Unheard voices

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Jan 10, 2016

inShare

A note to my readers:

 

After a run of 22 years in The Hindu (and before that 4 years in Indian Express), this is the last column to appear in print (at least for the moment).  The Hindu's editors informed me that they were dropping it, and some other columns, to make way for "new content".  

Sadly, despite my long association with the paper, the people in-charge did not have the courtesy to call and speak to me personally about this, or to give me enough notice and finally agreed to this last column on my prompting!  On top of it, they removed the line that indicated clearly that I was stopping the column only because they wanted it and not on my own volition.

Be that as it may, I will, as I've written, continue to write about these issues, on this blog, on other digital platforms and hopefully in print.

The Hindu

Irom Sharmila's fast without end and her plea that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act be withdrawn has so far fallen on deaf ears. Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma

 

 

As 2016 begins, one prediction will not go wrong. There will be noise, much more noise on the Indian political-scape. Five state elections. Each will be as fraught as the next. But in the midst of this noise, some voices will be drowned out, voices that are barely heard even when it is quiet.

This column has tried, in the 22 years that it has occupied this space, to remind us that these unheard voices need an audience. Urgently.

Voices like that of Irom Sharmila in Manipur. Her fast without end and her plea that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) be withdrawn has so far fallen on deaf ears. Sharmila continues her protest; successive governments continue to justify the imposition of AFSPA in northeastern States like Manipur and in Kashmir. And the voices of those who bear the brunt of this policy are heard only when there is an “incident”, when enough people die to be noted by the national press. And that is where the story ends.

Voices like that of Lakshmi, who lived on a Mumbai pavement for decades. Her plea that cities also belong to the urban poor, that they too are equal citizens who are guaranteed the same rights as those who live in 100-room mansions, has also fallen on deaf ears. Our cities are for people with houses, with cars, with holiday homes but not for people like Lakshmi who hold up the city and make it work. There is money for sea links, flyovers, broad roads, gleaming new airports and swanky business districts, but no money for affordable housing, potable water supply, sanitation systems that reaches the poorest.

Voices like that of Veena Devi, the mukhiya of Loharpura panchayat in Bihar’s Nawada district. She has only basic literacy skills. Yet she has managed to grasp the essentials of good governance, brought solar lighting to her village so that women feel safe, and figured out that being humane and efficient is not rocket science. There are thousands like her across India. Their voices will disappear if the law that Rajasthan and Haryana have enacted laying down minimum educational criteria for panchayat candidates, is accepted across the country.

Voices like the rural women journalists who work without fear or favour in the rough lands of Uttar Pradesh. The women who bring out Khabar Lahariya in five dialects remind us, who live in cities, that there is an India that our urban obsessed media so readily forgets. These women, trained to be journalists, set out fearlessly to expose incidents of harassment, rape, dowry and other social issues. They also cover local politics. They report, edit and produce their paper. For it they get brickbats, they face harassment, but there is also enough appreciation to keep them going. But their voices are not loud enough to drown out the ruckus that mainstream media generates on any number of issues every day.

Giving space to such voices is not something special; it is what journalism should be about. I chose ‘The Other Half’ as the title for this column because I believe that journalism should be about telling the stories that are not obvious, that don’t automatically hit you in the face. In our rush to meet deadlines, we journalists sometimes miss out on other perspectives. We fail to invest enough in listening to those who speak in quiet voices, those not quite sure about what they feel, those who appear inarticulate to the outside world.

These are often women, poor women, but also men who belong to groups so long marginalised that they have internalised the belief that their views do not count. So they never step forward and speak to you. If you are interested, or concerned, you have to seek them out and convince them you want to listen.

As we go into a new year, followed by one that stood out for growing intolerance, perhaps we should find ways of being more intolerant, but about issues other than the ones that cropped up last year.

We are too tolerant. We tolerate abysmal poverty in the midst of strident consumerism; we tolerate the infamy of millions of our citizens who continue to be discriminated against and marginalised by virtue of their caste; we tolerate unacceptable levels of violence against women within their homes and outside; we tolerate sex-selection and son-preference leading to a skewed sex ratio; we tolerate the existence of millions of undernourished and stunted children in a country where waste is becoming a symbol of prosperity and “progress”; we tolerate women dying at child-birth when this is not a life-threatening disease; we tolerate the excesses of the state in the name of “national security” even as our justice system fails to serve the powerless. The list of what we tolerate, and should not, is endless.

As I sign off on my last column in this space, let me assure the readers of The Other Half, who favoured me with sharp and useful comments through these years, that the other half of the story will continue to be told.

From instruments of abuse

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Sept 27, 2015

inShare

• 
  Special Arrangement

  Different editions of Khabar Lahariya newspapers that is published in six different local language editions in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

They waited nine months.  Filed two FIRs and one complaint.  But the police were deaf to their appeals.  No response; no action. Suddenly, everything changed. Within two days, the problem was solved.

The lack of response is a familiar story yet there is a difference.  The protagonists in this story are a remarkable group of Dalit and Adivasi women journalists in U.P. They publish a weekly paper, Khabar Lahariya, in five local languages — Bundeli, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Hindustani and Bajjika.  In a part of India where the sex ratio is hopelessly skewed, where women confront a daily dose of violence and abuse, where female literacy clings stubbornly to levels well below the national average, where poverty and absence of opportunities breeds its special brand of despair, these women are breaking every norm.  And also setting high journalistic standards by doing what reporters are supposed to do — doggedly follow even difficult stories.

Their organisation provides no transport; instead they walk, cycle, hitch rides to places where they personally want to investigate a story.  It would be much easier to call, an established norm these days. But these women journalists of Khabar Lahariya stubbornly stick to the old-fashioned way of reporting — burning shoe leather. And the difference is evident in the accuracy and quality of their reports from the rural hinterland.

For their labours, they have received recognition.  From a paper that was viewed only as a “woman’s” paper, Khabar Lahariya is now seen as a genuine rural paper.  It covers all kinds of news including political developments. In fact, as I wrote in an earlier column (The Hindu, March 23, 2008: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/article1437139.ece), mainstream journalists are now turning to these women for details, and even using their material without crediting them.

But the unsavoury side of recognition is abuse. For nine months, one man has been stalking and abusing some of these women on the phone.  He used dozens of different sim cards to call and harass different women. He would tell them things like, “Talk dirty to me else I’ll have you kidnapped and raped, many times over. Wherever you hide, I’ll find you. You and everyone in your team.” Despite complaints, the calls did not stop.  He called at all hours of the day and night to the point that some of them were terrified every time their phones rang.

The women registered their complaints and gave the cell numbers from which the calls emanated to the police and to the phone provider.  Yet nothing happened.

The nightmare ended only when another form of technology kicked in, that of social media. The Ladies Finger, a web-based portal, ran their story. (http://theladiesfinger.com/the-policeman-said-why-dont-you-tell-me-what-gaalis-he-whispers-in-your-ear/).  It went “viral”.  It was posted on Facebook and Twitter.  It reached the ears of the U.P. Chief Minister.  And all of a sudden the local police woke up and arrested the man.  Without this kind of pressure, nothing would have happened.

But as Shalini, one of the coordinators told the press, “Ironically, for journalists who report on gender issues, the very process of filing complaints and visiting several police stations for repeated recording of statements turned out to be a form of harassment in itself.”

We now have to wait and watch under what provisions of the law this despicable and unrepentant man, who calls himself Nishu, is charged.  But the entire sequence of events has thrown light on many aspects of the challenges before women who are doing something different.

At least, the women journalists of Khabar Lahariya are known and have connections beyond the villages from where they report.  But think of thousands of young women who want to break out, who make tentative attempts to do something different with their lives.  When local police ignore even women like the Khabar Lahariya journalists, what hope is there for any other woman who faces similar harassment?

Then also consider the double-edged sword that is technology.  On the one hand, the mobile phone has been an instrument of tremendous empowerment, including for women.  It has given millions of people a means of communication that just did not exist for them.  But on the other, it is also the source of harassment.  

That also goes for social media.  In this and other instances, it has been successfully used to put pressure on the authorities to act.  But we also know of the increasing harassment that women writers, social activists and others face through this very channel.  Any criticism of those in power is met with an avalanche of abuse and threats. The abusers use fake identities to evade detection.  Few of them are caught or punished.

So even as we inch forward — and certainly the very existence of something like Khabar Lahariya represents progress — we are pushed back because a woman’s right to her space, her right to choose, her right to be explore the unknown, is simply not accepted.