Points how to recycle computers, how to operate the software environment, how to create websites, music and video in order to produce their own media content and distribute it. In addition, each Culture Point gets a budget of 5,000 R$ (~1,800 €) per month over a period of two years.
The project team under the coordination of Freiere developed an online structure with five different platforms: Conversé, a Drupal-base open forum in wich the Points are exchanging their experiences, Estúdio Livre, a collection of links and context for free multimedia software, Xemelê, a repository for photographs, an internal server for mapping all the Points, and Cigar, a BitTorrent network for distributing the content that the Points produce that is currently being developed.
Claudio Prado reported at the conference that there are currently 85 people working for the project. Many of the ca. 50 participants at the conference are involved in it. Some like Thiago Novaes are employed directly at the Ministry. Others like Felipe Fonseca from MetaReciclagem work for the Information Technology Research Institute (IPTI), the formal interface between the Ministry and the grassroots movement. 270 Points were awarded in the first call. The plan was recently upped to make it look better in the election campaign next year, to 600 Points all together, incl. Points abroad (three in US, one in France, one in Tunis, more in Italy, one in Germany). Prado complained about much bureaucratic red tape that leads to a situation where it is always organisations with professionals who win public tenders. Therefore the board at the Ministry of Culture is disregarding formalities, looking at what the applicants are actually doing, and if selected, help them with the bureaucratic requirements.
Some of those selected to become a Culture Point were present at the Submidialogia conference, like Casa de Cultura Tainã where workshops on drum-making, drumming and other music are being taught to kids from the local community. There was also a small delegation from the Grupo de Trabalho Amazônico, Amazon Indians, living in remote villages, extracting rubber. They are collecting stories about every-day life, history, dreams, primarily to convey them to their children. Today they publish them as books. Once they have become a Culture Spot, they will also be able to make them available on the Internet.
The third generation of digital inclusion continues to be based on the previous two. The prime grassroots example for the first generation of getting computers to the people is the MetaReciclagem movement. Its founder Dalton Martins talked at the conference about his ideas on the three levels of approaching technology: from appropriating it as is via adapting it to tasks in a given reality to re-inventing it.
MetaReciclagem started in 2002. The groups get donations from banks and others companies that are renewing their PC pool. They refurbish these machines for use in social projects like Telecentros, and, more important, teach people how to do this themselves.
It turned out that it is easiest to get donations in the South-East of Brazil. Dalton is therefore planning to establish an exchange network for parts so initiatives in other locations can ask for network cards, harddiks, keyboards etc. and have them send from groups that have them. He sees selling refurbished computers as a possible business model for the Pontos de Cultura. Dalton does not see it as a problem if companies take up the recycling concept in order to make money with it. It only strengthens the network.
A top-down approach to the access-to-computers issue that recently made waves is the $100 laptop project by MIT MediaLab. Brazil committed itself to buying two million of those, but the project was not discussed at the conference.
The Telecentros are a successful approach to the second generation digital inclusion, the issue of access to the Internet. Today there are 120 Telecentros in São Paulo and some in other parts of Brazil, typically located in favelas in big cities. In order to reach people in the poor rural areas especially in the North and North-East of Brazil and in remote places e.g. in Amazonia, the Ministry of Communications initiated the program GESAC (Governo Eletrônico – Serviço de Atendimento ao Cidadão – Electronic Government – Service of Attendance to the Citizen). Its goal it to provide up to 5,000 points of satellite access.
At the conference, Antônio Albuquerque reported on the project. He had been with the Ministry of Communications since November 2002, and was Director of Services of Digital Inclusion of the Secretariat of Telecommunications and head of GESAC since January 2005. He was the last official from PT inside the ministry before he was fired in August 2005.
The ministry sees it as a connectivity service which should include tele-education and be rooted in the local community. On GESAC it is working together with the ministries for education, strategic planning and defense.
In October 2002, the contract for implementing the first phase was awared to Gilat, a company that provides telecommunications solutions based on Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellites. Albuquerque said that in 2003 there was a five-months struggle inside the ministry until June when the project finally got started. Gilat established 3,200 sites, 2,200 of which are in schools. Others connect institutions ranging from NGOs via public buildings to military bases in the Amazon. Currently the public tender for the second phase has been issued. Albuquerque feared that if the Minister of Communications changes again, GESAC might get trashed.
While GESAC and Pontos de Cultra are projects from competing ministries, there are links between them. Some of the people in the Mídia Tática movement are working for GESAC, like Tatiana Wells who helped establish stattlite-connected telecentros is the Northern states of Piauí and Natal. Some of the Culture Points might get access through the GESAC network.
Another project of the Ministry of Communications is the digitisation of TV and radio. It seems that everything digital in Brazil, indcluding these undertakings, is supposed to interconnect with all the other digital inclusion projects.
At Submidialogia, Takashi Tomei from CPqD Telecom & IT Solutions, the company that manages the Digital TV project for the Ministry of Communications was presenting the current state of discussion. So was Claudio Prado who is on the project team, doing his best to have the whole digital TV infrastructure implemented in free software.
The current Minister of Communcations, Hélio Costa, the third in two years, affiliated with the media empire Globo, used to be a newscaster during the dictatorship, then lived in N.Y., is driving the digitisation of televitsion and radio, but without any public debate, and favoring the US American standard. The US vision is HDTV for big screens in home theaters. But, asked Tomei, is that really appropriate for the Brasilian reality? He would rather see the digitisation of the electromagnetic spectrum used in order to increase the number of channels.
In the digital radio project, again the US American format was approved. Standardization of DAB technology is promoted by the World DAB Forum, which represents more than 30 countries excluding the United States which has opted for its own system. It uses a bandwidth of 400 kHz for both analog and digital channels. But, criticised Tomei, when the analog service is switched off in a few years, the channels will still be 400 kHz wide rather than the 200 kHz of the alternative standard, which will be limitting the number of stations.
Copyright was another issue at the conference, raised by lawyers who advise the media activists and by artists who are trying alternative licensing like Creative Commons or take a rather playful stance towards intellectual property.
Caio Mariano from the law firm KFC Advogados in São Paulo has developed an open content license for Re:combo, a collective of musicians, software developers, DJs, teachers, journalists and artists set up in 2001. They use sampling and peertopeer software as a means of expression through software, installations and live events. The group has about 40 members, spread throughout Brazil but also abroad, with a high concentration in Recife. The work of Re:combo is guided by the three principles of a) encouragement of ‘intellectual generosity’ b) the redefinition of the role of the artist within industry, and c) a dialogue with the audience as the creative agent for the work. The need for a licence in the copyleft spirit of the GNU GPL and suitable for the use in audiovisual production was felt from the beginning. After a series of studies, the collective and lawyer Mariano together developed the “Licença de Uso Completo Re:combo” or LUCR (Re:combo Complete Use Licence) published in August 2003. It expresses Re:combo’s idea of intellectual generosity, rather than intellectual property. It is more radical than Creative Commons in that it does not give authors the option to exclude commercial use.
Mariano works closely together with Ronaldo Lemos who is director of the Center for Technology & Society at the Law School of the private university Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro and project lead Creative Commons Brazil. Lemos was not able to attend the conference.
OrganismoBR is another diverse collective similar to Re:combo. Glerm Soares presented their work at Submidialogia. Activities include video, web-art, photography, music (among others by the band Matema and the Printer’s Orchestra) and publications, many of which are issued under the names Vitoriamario and Apodrece. Vitoriamario, a collective personality composed of several hundred persons, kind of a Luther Blisset, was active during 13 years before he announced his suicide in 1999. In his decomposing state, Vitoriamario, now also called Apodrece, became free for appropriation by the next generation of communications guerilla, issuing manifestos, proposing a new global currency and denouncing all property.
The anti-copyright plagiarist publishing collective Sabotagem was presented by Dr. Gorilla from Recife. The group was founded in 2002, has about ten members, and puts books and texts by authors like Foucault and Chomsky online, which are essential reading for a critical media discours.
The fourth day of the conference was dedicated to the state of media art in Brazil. Especially the system of art funding by foundations of the oil, telecommunications and banking industry, and funding through tax incentives was questioned.
Ricardo Rosas, the founder of Rizoma.net lamented the crisis of media art that he characterized as apathy and paralysis, not getting involved with social issues. He reported that the panel on the crisis of media art at the Digitofagia event drew the largest crowd, concluding that there is strong interest in the question.
Giseli Vasconcelos, who after co-founding Mídia Tática moved back to here native town of Belem in the North, complained that the art world is strongly centered in São Paulo, and that art from the North can only be sold through the galeries in São Paulo.
Artist Lucas Bambozzi belongs to C.O.B.A.I.A., a group formed during a squat with 3,000 people in São Paulo in November 2003 where artists joined hands with people from the landless people’s movement MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra). The purpose of C.O.B.A.I.A., according to Bambozzi, is to interfer with reality. He presented a number of projects, including CUBE, a large interactive multimedia installation that seven groups errected on a square on Av. Paulista in São Paulo. The translucent walls of the cube were projected onto from the inside. Various DJs and VJs were participating in the event. People with wireless microphones involved passers-by. The cube created a disturbance in public space. At first there was irritation, but soon people played along, and it turned into a big happening.
Fabianne Borges, is from the group Catadores de Histórias (history collectors), collecting stories from people in the streets, an idea that now has been taken up by the Ministry of Health. Borges also had been involved in the huge São Paulo squat. She told the conference that coordination among that many people was not a problem. The economics worked out well. There was a free university inside the squat. But at the end everybody was fighting and the group split. They met again this year and formed the ‘group without property.’
flickr set with more pictures from submidalogia
December 29th, 2005
Most of us are or have been part of building and running organizations and all of us will certainly agree on the fact that we all have to constantly grapple with various issues that force us to answer questions about the nature of the organization, defining and redefining its role / purpose, the challenges and the future of the organization. There clearly can be no account of an institution, which is static, and we are constantly forced to respond to changes that may take place externally, as well as dealing with internal changes. And while we spend a lot of time thrashing out issues such as ‘what is the core vision’ of the institution etc., these self reflections are more often than not, seen as internal issues with very little necessity for any larger dialogue with other organizations on issues of common concern.
We often proceed with the conceit that the issues faced by us are peculiar to our individual organizations alone, and while it may even be true that each organization would have a particular set of issues that it has to face, when we meet people from other organizations, it is almost uncanny how similar some of our histories and concerns actually are. The other aspect that binds is our recognition of the fact that over the past few years, there have been a number of radical transformations taking place that force us to redefine the ways in which we work and relate to each other.
Starting from the meta narrative of globalization to the crisis of older political theories that anchored a generation of activism and critical scholarship, we are forced to contend with changing ideas of the political, the collapse of the university as the site for the production of public knowledge, the challenge and possibilities that emerging technologies and new media offer to groups to reach out to a wider public as well as network between themselves etc. These transitions can also be the basis of great anxiety and conflict between groups, and the best example of this is perhaps the debate around the World Social Forum, and the objections of the traditional left against WSF.
In many ways, we can identify a chronological history, starting from the emergency in the seventies, of the emergence of what has broadly been called ‘civil society’ organizations in India. A number of groups and institutions emerged during this period on various platforms particularly civil rights advocacy, the trade union movement and also at a slightly later stage, the environmental movement and the feminist movement. It is also important to recognize a number of institutions that emerged as supporters for or supplemental to the various social movements that emerged during this period. This is by no means an attempt at providing even a synoptic history, but just an attempt at gesturing to some of the key moments.
This period that coincides with the crisis of the state in the seventies, moves through the eighties to the next major sign post, the post Mandal-Masjid years and the period leading up to contemporary period of globalization. This is also the period that sees major pressures on organizations, in the form of the NGO-ization of politics, the arrival of funding as being central to sustainability of organizations.
We see this workshop as a useful opportunity for us to reflect collectively on the genealogies of different kinds of organizations as a starting point from which we can address some of the larger issues of changes that have taken place over the past few years. While organizations emerge within a particular political and ideological context, the inevitability of change in context also poses a serious challenge to organizations. Sometimes the external changes can have great impacts on the internal structure of a group, and it is this dialectic of maintaining a core vision of a group and adjusting to change that force us to think of the ways in which organizations have been structured in the past, current experiments and also some of the imagined futures of organizations in terms of form and the networks that they are a part of.
There are different registers at which this story can be told, the intellectual and political context that motivated the formation of these spaces, the crisis of the university and the resultant necessity of non institutional spaces, the curious fact that given that we have groups from different generations in a sense existing together, the nature of this multiple temporality, what does it mean to work together, to build networks. It is also perhaps important to foreground here the sheer fragility of most organizations, and the fact that the running of an organization often takes a huge toll on the personal lives of the people behind organizations itself. How do we begin to collectively understand the idea of ‘sustainability of institutions’ not merely within a larger political narrative, but also taking into account the personal dimension of the stresses and joys that make or break a group.
While each organization has its own process of reflection and internal assessment, we want to see this workshop as an opportunity for us to collectively think through our own institutional histories; an organization that emerged as a response to the emergency is markedly different from a post globalization organization, between a research institution, a documentation center, an activist group, an academic space, an NGO. Apart from initiating a collective dialogue, a process like this also has the possibility of mapping out some of the intellectual histories that form the collective experience of that which we loosely call ‘civil society’ spaces.
The workshop will also focus, as a continuation of the this enquiry, the entire question of the nature of knowledge production, politics of knowledge production within this domain and how do we look at larger questions of collaboration towards a greater publicness of what we do. The workshop is meant to initiate a dialogue with the different organizations; a space where every organization traces out their own institutional histories/ genealogies, the internal changes, pushes and pressures in terms of responding to external demands (either in terms of issues, funding etc), temporal rhythm of running an institution, working with other organizations, institutional imagination and changes, conflicts and crisis, rhythm of work etc. The benefits of this ofcourse depend on whether organizations think that it would be important and useful to have this kind of a collective exercise. However we believe that at this point of time post WSF and other larger networking efforts, and at the stage at which ALF and other organizations are posed in terms of as an institution and in our networks and collaborations with others, a self-reflexive examination of internal processes and everyday existences as individuals and organizations in the light of transforming political, social and economic scenario is a valuable exercise.
DAY 1 – NODES AND NETWORKS (26th November)
Session 1: Initiatives in new media – Midiatatica, Metareciclagem and Alternative Law Forum
Midiatatica – Giseli Vazcongelos, Ricardo Rosas, Ricardo Ruiz, Tatiana Wells
The projects developed by midiatatica.org are aimed to dialogue with this context, and so far have followed different phases, parts of the same gradual logic, starting from the idea of introducing the concept of tactical media in Brazil for the subsequent application of it in both activist and artistic creations; then developing it towards the practical use of the concept in peripheral, marginalized or poor areas – where it would have bigger and more effective results; and finally instrumentalizing those practices in the artistic community. This last one, although having a relative reduction of the audience targeted, allows a more directed development for cultural producers whose interest in applying, researching and directing actions can have a more accurate effect.
The project of Mídia Tática Brasil, the Brazilian Tactical Media Lab, had its origins in the basic need of spreading the concept of tactical media in the Brazilian electronic, activist or artistic milieus, given the existence of various groups that already made this kind of practice without knowing it had a name. The intention was to propagate a collective action that had both a cultural impact (an artistic/activist intervention of social and political relevance) and a practical one (creation of devices and tools for the use of groups that intend to act in the public sphere with a sense of social responsibility). With such a task in mind, we subscribed to Next Five Minutes Festival, which in its fourth edition was opening space to initiatives happening in Latin America.
Metareciclagem – Felipe Fonseca
Metareciclagem is about the reappropriation of technology. Rather than naming an organization and a group of people that belong to it, metareciclagem or recycling is about naming a practice that is followed by many. The practice of recycling computers is about assembling computers that would otherwise be discarded. Often the computers are painted with bright colours and patterns, as a symbol of reclaiming technology for the many people who might not otherwise have access to technology, who through the practices of Metareciclagem then gain access. It is also about acclimatising to technology and making it friendly, rather an obscure object, thus practices of dismantling computers to see how they work, and also consequently using software that is not proprietary. In the discussion many questions were raised about how is an organization or network imagined if rather than a discrete group of individuals making an organization or network, the description is more about practices that can appropriated by many that may not have any connection to a specific group or network. It was felt that in the context where many were sensing the futilities of forced networks, this method of approaching practices is interesting and could be a pointer to future directions or thoughts on networks.
Law and Media – Emerging experiments – ALF [Clifton D’Rozario, Lawrence Liang, Namita Malhotra]
ALF has a relationship with media, inspite of having been essentially a group of lawyers. As the organization has grown and because especially in the recent years, a radical transformation in media practices through low costs technology and user friendly tools. We have a developing understanding of different modes of knowledge production and dissemination, and would like to share how ALF began thinking through our relationship with media. ALF’s starting point was to fill the gap between a stubborn legal system and its inaccessibility to people. There was an understanding that we didn’t want to be an older form of lawyering group, in terms of legal services, especially conceptually and also as a space. And now we are expanded much beyond legal services even though that is an integral part of what we do, and into other domains including alternate dispute resolution, pedagogical resources and teaching, trainings with police etc. ALF draws energy from the tension between activist lawyering, critical research and experimental forms of dissemination and media. There is no easy relationship between these non-stable domains, the tension between aesthetics and activists, experimental practices and public perception and expectations of clients and other people who come to ALF. The range of people and diversity in ALF allows the creative tension/chaotic energy to exist without collapsing and the internal design that allows interaction and overlapping of work. As different forms (activist, academic, creative, legal etc.) co-exist, there is an exposure to different social worlds – whether that of clients, groups that meet in ALF and thus are forced to contend with different social realities that may not be necessary in either a strict academic, activist, legal or creative realm. Thus the three important things that mark the creative tension in ALF – range of people, the kind of internal design, and the kind of interactions and collaborations (e.g. Sarai) marks the transition that ALF has seen in the past four years. (For a more detailed account see www.altlawforum.org/lawmedia )
Session 2: Conceptual Linkages and Collaborative possibilities
This session is to discover conceptual and practical linkages between the five participating groups in the workshop. The groups will through an exercise that allows them to connect different concepts and words, to be able to translate our work in different contexts in a common forum providing an opportunity to engage with each other and to create a space for linkages and collaborations.
The session began with a mapping out and visualization of the network of the Sarai-Waag exchange and the India-Europe Exchange Program that ALF, Public Netbase, Midiatatica, Metareciclagem and Sarai are all part of. The whole idea of this exchange that there is a break from development rhetoric and project based work, but to design an exchange program that can be broadened to bring in other people, including ALF. The sustainability of a network depends on the time and thought put into the creation of one. Another partner that came into the picture were Public Netbase in Vienna, who are part of the European Union- India program, who are interested in the expanding of the notion of the World Information Org. With the idea that this should not be limited to organizations, but that it should be expanded from an exchange to a platform. This is the first meeting of the platform. Two groups from Brazil are also interested in joining this platform, with their own ideas. The platform is thus meant for exchange of ideas and further collaborations, and to foster long-term relationships in the network over the next few years. The platform though reflective of the global condition we are in, should also contain the particularities of different contexts. The platform also has to balance the tension productively between networks and organizations (platform of networked organizations), and to foster institutionalization of new media initiatives and alternate forms of organization, with their own cultural specificities and histories as part of it. Another form is to have an organized network which doesn’t make a step towards institutionalization as is the case with organizations, and this is essentially different, fluid and more risky.
Two questions were posed to ALF – is it a group of lawyers making an organization and then finding ways of engaging with other forms (whether activism, networking, media etc.) or is it a group based on a particular form of knowledge and therefore would include only lawyers, or if there is another starting point or terminology that explains ALF that doesn’t begin with saying that we are a group of lawyers and then that we want to engage with different forms. A contrast was drawn to Sarai stating that there was a critique of professionalization (‘we didn’t want to be only a group of designers, media practitioners, faculty members or theorists etc.’) and wanted to engage by the trope of interdisciplinarity. Sarai’s interest was in creating a networked organization form that doesn’t collapse inwards and allows exciting collaborations, that destabilizes the starting point of an organization. Secondly, if one goes by the ALF Reader – the social constituencies that ALF speaks to seems to be clients or through activism, but there are many other forms of constituencies that are not mentioned including intellectual dialogue, students etc.. This is a curious omission and the question is how does this effect the self-representation of the organization. As ALF becomes bigger what happens to the inner search for interdisciplinarity in this context, and will dialogue be possible only when it is about law. What will happen when the constituencies become bigger – will this eventually lead to an older form of organization (like Lawyer’s Collective) with the emergence of stars in the organization, thus leaving behind notions of interdisciplinarity or crossing over in forms of knowledge.
It was acknowledged that this is a tension that exists in the organization, inspite of a clarity that ALF as such is not making any knowledge or disciplinary claims. The tension is also because the representational claims and performance element of being in the legal profession are high, and this does influence the organization as a whole. However on the question of organizational representation, there is a history to ALF as a forum that is clearly rooted within law, but we have moved on in terms of the individual interests and engagements. There is clearly a discrepancy and time lag between organizational representation and practices, because of the difficulty in encapsulating the complexity of our day to day work in ALF and the different interests and areas of work. ALF has made some movement towards an organization that makes critical interventions in law, legality and power, both in disciplinary terms and range of activities.
DAY 2 – BEING AND BECOMING (27th November)
Panel 1: Genealogy of Civil Society Initiatives
This session will try to map out the history of the emergence of civil society initiatives in India from 1970s along with the register of larger socio political changes. (Trade Unions/ Marxism/ 1980s/ 1990s liberalization/Mandir Masjid/NGOs/globalization/ market for Human Rights /Hindutva/technology/New Media/Networks/Global Human rights/funding/form/).
As we seek to map out the trajectories of civil society initiatives and place ourselves within this context, questions such as these become extremely important. How does an institution emerge and what are its vision, concerns, and responses to taking place around it and what is the institutional imagination. Who are the people of these institutions? Further what are the transitions and changes within the organization itself?
Mihir Desai (ICHRL, Mumbai)
Mihir Desai spoke about the journey and changes that ICHRL has been through, and how it began with the notion of a revolutionary political organization. This involved being part of trade unions and to be part of building a political party. This was also the period in which many individuals became lawyers to help the workers. However the collapse of movements in Poland, miner’s strike in United Kingdom and the textile strike in Bombay, led to personal dissapointment, and when coupled with collapse of Berlin Wall, crisis of Soviet Union, globalization and other trends, was very disheartening. In the mid-80s there was a decline in the atmosphere in optimism, movements and militancy, and previous ideas were fading. The decision was then to use law (primarily as labour lawyers) to help workers, and also undertake public interest litigation to help the struggles and movements (housing, peasants, working class etc.). Individual intitiatives were however not making enough impact, and it was felt that an organized effort is required to create a network of lawyers. This was called the Human Rights Law Network launched after an all-India meeting in Bombay. However the network as envisaged of individual lawyers across the country was not sustained entirely after the meeting. At the same time many groups or organizations were in a quandary as to whether to accept foreign funds, and this discomfort still exists today. Finally a compromise was reached, and the organization decided to accept funds. The organization was intent on keeping law as a focus, and especially litigation (legal aid and public interest litigation). Certain basic tenets of the organization were also questioned along the way, including issues around representing women (in sexual assault and family law cases) and stance on the death penalty especially in the case of Dhananjay Singh. The organization sees itself not as a lawyer’s organization now, but as a human rights organization, but neither as an agent of a political party or a social movement. The focus of the latter type of human rights organization was about the effects, and not the causes of problems. So thus the question is what is the role of a human rights organization in the absence of a large scale social movement, and does it move away from dealing with effects, but also with causes? Such an organization is also generally responding to crisis or fire-fighting, but in the last ten years there is a consensus that the two problems facing us are communalism and globalization. No debate has taken place as to how a human rights organization should deal with these problems, and this also connects to the focus of an organization on impact rather than causes. Now the organization is huge (200 lawyers) and requires big funding, and thus pressures are to hold activities, meetings etc. to meet the demands of funders. Thus an organization has to somehow avoid to have funder agenda-driven activities, but this is a struggle. An organization starts with a vision of a few people, and when they leave the organization collapses or completely changes. This happens with many NGOs, organizations, collectives etc. often the work in the organization is being done by individuals with interest in a particular area, who may not connect with larger politics or vision. There is also the problem that the orgnazation by doing legal aid, is doing work that the government should do. Shouldn’t we strenghten the legal aid board of the government? By doing the work, we are helping the proccess of privatization of health, education and even legal aid. However there is the immediacy of people who come for help and legal aid in usually desperate situations. Though the ideal situation is that both pressures on the State and the work iteself should take place simultaneously but that is not happening.
John (Centre for Education and Documentation, Bangalore)
John spoke of a personal trajectory that began with social work based in church. Politicization took place because of church based activities that led to organizing people, some radicalization within Church and formation of groups influenced by communist parties and the Naxal movement. That is the context in which first documentation centres were set up, like Indian Social Institute. It was felt because of scattered groups working, that there was a need to gather and consolidate information. Thus Centre of Education and Documentation was set up in Bombay in 1975, triggered but not only because of the Emergency. The intention was to work not only with organizations and development sector but also to students and the non-converted, and there had to be an information-structure outside of academics. It was felt that there was a need to slow down information and organize it, so it can be absorbed and understood effectively. Computers entered the scene in the early-80s and this helped cataloguing and databasing. There was a self-reliance in computing in terms of hardware and software. Then in the mid-80s with the emergence of a different information structure that led to certain kinds of projects that dealt with digital divide and non-political information. This is different from CED which is about information in public domain and sharing it in a different way. Funding became a problem because the running costs of CED were too low to warrant large funding, and thus CED was asked to form networks of organizations. This lacks the additional quality of commonness or coalesing together whether on ideaological issues or on the groundwork. Networks have infact become competitive and thus networks become a way of managing funds and collaboration.
Prof Seetaram Kakarala (Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore)
Three broad snapshots are indicative of the larger framework of civil society and organizational forms in the past few decades. Redefinig the politics or crisis of alternative politics seems to mark this period and especially the previous two presentations.
There are certain characteristic features of what can be called our time, and the transformations that are part of it. Some are listed below:
- post-nation state framework may not be possible in the near future, but the nation-state is re-defining its own role.
- Hugely expanded power of multilateral institutions including civil society structures – water-users or village level groups
- Resturctuirng of civil society in the North especially Europe
- Ideaological metamorphosis of the new middle class (China and India) because of capital inflows
- Changing tehcnological context and virtualization of action, a new dimension of activism and the digital divide
- Epistomelogical level – there is a crisis of 19th century paradigms, whether Marxism (1989-95), social sciences, liberalism, feminism – we are at crossroads in understanding social realities
- Lot of critical reflection in the South (third world)
- Appropriation of languages whether Gandhian communitarian (alternative) development taken up now by the multiateral agencies, which are driving communities into the mainstream. There is an epistemic backlash (similar to the backlash to feminsim), and there are more belligerent approaches to changing world order, and we are experiencing hyper-modernity, rahter than engaging with democratic values
There are three phases of civil society debate in India, or three approaches to capturing civil society in India and these are sketched out below.
- 1st phase – 1947-67 not as a strict category – a semi-totalizing welfare state under a particular vision, and giving hope of a much larger kind and failing to do so.
- 1967 – post emergency(mid 90s) – civil society politics is a response to a failure of the State or a response to the vaccuum created by the failure of the State (empowerment, uplift poor, build civil society) – 3 theoretical approaches
- grassroots intitiatives or movements, non-party political formations which captures the democratic possibilities within State ambit and responding to the vaccuum – this imagination never provided typology or captured the variety and complexity, but remained as a democratic resistance to a semi-totatlising society.
- Strong empirical engagment where questions of typology have come up – are NGOs radical or reformist? What kind of empirical categorizations – religious, secular, developmental with apolitical or empowerment motives etc.
- Social movement analysis – not very prevalent in India, capturing old social movements (left, naxalite, trade unions) and the so-called new social movements – micro movements, NGOs as new social movements
- Are they extending state activity and performing as extended arms of the welfare state? One crisis point seemed to be by the mid-90s that there was no problem in pushing agendas of commodification or engagment with market, for e.g. micro-finance organizations – agencies that bring into the rural world new commodities
- mid 90s – real but subtle change in terms of theoretical imagination of civil society politics as also the epistemic crisis of 19th century paradigms and their relevance today
Contemporary context of civil society debates.
How de we look at civil society after 1995 – if previously (1967-95) civil society was about democratic actors, resistance to cerain kinds of State activity or extended arms of the welfare state – that perspective though useful to invoke does not seem to describe the kind of organizations that have come up now. NLSIU is a university, which is not private and not funded by State like a traditional university, and is different in revenue model and in ways of functioning. Though the nomenclature and paraphenelia of the unveristy exists, the internal dynamics are different. Further different are organziations like CSCS which is primarily a research organization but it has a serious teaching program for postgraduate students, not funded by governmetn or established bodies but works out its own revenue model. Though activites might resemeble traditional research organization, but it does not fit into the prior categories. There is also a crisis of paradigms, which adds to the difficulty of describing these organizations. Does one percieve them as progressive or not?
- Far-left movement which continues to engage with emancipatory ideas, which includes engaging with currently the Naxal movement. This co-exists with networking or a de-politicised sense of imagination, similar to virtual action. In between there are many layers of organziations and groups, such as human rights organizations, civil liberties movements that are struggling to redefine themselves, and how they engage with the notion of citizenship.
- There are two texts that raise interesting questions – Politics of the Governed, Partha Chatterjee and Ashis Nandy. What are the alternative politics in the context of development totaliaranism? How do we understand democratic politics, or politics for democracy? Can civil society generate democratic politics? Are there alternative locations for understanding democratic politics? Nandy explores cultural dynamics of democratic politics. How do we transform multi-cultural dialogue to cultural cosmopolitanism, and re-imagine democratic dialogue?
- Other questions thrown up – what kind of intervention is imagined as possible now (Naxal movement was an option in the 70s, or currently Narmada Bachaon Andolan or MKSS). There seems to be a lull now, in finding a politically correct way of looking. So what interventions and to what end, seems to be a big question now. In the survival process of organizations will we redefine political activism, and discover multiple political utopias.
Panel 2: Challenges / Transitions faced by Initiatives in Changing Contexts (political, social, financial etc.)
Ravi Sundaram (Sarai, New Delhi)
Institutions, organizations and collectives of people emerge and undergo transitions over a period of time, redefining their agendas and methodologies. How has the changing context, whether it is the changing political scenario, the economics of running an organization, changing perception and involvement with politics and social dynamics within which institutions operate, and many other factors led to transformations.
Anita Ratnam (Samvada, Bangalore)
The experience of Samvada in having conversations with students over the years have varied tremendously over the years of its functioning, whether it is taking up issues like toilets in the girls hostels, or even setting up English tution centres. Even though there is a tremendous amount of work, there is a sense that one doesn’t know what it is that needs to be communicated, what is the point of resistance or adaptation for youth now. As an organization, Samvada is stuck between far-left groups and NGOs in the city, and there is a build up of anger around class and caste issues amongst the students and within the organization. Funding issues are also becoming important, as the Church based organizations in Europe that support the group are getting pressurized, and therefore putting pressure in turn. Even within the politics of funding, youth (rural or urban) is not a priority though drought, water, communalism are probably more likely to get funding. A multiple-issue proposal is not acceptable. Donors are also interested in governing networks, rather than supporting networks that organically grow. Samvada grew from one individual to a team of 2-3 and then five people with different areas of function (rural-Kannada, urban-Kannada, urban-English) and clear demarcated roles. From a team it became an organization, and when the Smile (youth networking) program began, it became a cluster of five organizations, which are now legally becoming separate entities. The issue now is whether now these organizations and politicised individuals exist and whether the organization is now redundant, or whether there will always be a need for politicisation of youth. There is also a competition for the staff, because of higher salaries and burn-out or boredom with work, inspite of a huge effort going into the nurturing of the skills of the staff.
Madhu Bhushan (Vimochana, Bangalore)
Vimochana and CIEDS have grown together, and the two organizations have sustained each other in terms of organization, structure etc. The 70s did see the birth of many such development organizations with innocuous titles. These organizations were also about the rejection of radical leftist, and wanted to create a space for new poltiics and practices where different strands of leftist thinking could dialogue. CIEDS would come under the fiercest attacks of the left, because of issues around foreign funding, and also issues that cut across the class issue whether gender. Vimochana thus grew out of a great deal of hostility within this political spectrum. CIEDS was crtiquing the politics of the right, and of the left, and very deeply critical of the structure and perspective of the left. An example of this is nuclearization, and the stand of theleft that nuclear weapons/energy can be used for peace that CIEDS and Vimochana did not agree with. Thus there was a search for a third way (outside of Europe dominated theories/paradigms), on issues of caste, patriarchy and class, without taking recourse to universal paradigms. It was initially a loose group, that later became instituionalized and it became a collective structure. This was however not flat, and there were differences between researcher and activist, and this led to a hierarchy of power and salary. Many radical changes were then made to the structure of an organization, and that there is a balanced need for both research and activism. Salaries were equalized, and everyone started on a flat salary. Another axiom of the group was individual autonomy and collective responsibility and decision by consensus. So though there is a responsibility towards social transformation there is space for creativity. This led obviously to stars forming who dominated the group, because of this importance given to individual autonomy. The organization is pluralistic, whether in terms of areas of interest or individuals, which can be an enriching experience. Vimochana was created as forum of CIEDS that would focus on issues of violence against women, in 1979. two important changes took place along the way – it should become an all-women’s group even though it started as a group that included both men and women. This caused unpheaval and anxiety within the collective, but it was decided that a split between Vimochana and CIEDS should not take place. This was a time when many autonomous womens organizations were formed (whether from State or political parties), and though Vimochana was part of, it also had a different history of growing out of CIEDS. This has informed both the perspective of Vimochana and CIEDS. An ongoing dilemma is the sidelining of CIEDS now. Vimochana began as a campaign organization around issues of violence against women, but more women came with queries around family law, property and diverse issues. Thus other outfits began, the first was Streelekha (publishing and bookshop) which grew out of a need to showcase women’s writing and women studies. Income generation and sustainibility was also an issue, including dependence on donors. It was after Streelekha that Vimochana became institutionalized, with fulltime members that would respond to violence against women, and Amla was started as a crisis centre. At this point of time, what is of great concern (for both Vimochana and CIEDS) is that inspite of great effort to create a different structure of organization and politics, it is under grave threat. One issue is of co-option, including the impact of the United Nations Decade for Women, and thus many people have got into advocacy and lobbying, instead of responsing to issues of violence on the ground as a shortcut. Another issue is funding, which originally allowed us to grow in the direction that we wanted to grow, without strictures of measurable outputs. There is a funding crunch in the West, and also the interaction now with them is not on an intellectual or idealogical basis, but through project proposals.
Special Respondent: Prof Babu Mathew (Action Aid, New Delhi)
The political significance of one’s work has changed and also the experience and learnings that one has gone through, whether student politics, trade unions, movements or leading organizations. This may lead to an understanding of the ways to go forward, and if this can still retain political significance. There were learnings from the experience with the communist party of India including from the unionization in the Peenya industrial estate, where nearly complete unionization was achieved. This struggle was marked with confrontations with the police. The questions faced now are similar to those faced then, including the issue of democratization of the trade unions themselves, and disparity between part-timers and full-timers in the union. The part-timers were supported by other vocations as well. The intention was to use labour law and struggle to a maximum extent, and build up competency in labour law. There is a tremendous strenght lies in building membership based organziations. One of the unprecedented events was the coming together of farmers and workers and that kind of large-scale mobilization has not been repeated. In the current times, however one should not ignore the results of the recent general elections. The agenda of BJP to establish Hindu Rashtra, second wave of economic changes, change the constituion, win over Dalits and tribals, isolate left and Congress etc. so where does this figure in our evaluation of civil society? Did civil society influence the perception of BJP or the India shining campaign. There are other strands of activism that exist that we should take into account and be willing to be part of. The other thing that we should look at, is what influences policy making in India whether the social movements, lobbying, multi-party system, election commission, print media, judicial process, contribution of intellectuals and especially the constitutional framework that is the consequence of the independence struggle. It is through this epochal constitutional framework that people have exercised the ballot to bring about a far-reaching change in the government. Many interesting things are happening at the micro-level, including the coming together of organizations and groups in order to create platforms rather than networks – like Dalit Samakhya in Karnataka or membership based organziation in the organized sector, manual scavengers movement, and there is a desire for these movements to come together and to form meaningful alternate politics.
Panel 3: New Networks
The session will attempt to understand the emergence of networks as an alternative way of thinking of the future of institutions, away from the centralized imaginaries that dominate most institutional practices.
Rahul Srivastava, (Pukar, Mumbai)
A missionary zeal in a secularized form seems to inform our work, probably because of an education in Christian institutions like St. Xaviers. Subsequent to that there has been an exposure to sociology, anthropology etc., but even then there was a personal burden of guilt and discomfort with getting submerged in a larger collective. This is probably linked to what one can recognize as a deep fallacy in the social sciences, that individuals and society are two discrete categories, and they can be decontextualized from each other in an abstract sense. Thus one is comfortable with the collective, only when the individual identity is not important, say as a consumer. The idea of the collective is however important, and Pukar entered the field two years ago, with a standard narrative of being a collective, headed by an academic, with individual associates. Pukar however also was a collective and a group of individuals, schizophrenically. Thus there are obviously casulties in this process, where an organization can’t accommodate an individual who is larger than the organization. Institutions and organizations are not necessary, and the market provides interesting spaces outside of commodification. Pukar had the usual anxieties and insecurities, which are of managing this schizophrenia between individual and the organization. Universities unlike Pukar, can absorb individual idosyncracies. It also faced pressure because of funding, and individual trustees have to be brought on. The structure of the organization was meant to be a small core and a large group of associates. Events and projects were useful ways of networking within the organization especially with the associates. Associates have freedom to produce innovative knowledge practices. The only innovation, was that we tried really hard to keep the core minimal and it tries to be different and interesting, film as a research or the neighbourhood project which is documentation as intervention. The only form of new media that Pukar has engaged with is multilinguilality – we collate language and new in a different way beyond its technological dimension. We also try to negotiate in different ways with the market, and try to find radical spaces within. Pukar creates small initiatives with the youth in different parts of the city and network with each other, and here too language plays an important role and create multi-lingual spaces in Bombay. We find Sarai interesting, because of their desire to engage with a wider public especially through the fellowship program, and to network with different knowledge practices. However one thing needs to be transformed in Pukar, and that is the over-burdening narrative of the collective that individuals are responsible for, and the organization should develop into individuated spaces or individuals play a more active role as individuals within the organization. This however requires that at a larger level organizations and institutions see themselves as spaces in which individuals are strengthened. This also plays a role in funding politics that doesn’t fund individuals, because organizations and institutions are considered more stable and often immortal, even though most institutional narratives are often about individuals and this is accepted generally.
Arshia (Open Space, Pune)
There are obviously many common concerns and issues as is obvious from the conversations today. Open Space is an intitiative inside CCDS (Centre for Communication and Development Studies). CCDS runs a website www.infochangeindia.com which is a research and information resource, brings out a quarterly dossier (Agenda) on different issues (Bhopal, women in media etc.). it brings journalists and activists together on the same platform, to send out useful and accurate information. As a further extension of this mode, Open Space was started in April 2004, and we inherit a long tradition of activism and intellectual theorisation. CCDS and Open Space believe that getting information out there is a politicalization in itself and the tagline is Talk, think, act for change. We mandated to deal with young people and located centrally near the academic instittuions. Right now our constitutency is English speaking, urban, middle-class youth and young professionals. Open space is an interesting position where not only are we providing a space to hang out but often the young people ask what do we talk about, though Open Space wanted the people to come and tell them what they wanted to do. In terms of what has worked successfully, are film screenings. Open space is located between mainstream and activism, and our most succesful series has been on terrorism and nationalism which includes blockbusters and documentaries. This is accompanied by a moderated discussion. We are committed to the idea of using mainstream cultural products, rather than activists products or obviously political art. We offer physical space for other organizations to do events, as a mode of networking. The good things about Open Space are the spontaneity. One of the big issues is what language do we work in, and do we continue working in English? There is a lot of pressure from organizations and the consequent funding politics about being perceived as elitist because of the constituency that you work with. There is a danger of then being forced to do token activism.
Deepu (Pedestrian Pictures, Bangalore)
Pedestrian pictures represents itself as the post globalised youth, because there is no real common political or ideological ground from which the members have . Some have come from a Marxist, media, Samvada or Narmada Bachaon Andolan, anarchism background, but there was an interest in how documentary films and media influence people to become part of movements. We were also inspired by groups that were doing media work in Kerala and Karnataka, and we organized a film festival on 12 different issues and create a platform to discuss issues. Many NGOs joined us and gathered money for the film festival. The same pattern was repeated, and did film festivals in North East, and many other parts of the country. Along with this we did a montly screening in Bangalore, college screenings etc. There was a doubt as to whether we would be like a film society, and even though we were claiming that we were media activists, without clarity on what that means. However inspite of all the screenings the question arose as to what is the result, and there was a pressure within the group that there should be results. With the collapse of certain forums in Bangalore, we had to reach out to other networks and groups. At this stage we were asked two questions – whether we were politically incorrect, or whether we were politically confused? This was asked because we were not associated with any obvious political formation, whether Marxist or otherwise. Hence we started referring to ourselves as post globalized youth, which still gives leeway for confusion and mistakes. PP then decided to go to villages and different grassroot movements, and to tell them that we have 150 odd films about different movements. We pushed through, inspite of a reticence about the medium of film, and we had a screening for around 3000 people. Inspite of a language problem (from Hindi, English to Kannada) the people started identifying with the struggles of other people fighting with police or for their rights. There was a positive vibe created by the film festival. Some of these people travelled to different places to meet different movements. We then started getting invitations to go to different places. We also because of our involvement with the anti-communal movement and movement against acid attack on women, got into film-making. PP is non-funded, and it took one year to resolve the dilemma about funding, and then the decision taken was that if the movement that we are working with (audio visual material, documentaries or rather small video films) wants to sustain this work that we do for them, then we will be sustained. If the need for this work dies out, then let the organization die. We are now in touch with 80 groups around Karnataka, and they started selling our small video films or documentary films priced for Rs.9 and copyleft. The same film was sold for Rs. 3000 and for nothing. From the sale a certain amount was cut by the organizations and the rest was given to PP. These methods of income genreation sustained PP, and though no one is paid, we bought two projectors. Anybody can join the group depending on their interest. When we started associating with marxist, adivasi groups including extreme left, people’s movements, we started getting branded as marxist or any other piegeon holing category. It took time to explain what the intetion of PP was to develop and help in the communication system of movements. But we now are able to negotiate this. Another problem is that because of the non-funded status, everyone is freelancing, but one person needs to be in charge of the functioning of the group. Thus it was decided that during this period the others in the group will chip in and provide income for that one person. Its been 3 and a half years, and we are comfortable working liking this.
Solomon Benjamin (Centre for emerging urbanisms, Bangalore)
This is a group interested in urban studies, and seeking an organizational form that would systematise the work but retain the excitement. This is a group that is interested in research that actually started in the late 80s, under the broad rhetoric loved by funders – urban governance and poverty. The interest was in understanding in what was happenning around us, and the research was interdisciplinary and infact eccentric. Research funding in the late 80s was open enough for exploratory research to take place, so that instead of focuisng on urban poverty we were able to look at the rich and hwo they controlled the city. The intention was not to end up in activism, but to gain an understanding of how power structures operate. But research in this new post globalised set up dominated by companies and civil society movements like Janagraha, requires investigative research also. Thus it was felt that there needs to be an understanding in how high circuits of power such as planning bodies for cities work. Thus the organization where such research took place would need to accommodate the schizophrenic identities of the people, and the covering up of the real work/research that is taking place. This is because global capitla inflows work differently now than it did in the 80s or before, which requires us to interface with coprorate and other sources. Then this needs to be linked up theoretically and practically to the different events in the city, like the destruction of a layout. Another source is popular media rather than technical reportage of planning of the city.
This is a very loose group, where many people who are involved are part of the research field, either as agents or touts. Thus there is an inflow and outflow of such people into the various projects. At the national level research funding is tied up with donor agencies who then fund certain groups that might fund your research either as an individual or within a loose group. At the international level the terms of reference are rigid, and one is expected to do the field work rather than conceptual linking. There is difficulty in doing crazy work when the funding is tighter than before. There also personal pressures at this age on the building of a group. Networking between groups and individuals has heightened with email lists and there is a value to this.
Jawahar Raja (practicing advocate, New Delhi)
We are a group of lawyers who are thinking of setting up a space where we can collaborate. We are at the inception stage of this process of building of an organization. With a group of lawyers, it is obvious that there might be a pressure to be programmatic about it. We are working towards some kind of vision, and what ties our varied interests are that we are interested in issues of inequality, linkages between law and equality, how law can be used or how it exaceberates inequality. Our intent is to create a space in which we can work, and maybe later think of a space that people could use as well. In terms of internal structure of an organization, we recognize that there would be a heirarchy inspite of an intention to have a flat structure. What we feel the need to do is that we should keep an eye on the workings of an informal hierarchy. This also relates to how we intervene in different fields – whether litigation or any other. The assumption is that this accountability would come from within the organization. As of now organizations are not answerable to anyone except themselves. Thus we want to think about accountability for our work and in the sense of a larger accountability to what we are working towards. On the issue of funding, it often seems that certain larger organizations are sustained purely because of funding coming in. the rhythm of the organization becomes different, and is driven by the number of campaigns, public interest litigations etc. needs to be shown. There is also the issue that we are a bunch of people who know each other from before, come from privileged English-educated backgrounds etc. and we want to engage and build a democratic organization. Thus how do we prevent the formation of personalities or stars within the organization. What we want to do is thus take it as slowly as possible. Our work overlaps in many ways and in our discussions with each other we find that it has enriched our work, and thus felt the need to take it forward in a formal sense, inspite of a wariness of the process of formalization. We’ve started by taking a space, and hope that in the slow process of forming a group and face similar issues that other groups already have.
DAY 3 NOTIONS OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE / PUBLIC RESEARCH (28th November)
Session 1: Situating Public Knowledge
Universities and research institutes have been the recognized site of production of knowledge, but were plagued by limited relevance, bureaucratic structures and inaccessibility of such knowledge. The attempt over here is to trace this form of production and the contributions that it has made, and the emergence of research and educational initiatives outside of the university context. Below are some accounts of educational, research initiatives that have gained some independence from the traditional format, and have been exploring different domains, some over a long period like the last ten years, and some which have just started.
Ashish Rajyadhaksha (Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore)
Centre for Study of Culture and Society is a research institution that also offers a serious postgraduate programme in culture studies.
Arul Mani (St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore)
The honours program of St. Josephs College invites students not only from within the college but from elsewhere also. Initially started mostly as an English honours program, it has now expanded to peace studies, legal literacy, journalism and many other courses. The english honours program too started with a formal format of appreciating the modern novel, and then rapidly expanded to cartoons, poetry, detective fiction and many other realms. It is an interesting exercise in educational programs that are in some sense affiliated to a formal university, and yet have some degree of independence in formulating curriculum and how the courses should develop.
Anita Ratnam (Samvada, Bangalore) Shekhar Krishnan (CRIT, Mumbai)
Session 2: Multiple Sites of Public Knowledge
This session is divided into three parts each will be preceeded by a trigger presentation that poses questions and issues for the participants to respond to, coming from diverse areas of engagement with the public and public knowledge, ranging from new media initiatives to setting up of media centres, of creating knowledge for movements to academic research.
Technology and Social Practices Felipe Fonseca, Metareciclagem
Old and New Media – Dissemination practices Deepu, Pedestrian Pictures and Clifton D’Rozario, ALF
There is a lot of information and knowledge produced is a certain kind which is in favour or in tandem with the picture painted by multinational corporations. Thus where is the information for the other people especially those affected. Thus we need to look at knowledge production in the context of social movements especially Narmada Bachaon Andolan. NBA is hardly the first anti-dam movement, but it is NBA that has been successful in changing the discourse around dams, even if it hasn’t achieved all the avowed objectives of the movement. There is on one side there is the production of dams as the modern temples of India, through classrooms, news, documentaries on state televisions etc. Thus NBA is about resistance by the people, which led to the production of anti-dam discourse.
New Media Tatiana Wells, Midiatatica
Democracy in Brazil is not very old, and there was a vaccuum left by the State. In the last ten years there haas been a proliferation of free radio, which is different from community radio in terms of management and content. There have been many independent collectives that have experimented with technology. At the same time there are pirate radios. But very little research or critique has ahppened about them. Some of the free radios are housed inside universities now, and work with the Ministry of Cutlure but retainign their autonomy. Open source instrumentalized a lot of this practice. In Brazil one can see at the same very avant garde public policy being forced through at district levels, and at the same time there is very repressive politics about popular mediums like radio. We work with the idea of creating creative contexts that look at technology with a different focus and to approximate tactical and new media with the open source context.
Evolving Creative Forms Monica Narula, Sarai
Sarai is a place for interdisciplinary research and practice as part of Centre For Study of Developing Societies. It contains the media lab, which serves as a context for creative collaborations between members of Ruqs media collective and the others at Sarai including academics, others from design, film and other background and from the cybermohalla project. A premise that we work with that the framework of interactions is as creators and producers of knowledge, whatever the media form, in which the participant/audience or the person who is engaging with the material produced is also seen as a creator. Open source communities have posited the idea that the user can become a producer and part of community. Bascially Sarai is looking at extensible, multipliable and transformable media sites and forms, as well as to create context and nodes of participation of various kinds. Some of the projects described here – Cybermohalla – there are three experimental labs set up in various parts of Delhi including working class colonies, slums etc. set up with collaboration with Ankur. Another project is opus which is developing into apanopus. Opus is an online environment, which was a translation of open source philosophy with cultural and creative content, and to work with the idea of rescension. This is now transformed for various reasons into apnaopus with the cybermohallas. Research and production nodes in Sarai produce broadsheets, using cheap modes of printing and pater, and to make work-in-progress public. One of the recent projects is the Network of No_des which uses simple forms such as text, image and hyperlinking.
Margins of Interdisciplinarity Namita Malhotra, ALF
Law or legal knowledge is often restricted in terms of access and comprehensibility by people who are not familiar with the legal domain. The effort within ALF is to break out of it. One of the first ideas was to have a common public legal resource that people could access. This was the beginning of the law and media project. We want to look at an enrichment of the spaces in between, rather than collaboration with very ‘entrenched’ participants, or pay lip service to the idea of interdisciplinarity. Legal discourse is extremely self-referential, from precedents/laws/international conventions to articles on legal issues – it is a world inhabited by the ‘principles’ of reason and objectivity. Robert Cover says (Word and Violence) “legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death.” Our engagement with legal discourse also necessarily implies a certain style of thinking and engaging esp. with text/written matter. However this peculiar engagement driven often by an understanding of applications of legal principles of equality, justice and esp. this habit of engaging with legal texts in terms of their superiority to all else that is around (including people’s narratives, other aspects of their lives and also our lives) – has led to the desire to displace the autonomy that it has. Interdisciplinarity – allow for a backdoor/insidious entry point into disciplines (in the same way that activities that are illegal/marginal such as piracy allows for an entry point into global media flows)
Certain dilemmas have emerged over the period of the law and media project. These are :
- Law because of an intensely coded nature immediately implies a setting up of a hierarchy, which allows for limited engagement by us in terms of only law, and doesn’t allow for the stepping aside of this category.
- A hybrid interdisciplinary product at the edge of disciplines doesn’t entirely address the issues and questions of either – apart from the necessity of any such ‘product’ (for the lack of a better word) being able to stand on its own – it only manages to address certain issues and concerns of either discipline – it can either limit the discussion or open it up entirely into a different realm
- Media products have to achieve certain results. However the idea of media/art as conceptual spaces that allow for exploration does not have the same credibility, as the idea of media as a tool for dissemination/outreach.
- Working at the margins of disciplines – also implies contact with different communities – whether the community one works with (say pourakarmikas), an urban studies reading group, the Sarai reader list, ALF itself and the different social worlds that it brings you in contact with. This is often a complex, sometimes difficult relationship within which differing aesthetics and levels of access to technology come into play.
- ALF’s interest in different media practices has been entrenched in other practices and work of ALF, and also the different communities that we engage with – hence there is no clear trajectory or movement from forms such as documentary films to more experimental forms, but that depending on the people we work withy different forms are used.
Alternative Law Forum Bangalore
December 15th, 2004
Yogendra Yadav, chairing the session, joked about mistaking the topic of the session for ‘Truth’ and ‘Causality’, the two things disapperaing in the social sciences. Though the jokes were followed by Ifthikar Gilani talking about his own, near farcical experiences with the Intelligence Bureau and the Courts, it wasn’t funny.
In the plenary, Arundhati Roy spoke of how we live in a judicial dictatorship and are unaware of it. Ifthikar Gilani was made painfully aware of this, when the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi refused to grant him bail for having in his posession a pamphlet of an independence movement in PoK, ” for believing(?) in the liberation of Kashmir.”
Ifthikar Gilani went on to say that he was scared by the lack of judicial accountability, becuase he could get justice after only seven months having access to the media and the government in the capital of the country, but what would happen to the arbitrarily accused in the small towns of India without access to the portals of power?
Gilani went on to point out that the new Freedom of Information Act, which was passed while he was in jail, does not override the draconian Sec. 5 of the Official Secrets Act, by which the mere posession of any document deemed to be dangeropus to National Security, could lead to the arrest of people, and their incarceration for upto fourteen years. He mentioned a sketch of Meerut Cantontment, which was planted on 4 different people… which had far less information which could be considered detrimental to national security, than issues of India Today which give maps and figures of troop deployments in border areas.
Gilani also mentioned how his trail and incarceration were misprepresented by the media, particularly the Hindustan Times and the Pioneer, whose reporters gave entirely fictive accounts of the court proceedings and his ‘confessions’ of being an ISI agent and a terrorist plant.
(Judges can be bought, why not journalists?)
Anjali Mody’s presentation on the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ by the media, noted how the media now ignores the ‘other side’ of the story, which is a very basic tenet of the profession. This laziness, and the willing suspension of disbelief, has created the sense of a nation under siege, becuase the only source the media follows, particularly in the coverage of ‘terrorism’ is the government sources, which are shadowy, and ‘non-verifiable’. The media cannot even think of the governemnt as a perpetrator of terror, something which is exclusively reserved for non-state actors, except for Pakistan.
Anjali locates this failure of the media in the Information Culture present; in which Information is not free, but a state owned commodity, dispensed as a favour, so that even routine information dispesned by the government is valued. She also locates the media’s ‘laziness’ in its class intersts, which make its goals the same as that of the state.
Anjali spoke of the terrain of the ‘encounter’, which led well into the presentation of Vijay Nagraj of Amnesty International, who dwelt upon the the discursive power of the ‘encounter’, the extra judicial executions that we are all aware of. Vijay spoke of how the media reportage of these ‘encounters’ has done away with the words ’suspected’ and ‘alleged’. Now they are plain, unadorned terrrorists. Police lies become facts. The laziness of media language in reporting ‘encounters’, has lethal implications; delegitimizing an entire struggle. the truth as casualty.
The media has completely ignored the 1997 directives of the NHRC, which call for an investigation of all police officers involved in an encounter. The police versions are now the truth. The ‘lazy ‘assumptions which led to the arrest of Ifthikar Gilani are part of the media’s commonsense about all Kashmiri Muslims.
Vijay warns us of worse things to come, like the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, to come out in the US, which by maintaining a blanket security policy for detainees, will in effect legitimize disapperance.
And since repression has become globalised…
Arun Mehta, in the same panel, spoke of the need for electronic forensics, especially when the major evidence presented in almost all the spectacular crises of the past two years or so, which have allowed governemts to kick up levels of repression and aggression; has been largely electronic in nature… the bin Laden tapes, the december 13 mobile intercepts, the West end tapes, etc.
Arun Mehta noted, especially in the Tehelka case, how there were no standards for the presentation of electronic evidence, especially in the Tehelka tapes, and went on to highlight guildelines for accepting/using electronic evidence.
The guildelines are simple – Good audio quality of recording is an essential, for it makes it much harder to distort content. Backup coipes of all evidence should be taken immediately, and distributed, to prevent police tampering. The public should have access to all these materials, unedited. The recording hardware should aslo remain untampered with; and accessible.
Anand Vivek Taneja
March 5th, 2004
The Sarai Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, (CSDS) Delhi together with the Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam, recently organized a workshop titled “Crisis/Media : The Uncertain States of Reportage“. The workshop was hosted at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi. “Crisis/Media” brought together media practitioners, journalists, critics, activists, writers and students for an intense three days of reflection, dialogue and debate on the act of bearing witness, in and through the media on a world at crisis. The workshop opened with a provocation that stated “The crises in the media are the crises of the media.”
This event, which took place on the 3rd. 4th and 5th of March, 2003, brought together critical voices from Kashmir, Gujarat, Manipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Argentina, the ex-Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, Australia, South Africa and the United States. It had human rights activists, anti war campaigners, and legal practitioners dialogue with reporters who have covered intensive crisis and conflict situations, It featured talks by writers, critics and academics, a round table in which independent media activists discussed strategies for the future,an impromptu exhibition of photographs depicting the situation in Argentina today and screenings of films and videos relevant to the themes of the workshop.
The workshop was very well attended, with people staying on after long days for the screenings, and conversations continuing well into the night, on each of the three days. A group of M.A. Final year students from the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia University. Delhi also attended the workshop along with the many who had pre registered to be able to attend.The seminar room at CSDS was packed to capacity, for much of the three days, and arrangements were made for live video transmissions of the panel in order to accommodate an additional thirty or forty people in the ‘Sarai Interface Zone’ in the basement of the new building at CSDS on Rajpur Road.
What follows is a few vignettes and memories of some of what I found to be the most engaging encounters and presentations that occurred during the event. As one of the people who organized and co ordinated the event (together with Geert Lovink from the Waag, and Rachel Magnusson, intern at Sarai)I found that my expectations of what we had hoped to achieve with this conference exceeded to a great extent by the depth and intensity of the discussions, and by the excellent presentations made by the invited speakers that prompted these wide ranging discussions. In a south asian context, where a variety of economic, cultural and political factors enforce what is often a crippling silence about many key issues, even as the impression of a free media is sought to be sustained by the clamour of a sophisticated media and news industry, this workshop had an added significance. It was able to generate a climate that welcomed candour and free speech, and at the same time set and maintained a high standard of discourse about crisis reportage. It was able to be an event that could focus on very concrete issues of media practice, without losing sight of what it means, in a philosophical and ethical sense to bear witness to difficult times.
In our intorductiory statements, Geert Lovink and I stated that The ‘Crisis/Media’ Workshop at Sarai opened framed by the memory of one crisis, and the anticipation of another. Exactly a year ago, at the end of February and the beginning of March 2002, we witnessed a pogrom in Gujarat, in western India. Today, the world stands a hair’s trigger away from a war in Iraq, the consequences of which, on a global scale seem too difficult to even imagine. These are times for sober reflection, and that, precisely, is what we often find missing, as we open the newspaper, listen to the radio, or continue to be lobotomised by television. Yet, a variety of different, dissident, passionate and sane voices are also making themselves heard, through combinations of new and old media, as never before. The ‘Paid For’ news of the mainstream media is often exposed for what it is, even before it appears, by an increasingly vigilant network of independent local-global media initiatives. The numbers that turn out on the streets of the world’s major capitals to protest against the plans for war against Iraq seem to suggest that despite huge propaganda efforts, ‘the spin’ isn’t working, at least not all of the time. We live, as the Chinese curse, has it, in ‘interesting times’.
The workshop opened with a keynote presentation by Danny Muller, from the Iraq Peace Team, who spoke eloquently of the way in which the rising tide of protest worldwide against the plans for war against Iraq, showed how the spin doctors in the media don’t always get it right. He spoke of the necessity of tactical intelligence, in order to ensure that alternative voices get heard. He also emphasized the fact that we need to see each of ourselves not just as passive recipients of media, but as active agents, using conversations, letters, and other means of personal communication as effective “viral” agents of making it possible different points of view get a hearing. He spoke fo his experiences of talking about his trips to Iraq, and civil disobedience through non payment of taxes, as well as his interventions on prime time live TV shows, such as Oprah Winfrey, where he could confront President Bush with the sheer absurdity of the drive for war. Danny Miller’s presentation was a testatment to the way in which ordinary people with limited resources can make a difference to the media representation of any issue.
The tension between mainstream media and other ways of bearing witness to our times remained a consistent theme through the days of the workshop. It surfaced for instance in the plenary that bracketed the end of the workshop, which featured an address by Arundhati Roy, the well known dissident writer based in delhi. Arundhati Roy, compared the mainstream media to a buffalo, surrounded by a swarm of bees that were all the alternative and independent voices emerging from within a politicized new media culture – she spoke of how the “paid for” news of the networks and newspapers needs to be vigilantly combatted. Her exposition of news as ‘collateral damage’ looked at how the indigenous forest dwelling people of north kerala could be dubbed easily as ‘terrorists’, at the way in which the movement against the damming of the river Narmada has fared at the hands of the mainstream media, and the easy acceptance of official press releases as ‘objective’ truth as an unfortunate part of the so called “war against terror”. At the same time, she sounded an important note of caution when she stated that peoples movements need to work had to create an alternative political culture that cannot be easily packaged into the familiar patterns of the “leaders and the led”, and the images of martyrs/victims and extremists that the mainstream media is so adept at using to represent them with. Arundhati Roy , through her presentation, made an eloquent case for the “peace correspondent” as opposed to “war correspondent” as someone who reports not only the wars that are manufactured and unleashed on to people by powerful interests, but as someone who listens to and is sensitive to all the struggles for dignity, peace and liberty that do not necessarily make the news in the din of war. In concluding the discussion after her presentation Arundhati underlined the need to be wary of a “Lazyness in Language” and of the need to remain alive to the task of making the connections that needed to be made, and to the imperative of a fidelity to what people experienced in the world today.
Ranjit Hoskote, (Deputy Editor, The Hindu) in another plenary spoke of the responsibilities that come with the act of speaking in a resistant voice, the imperative not to take on the mantle of victimhood as a catcha all and not to mirror the “repeatage” that substitutes for reportage. He emphasized the need not to simplify, to reproduce existing inadequate categories, and the urge to jump to conclusions, pointing out that in a conflict, very often it is unncessary to allow oneself to be pushed into the corner of choosing one or the other side, because, as he said, the “Truth may have more than two sides to it”
Subarno Chatterjee (Delhi University) dissected the role of the media in the build up of war frenzy during the Kargil conflict, and discussed in detail the questionable way in which reportage of “atrocities” by Pakistani forces would occupy the headlines, while different standards where applied while talking of the behavious of the Indian military.
A panel in Hindi featured a exploration by the eminent Hindi essayist, writer and critic, Rajendra Yadav of the crisis of free speech in the Hindi language. His presentation, which took the form of an autobiographical exegesis of the many attacks he has faced from the right, left and the centre as a result of his willingness to say things that made people uncomfortable was marked by with and candour, but also revealed a deep discomfort with the prevailing culture of “playing safe” that has the Hindi reading public within its grip. His presentation was followed by an anecdote laced intervention by Abhay Dube (fellow, CSDS and former journalist) of the “crisis’ that gripped the newsroom of a major Hindi daily (about what to say and what not to say) on the day that the Babri Masjid was demolished by the forces of the Hindu Right in 1992.
In two other significant panels, one on the media reports of the Gujarat violence, and the other on reporting situations of conflict in South Asia, (which discussed ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka, insurgency and state terror in Kashmir and the north east of India) working journalists based in Kashmir and Gujarat, spoke with depth and passion of the travails of trying to stay close to the truth. Darshan Desai, (Outlook, Ahmedabad) ) spoke of the way in which the political forces who orchestrated the violence in Gujarat (the ruling BJP party) was able to successfully manipulate the English language media’s reporting of the truth about what was going on – into a discorse of ‘the demonization of Gujaratis by a section of the media’. This in turn helped turn the image of the aggressor into that of the aggreived, and was pumped for mileage, quite successfully in the elections that followed some months after the violence. Siddharth Varadarajan (Times of India, Delhi) spoke of how the English language media did perform a responsible role by not shying away from naming the victims of the violence that engulfed Gujarat, but he also spoke of the “Anarchy” of the newspaper office, and the pressures of daily production, by way of explanation for the many slippages that occur in the media’s presentation of key issues of conflict. This explanation was contested actively in the discussion that followed. Gurpal Singh (independent filmmaker, Mumbai) spoke of the efforts of a coalition of media workers and activists towards creating a body of video documentation in the aftermath of the violence, that they were willing to share with all those who were committed to speaking out against what had happenned, Arvind Narain (Alternative Legal Forum) spoke of the ways in which the term “genocide” could or could not be deployed in describing what had occurred in Gujarat, in the light of the existing paradigm of international law. He spoke of the need for engaged and creative legal and human rights activism in coming up with adequate responses to exceptional situations like Gujarat.
Muzammil Jaleel (Indian Express, Srinagar) spoke of a daily routine of fear, of dealing with getting inured to violence, until the death of journalist colleagues in bomb attacks would shake one out of the inertia of witnessing violence. Muzammil emphasized the necessity to abide by a professional ethic and a commitment to telling what one sees, even if the things that you see do not add up to a coherent picture that is comforting to either of the parties in a conflict like Kashmir. This, he said, means everyone is out to get you, in one sense, both the insurgents as well as the forces of state power, because the truth is inconvenient to everyone. Manoranjan Selliah, (independent journalist and human rights activist, Colombo) talked about the way in which the plight of Tamil Muslims, caught in the cross fire between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan State had been completely ignored by the media, which chooses to ignore the victims of those it has already designated as ‘victims’. A Bimol Akoijam (visiting fellow, CSDS, Delhi) spoke of the way in which the North East of India, functions in a sense as the marginal, repressed ‘other’ , yielded by the obsessive “Rastra chetna (national consciousness)” of the mainstram media in India. This he said, was symptomatic of a residual colonialist consciousness that still animated the mainstream of Indian civil society and the state – the media could hardly be an expected to be an exception to it. Abir Bazaz (independent filmmaker, Delhi/Srinagar) who was featured as a discussant, spoke of the media’s many silences, especially with regard to the beginning of the nineties, in Kashmir, when a massive climate of fear and repression led to an increased sense of alienation within the Kashmir valley. He also pointed out the tendency to be selective about the “victims” whose cause one chooses to champion, pointing out for instance how the Kashmiri Pandit minority became selective victims, depending on who was doing the reporting, within and outside Kashmir.
In another very interesting panel, called “The Encounter : Truth as a Casualty” Syed Iftekhar Gilani, (Kashmir Times, Delhi) a journalist recently released from prison in Delhi, spoke eloquently of the kafkaesque ordeal that journalists and others face when faced with the “Official Secrets Act”. Anjali Mody, on the same panel, spoke of how journalists have become habituated to reproduce official (police) versions in the case of so called “encounter” deaths, because of the vice like grip of the notion of “national security” and the “national interest” on the media as a whole. She pointed out that though there were a few honorable exceptions of cases where reporters did scratch the surface of the hand out stories about “terrorists’ slain in encounters, there was still little by way of an understanding of what could be done so that all the nuances of a particular “encounter’ were adequately explored. Arun Mehta ( telecommunications engineer and human rights activist) spoke at the same panel on the need for a strict scrutiny and adequate ‘forensic’ standards in cases where the media highlights what is considered to be ‘electronic evidence’. He quoted a series of examples, ranging from the Tehelka Arms Kickback Scandal to the trial proceedings in the “Attack on the Indian Parliament” case, where the state, media organizations, and reporters have all been slipshod in the way in which they have dealt with what has been called ‘Electronic Evidence’. Vijay Nagaraj (Amnesty International, Delhi) who spoke as a discussant on this panel spoke of the necessity of carefully examining simple things like police FIRs (first information reports) to unravel patterns of violence and repression at an everyday level. He also cautioned us against the new found global respectability for severely repressive laws that were violative of basic human rights as a corollary of the so called “War against Terror”.
The focus of the workshop was markedly global, and we heard from Marilina Winik (Indymedia Argentina, Buenos Aires) about the way in which independent media initiatives were confronting the collapse of everyday life in Argentina today. Marni Cordell (The Paper and Small Voices.org, Melbourne) spoke of experiences of working with independent and alternative media practitioners in Indosnesia and Australia We heard testimonies of women in the South African Media from Crystal Orderson, (Young Africa Television, Johannesburg) and also of how radio, and the internet became essential tools in the struggle for a free space, in the ex Yugoslavia, from Katerina Zivanovic (Cyber Rex and Radio B 92, Belgrade) , and Adrienne van Heteren (Press Now/Glasnost Foundation, Moscow/Amsterdam). The Crises of Everyday Life were also examined in a south asian context in by Dipika Nath (Prism, Delhi) spoke of the media’s representation of sexual minorities while Chitra Ahanthem (Imphal Free Press, Manipur) looked at how the HIV/Aids situation, complicated by a backdrop of ethnic violence and state repression creates a warped media picture of Manipur.
The afternoon of the third day began with a panel titled Confrontations in Cyberspace. Harsh Kapur, (South Asia Citizens Web) took everyone on a tour of the global far right in cyberspace, with an extended detours on the large territory occupied by the Hindu Far Right, in India, and in the global south asian diaspora. He also highlighted efforts at online resistance to the far right, and spoke of the urgency to launch concerted online campaigns against the far right’s sophisticated and extensive web presence. Aditya Nigam (Autonomous Media Network and CSDS, Delhi)spoke of the different political culture that could now become possible because of the decentralized, potentially non hierarchical structure of the web. He mentioned the crucial role that mailing lists had played, in the wake of the Indo – Pak nuclear tests in 1998, during the Kargil war and in the aftermath of the Gujarat violence. These, he said were necessary and crucial to broaden and deepen, especially when the mainstream newspaper can report mass protests as mere ‘traffic jams’ as had happenned recently in Delhi, even as they engineered false ‘media events’ to suit particular political interests. Asha Varadarajan, (Queens University, Kingston, Ontario)
In the final panel on the reportage of ecological crises, Darryl D’Monte (president of the International Fedaration of Environmental Journalists, Mumbai)spoke of the crisis within environmental journalism, as a result of the backlash against discussion of ecological issues within mainstream media. He spoke of how column inches of in depth and analyrical reportage on environmental matters had actually declined, even though issues like “Global Warming” did have high visibility. Sanjay Kak (independent film maker, Delhi) spoke about the necessity of putting politics back into environmental reportage, and of dealing adequately with the time scales that are important in the politics of environmental issues, which the mainstream media’s obsession with “events” is generally unable to accommodate or grasp. Pradip Saha (Down to Earth Magazine, Delhi) gave a verywitty but sharply critical analysis of the nittiy gritty of the reportage of an issue like “water” in the mainstream media. Complete with graphs of frequency distributions of seasonal patters of reportage in newspapers of water related themes, Saha drove home the point that the media generally followed the patterns of thought laid out by the state and by corporations when it came to the reportage of basic issues. He made a strong appeal for a systematic analysis of the political economy of media ownership and control patterns and the way in which these patterns impinged on the reportage of environmental issues. Ravi Agarwal (Environmental Activist, Toxics Link, Delhi) spoke of how the only environmental issues that get any real coverage in the media are those that can be presented as “disasters”. This implies that the everyday issues, which are structural, which have to do with basic economic and political questions often get sidelined. He also spoke of the need for effective media strategies for envirnomental activists, not necessarily relying on the spectacular, as wealthy organizations such as Greenpeace are able to do, but relying instead on methodical and systematic investigation, analysis and innovative ways of presenting findings to a broader public.
Apart from the discussions and plenaries, each days programme ended with a screening. The first evening featured “Before the Rain” by Milcho Manchevski, which was introduced and located within the context of the history of conflicts, and media representations of that conflict in the ex Yugolavia, by Costas Constantinou (University of Keele)
The second evening featured a screening of “Paradise on the River of Hell” a personal reflection in video on the situation in Kashmir, by Abir Bazaz and Meenu Gaur, followed by a selection of short films by different groups from Argentina, which was introduced and presented by Marilina Winik.
The final evening’s film was “Words on Water” a film on the peoples resistance movement to the building of big dams on the river Narmada in Central India, by Sanjay Kak. Each of the screenings was followed by a lively and animated discussion with the filmmakers and presenters.
The workshop also featured an informal round table on future strategies for alternative media inititatives, which saw the participation of inedpendent media activists such as Sanjay Bhangar (Indymedia Mumbai) , Marilina Winik (Indymedia Argentina), Marni Cordell (Small Voices, Melbourne), Katerina Zivanovic (Cyber Rex, Belgrade) and others.
The atmosphere at the workshop bordered occasionally on the electric,with intense discussions following incisive presentations and plenaries. The workshop was for many of the participants, (as well as for all those who attended) an opportunity to talk about and listen to many issues of critical importance that had for a very long time been smothered by a suffocating, uncritical culture of silence in South Asia. If anything it did demonstrate that there is hope yet, within our societies, for the emergence of a consistent, critical and vigilant climate of examination of the media – as one more node in the matrix of power. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the workshop also laid for many who came to the attend, the seeds of thinking about “doing” media as a way of challenging the same matrix of power. We hope that the conversations that began during this workshop will play some part in the realization of a critical culture of media practice, that instead of lurching from one crisis to another, is able to do some justice to the times that we live in today.
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
March 16th, 2003
The morning session on the third day of the Crisis /Media workshop at Sarai was testimony to a packed auditorium. Writer activist Arundhati Roy was to present her paper on Peace is War: the collateral damage of breaking news. Shuddhabhrata Sengupta introduced Roy as one of the finest voices in India who has consistently spoken on issues of concern, be it possession of nuclear weapons in South Asia or the adivasi movements in Kerela or the epoch making Narmada Bachao Andolan in the valley. “Reasonable, strident and passionate” were a combination of words that he used to describe the essence of the voice of Arundhati. Also the one phrase that had made an imprint on his mind from her award winning book The God of Small Things ˆ Locusts and I was in ways, more than one, to be the essence of her paper ˆ the need to take a definitive position during times of crisis and shun the garb of neutrality under which many of us try and cover our faces and thus aggravate the crisis.
Arundhati’s paper threw up many interesting issues for introspection by the media practitioners and those involved in crisis reportage. She began with the concept of “Paid For” News expressing her delight that now since the mainstream print and electronic media had actually openly started selling space in the gossip sessions, the viewers may soon be in a treat for situations like “And this sentence is sponsored by…” ! What a take off on the mainstream Indian bourgeois discourse!
Roy pointed out that after the September 9 attack on the towers, the myth of the free press and the great US media had come crashing down but drew attention to the Indian media back home that we had broken the myth of free press in India not once but many times, during the Decmebr 13 attack on Parliamnet and Syed Gilani’s arrest. In relation to the reportage on Gujarat she said that the reportage on Gujarat did not begin with the riots last March but a decade earlier with the breaking of the Babri Masjid implying “that in our hearts, feelings do not begin when headlines begin but much before them.”
Roy clarified that she was not on a media bashing spree but that it was important that the media too be held accountable. She referred to the rise of the New Media that comments and critiques the institutions and vestiges of the Old Media in its every move. Pointing to the role that media plays in the strengthening of every democracy, Roy pointed out that if the US government still chooses to ignore the massive worldwide protests being held against the impending war in Iraq, then one has to seriously question the predicament of what a democracy is.
In an in depth analysis on reportage of crises by the media, Roy drew attention to the fact that media has begun treating a crisis like business appointment. It makes headlines with the first great sensational occurrence or visual spectacle and once it has been fed on the minds of the consumers in decisive and repetitive chronology, media moves off to its next appointment with another crisis. Crisis reportage has also become slick, advanced and more technological, almost like a science, said Roy. Media has almost perfected the art of isolating a crisis and making it float like a hot air balloon fueled by the excessive media glare and stripping it of its essential context and the historical situation it may be situated in. Crisis as a spectacle is not new to us, spoke Arundhati and pointed to the most theatrical Salt March by Gandhi to Dandi but pointed out that stripped of its essential resistance movement, crisis reportage today plays it up merely as a spectacle.
Crises have also increasingly come to be reported as more symbolic than real. Aware of the media’s need for gobbling up any sensational and theatrical event, politicians stage manage colossal political campaigns like the Rath Yatra in the name of a politico-spiritual or religious crisis and whip up emotional and political frenzy among the citizens. Roy also coined an interesting term, “ownership of the crisis”. She went on to say, “If you do not have a crisis to call your own then you are not in news and if you are not in news then you are down and out.” The more depressing fallout that such a strategy of crisis reportage has had on genuine resistance movements is that they look to new ways of attracting attention to their cause like technique of Jal Samarpan that the NBA activists have talked of latterly to resort to in an attempt to bring some hope to the sapping movement.
We are all aware of the crushing and trampling upon of crucial resistance movements whenever they have graduated from mere symbolism to civil disobedience by the mighty state. Thus Dalits and Adivasis are killed for encroaching upon forest plantations in Kerela that belonged to the JK plantations. Hundreds of children are jailed in Jharkhand and lakhs disappearing in Kashmir under various excuses of threats to national security.
Roy pressed for the most urgent need of “Peace correspondents” rather than “War Correspondents.” She stressed on the need of the media to lose the terror of the mundane and to expose political fallacies. She spoke of the importance of transparency and accountability in a democratic set up. She said that even institutions like the mass media and the judiciary need to be accountable because any institution beyond scrutiny in a so-called democratic set up is anti thetical to the very spirit of democracy. Another worrying trend in crises reportage, Roy said, lay in the tendency to approach each crisis from the back: the decision to enter Afghanistan through the debris of the World Towers. Such a lopsided entry colours the nature of reportage and one never gets to know the causes of the crisis.
The two main pillars of Arundhati’s presentaion were the strong appeal it made for the mass media to look inward and introspect in the nature and techniques of crises reportage, on how to articulately report crises so that it does not become fodder for theatrical or political back-bashing and secondly, the efficacy of the media’s strategy to make the transition from spectacle to resistance.
It also threw up many corollaries in media writing, for example, the usage of language, an issue that was brought out in the interactive session with the audience. Pointing to the use of language, Roy acknowledged that the media has been extremely lazy with language and needs to tighten it up to get its message across articulately and correctly.
Attended by a packed audience that went satisfied with an emotive yet reasonable and appealing presentation, Arundhati Roy was a delight to listen to and learn from. One of the most sane voices in the increasingly complicated whirlwind of political and theatrical rhetoric, she still speaks with relish and writes with the head and heart firmly in place.
Anamika Bhatnagar
March 5th, 2003
In response to a question at the end of her presentation, about recovering the possibilites inherent in reportage, Arundhati Roy spoke of the ‘laziness of the use of language’. How this laziness needed to be fought; how every sentence had to be honed and polished, how even a 200 word report had to be made a weapon – because ‘they’ aka ‘the motherfuckers’, (aka The World Bank the IMF and …….) steal and co-opt language to suit their own twisted ends.
Crisis/Media, for me, has been working through certain trajectories over the past three days, coming up with ideas, and trying to express them, and this morning’s Plenary was t the perfection of an idea that had been struggling for expression through a series of sessions.
Language as a weapon. Honed. Polished. Language as an ally of thought, rather than its polite obfuscation.
Shuddabrata Sengupta, who was chairing the session, reminded us of a term from The God of Small Things. Locusts Stand I. Who are you to say these things? is something that is always hurled at you to silence you. Exactly a year ago, it was used to send Arundhati to jail for one absurd day – who are you to ask/say these things?
Locusts Stand I. Where do you stand when the locusts come flying? (Istand with the sons of Cain.)
Metaphors, imagery, the play (and hard work) with words and phrases that turns them on their head. These are her weapons. Weapons which cut through the doublespeak of ‘development reports’ and the ranting report of the right wing; words which provoke all of us to think, and to find our own truths. Arundhati’s presentation today, though self-admittedly more ‘theoretical’ than her past work, was no less powerful.
Beginning from the Times of India selling space to wannabes on Page 3, through 9/11, to the shrinking space of Civil Disobdience and the self-fulfilling prophecy of ‘Terrorism’, to Peace is War, the importance of talking about everyday struggles; it was brilliant Theory, constantly informed by the realities that the Media ignores in its constant search for Crisis.
The behemoth conglomerates of Old Media, though plagued by the buzzzing flies of ‘New Media’ (which can come up with minor irritants like the millions of anti-war marchers in 750 cities) keep lurching from Crisis to Crisis to satisfy its insatiable appetite for Spectacle; for Theatre. ‘Crises’ are disconnected from their context, from their historicity, and then dumped… Social Movements, Resistance Movements, are being sucked into crisis production, becuase if you don’t have a crisis of your own, you’re not in the news; if you’re not in the news you don’t exist. While ‘real’ crises, and those who suffer genuine socio-economic problems which are grounded in the real – are increasingly dealt with by brutal repression; ’symbolic’ , virtual crises , like the ones created/fed by the Right Wing are given media coverage, denied to the real, and allowed to shift agendas in the country with a ridiculous ease. As Arundhati Roy said in the context of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, ” People resisiting dams are suppoosed to conjure up new tricks, or give the struggle…”
When victims refuse to be victims, they become terrorists. The space for genuine Civil Disobedience is is atrophying; conflated with the fear of ‘Terrorism’, is closing every avenue for non-violence protest – and leaving no choice to people to become ‘Terrorists’.
The solution to this? For the resistance movements to stop feeding the the media’s endless appetite for theatre, and get back to the real issues. To recognise that for most people in the world, ‘Peace is War.’ That the daily struggles of existence are the more important struggles than the spectacles/spectres of War and Terrorism that the media/government create. To lose our fear of the mundane and to dwell on these struggles, to become ‘Peace’ Correspondents. In response to one of the questions, Arundhati spoke of ‘normality’ as being magical and celebrated in literature, and the need to blur the lines between literature and reprotage. This tied, for me, up with one of the themes of the first day, when shuddha had suggested poetry and a poetic form as a possible way of writing about violence; as an alternative to the ‘objective’, balanced report as news.
(Hermann Goering – Tell the people they’re being attacked, then denounce the peacemakers.)
At the end of her presentation, Arundhati Roy re-deployed cheesy ‘Titanic’ in a beautiful metaphor. That we continue sailing on the Titanic, as it slides into the sea. Even as the third class passengers drown, the banquetting continues, even with decks tilted, becuase they know that the lifeboats ar reserved for club-class.
And the motherfuckers may be right.
The final edge to the weapon of language. The eloquence of abuse for those who deserve it.
To paraphrase Shuddha, once again, We need to break the norms of polite, bourgeoise discourse. If you’re reasonable today, you have to be strident, pasiionate, uncomfortable.
Fuck you, motherfuckers!!
Anand Vivek Taneja
March 5th, 2003
In the Hindi session, ‘Na Likhne ke Kaaran’, the concerns about the media from the morning plenary, and the first session, as well as the preceding days, spilled over.
The dissatisfaction which had followed Siddharth Vardarajan’s absolvement (sort of) of the role of Editorial decision making in the finished product of the ‘newspaper’, even in times of crisis; was addressed by Abhay Dubey’s short, punchy presentation.
Abhay humurously traced the trajectory of how JANSATTA, a paper he worked for, transformed from a communal paper to a markedly secular paper, almost in one day – the 6th of December, 1992.
Through this trajectory, he attempted to understand the role of the Editor in the functioning of the newspaper, and where the decision making power lay, to which all the other writing/expressions in the paper were reactions. Abhay thenpresented the triangular model of content-decision making and problematized it. instead of the triangle of Capital, Governemnt and Obstacles(e.g – Hindutva), he proposed a 4th corner to the Triangle, the made invisible corner of the Editor; whose say in the newspaper’s policy is hidden under excuses of the disaggregated model of American newspaper policy.
But the speech de resistance of the pre-lunch session was Rajendra yadav, speaking of ‘Na Likhne ke Kaaran’, ‘Reasons not to Write…’ .
Rajendra Yadav’s understated sarcasm and anecdotal style made for great listening. He was talking of why it is easy to be a status quoist, becuase everything you write abouty is a holy cow, so if you challenge something you are asking for trouble… more of the ‘laziness of langauge’. It is better not to write if you can’t challenge Religion, Family, Society or even Economiccs and Politics. (Which hasn’t stooped Yadav from writing about any of these, and provocatively, in his long and chequered carreer)
Ravikant, in his introduction, to Rajendra yadav, mentioned how despite Hans, which yadav edits, being a literaray magazine, it delas alo with the politics of the literature. This becomes more important to me as it highlights the theme of blurring the lines between literature and reportage…
Rajendra ji spoke of huis unflinching commitment to rationalism and free thinking in the face of all kinds of obscurantism and the controversies he has created through his writing, especially the writings which have problematised the way all morality and patriarchy is located on the woman’s body. On why na d how he went around defending MF Hussain in his writing, when the right wing was gunning for him – his was an a free-flowing and inspirational talk, in which he made it clear that the reasons not to write are the very reasons to write.
At the end he spoke of why we leave abuses, Gaalis, out of our sanitsied discourse. Gaalis, particulalrly in Hindi and Punjabi, are one the most expressive forms of langauge we have, especially for those who use them as daily discourse. Rajendra-ji made a plea for the retention of abuse in literature.
Anand Vivek Taneja
March 5th, 2003
In a presentation entitled, “The Ethical Quandaries of Bearing Witness” Ranjit Hoskote identified how truth is essentialized, cliched, and diminished by the media during crises. He discussed the causes of this phenomenon, which include: (1) ‘repeatage’ – the impoverishment of discourse by repetition. By repetition, cliches package situations of crisis. (2) the frequent sacrifice of contexts and frameworks in favor of ‘the shallow present’ (3) the way in which dominant and state-sanctioned narratives leave others inaudible and diminished. (4) the reformatting of notions of nation-state to suit popular beliefs.
In the second half of the presentation Hoskote discussed the Indian media’s intense loss of the self. The international media was being used as a parameter for most of its work. The media had turned from a discourse of communicative action into a discourse of hegemony. He also posed a question – in the presence of a crisis situation, whether one is a media practitioner first or a citizen? The conflict of the self and the other is within. He expressed a utopian future where in moments of conflicts and crisis the media as an ally of the resistance. In conclusion he raised the point as to how “victimology” can become a dogma in its own right. Everyone is a victim , no one is innocent.
Karma Wangdi and Suzanne Schulz
March 5th, 2003
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