A recent Marathi film made by a first-time director has a wild bull for a principal character. This animal is blamed for every untoward incident that occurs in a sleepy little village. So a concerted drive is launched to tame and cage the marauding bull. A district forest officer is summoned. The human denizens of the hamlet, led by two local political leaders opposed to each other, are desperate to restore order and establish their might. But can the free spirit of the wild bull be reined in once it has been unleashed? This racy but intricately structured allegory was Valu (The Wild Bull) and it was directed and co-written by FTII Pune alumnus Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni. The film garnered unstinted critical accolades and substantial box office returns when it opened in 2008. It propelled Marathi cinema into a new zone. The energy that Valu set free has steadily grown in strength and scope. He has made another equally good film, but Kulkarni’s name does not yet command instant nationwide recall. Nor do his intimate little films activate the kind of ho-hum hype and hoopla that usually accompanies the work of Bollywood’s new-generation mainstream brat pack. But he and others of his ilk are on their way. With their diligently crafted, often stylised but always socially and culturally relevant cinematic essays, young regional language directors around the country are scripting a dewfresh narrative minted entirely with indigenous ingredients. This rooted yet globally clued-in lot – independent, free-spirited and fiercely original – represent the future of Indian cinema. They are young yet mature, strapped for cash but high on enthusiasm, and they make films that are thought-provoking yet endowed with the power to grab eyeballs. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
EIGHT-year-old Rehana and her elder sister, 10- year-old Kutty, have ambitions. Rehana wants to be a teacher. Kutty dreams of becoming a gritty, tough-talking police officer. It isn’t unusual for children to aspire. Except that two years ago, Rehana and Kutty, sunk in poverty, couldn’t imagine that such careers were within their reach. They spent all day helping their mother, a single parent, eke out a living picking waste around the posh PVR Cinema in Saket, South Delhi. Now Rehana and Kutty go to an English-medium school called Little Ones Public, not far from Saket, a journey made possible by Literacy India’s Street To School programme. Indraani Singh, India’s first Airbus pilot, is the founder and head of Literacy India, a non-profit based in Gurgaon. “When PVR Nest, the charity arm of PVR Cinemas, wanted to rehabilitate children around their movie halls in Basant Lok and Saket, we jumped at the chance to do this with them,” says Indraani who is passionate about empowering underprivileged children. “We targeted children who had run away from home, who are orphans or have single parents. We focussed on the ragpicker community, junkies and drug addicts. We wanted to get them off the streets and into classrooms,” she explains. The Street To School programme began in May
2006 with three hours of informal learning organised
in a public park near the PVR Cinema with
students picked up from the streets. Indraani says
each child was identified by programme volunteers.
The volunteers counselled children and
motivated their parents to grab this opportunity
to study and to look beyond street life. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE Ruchika Girhotra case has once again put the spotlight on police reforms. After 19 years, SPS Rathore, a retired Director-General of Police, (DGP) in Haryana, got off with a light sentence of just six months on charges of molesting 14-year-old Ruchika in 1990. Rathore allegedly got Ruchika thrown out of school and had her brother, then a minor, arrested on false charges of stealing cars. The boy was handcuffed and tortured while illegally kept in detention. Ruchika finally committed suicide unable to cope with the stress that she and her family were subjected to. Ruchika’s case is unfortunately not uncommon. The highest number of complaints made to human rights commissions in India are of human rights violations at the hands of the police, according to a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), one of the few NGOs which studies policing and prison reforms. The Indian police, it is acknowledged, are known for rights abuse, corruption and lack of efficiency. It is also known that the police are poorly paid, badly trained and ‘kicked around like footballs’ by politicians. Successive governments have not taken measures to improve the police force which has been governed by an archaic law passed in 1861. To recap, in 1997, the Union government set up a National Police Commission (NPC) to improve the functioning of the police. It produced eight reports and several recommendations which just gathered dust. In 1996 two former Directors-General of Police filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court, asking the court to direct the Union and state governments to address the poor quality of policing in India. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has been a strong critic of the Copenhagen Accord on climate change. Sunita Narain, director of CSE, spoke to Civil Society on what she finds wrong with the new Indian position in negotiations on climate change and why a place at the high table of polluters is not such a good thing for the Indian economy. You have been critical of the Copenhagen Accord.
What do you find wrong with it? So no longer is the accord setting up targets and asking the world to agree that we have a carbon budget of so much and the budget has to be allocated on the basis of historical emissions and therefore the US has to cut 40 per cent and India has a chance to increase. This accord says that all that should be thrown out of the window and we will go by whatever countries are agreeable to doing. So, why won't this work? It won't work because it is not enough. If the US had put on the table that 40 per cent cut to meet the two degree target by 2020, it could be a workable accord. But the US has not done so. The US has put on the table a target of cutting three per cent over 1990 levels. But it has added to it the fact that it would like its right to pollute because it would like to look at a framework under which it could possibly peak its emissions by 2030. Now can you imagine what the world would be like if the US does not have any controls on it? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
ANKUR Dhama has magic in his feet. Or at least so it would seem from the way he traps a football, keeps it in control and gets it into the goal after making his way down the centre of the ground. On a good day he has been known to score six times and in the few years that he has been playing, his name has come to be mentioned with considerable awe. But if Ankur’s celebrity status is growing, Dhanna Ram is not far behind. He has got as much grit and likes to pound the opposition. Dhanna in full flow is cause for concern because he can turn a match around. If there is a player who likes to win as much as Ankur does, it is Dhanna. No less impressive is Ishrafil. Once he gets going, pinning him down is almost impossible. Ishrafil seems to enjoy quiet aggression and has a record number of goals to his name. Ankur and Ishrafil live in Delhi and Dhanna in Jodhpur. They clash at least once a year. And of course they meet when they are at the same place for a tournament. But there is this one small missing link in their healthy rivalry – they have never set eyes on one another other because all three are completely blind. As the Sixth National Football Tournament for the Blind got under way in Delhi on 26 December, nine teams from six states took each other on in a robust clash of wills. Not all the players were as skilful as Ankur, Dhanna and Ishrafil. But what they may have lacked in craft they made up in enthusiasm and spirit. They were there to compete and in the rigorous forays across ground of the Delhi Blind Relief Association (BRA) (on Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg near the Oberoi) there were plenty of spills. Players sometimes collided with such force that they had to be taken to the medical tent run by Fortis with nosebleeds and bruised limbs. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
REGIONAL cinema is making waves in the hands of a new breed of directors who are fiercely independent and rooted in their local realities. They aren’t attracting nationwide audiences as yet, but that perhaps has more to do with the way films are marketed and distributed than their own formidable talents. It is a question of time before the demand for such films grows and in these early offerings is perhaps the first truly original Indian cinema in a long while. It is a measure of how much attention these films are capable of attracting that Harishchandrachi Factory by Paresh Mokashi was an Indian entry at the Oscars. Is regional cinema representative of a larger trend in the country? Are people demanding a better hearing for their local problems? Are new technologies helping them to express themselves nationally and globally? The films not only speak of local realities, but they also show flowering of talent which seeks to be recognised on its own terms. Behind the tragic story of Ruchika in Chandigarh is the long history of poor police reforms. We have in this issue a story which looks at the Ruchika case from this angle. Politicians want to continue using policemen for their own ends and the result is a force that doesn’t really bother to serve ordinary people. But modernisation of the police force is critical and can no longer be ignored. What appears to be certain is that reforms are not working. Police reforms need to be debated by a wider section of society. A cue could be taken from RTI and NREGA and other laws which have been crafted by peoples’ movements. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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ANISHA and her sister, Anita Tirkey, travel 16 km by bus from their home in Gadada village to the JRD Sports Complex in Jamshedpur to use its boxing facilities. Their father works as a labourer in an industrial unit in Jharkhand. Anita used to play hockey at their school in Rahrgada. In 2005, encouraged by coach A K Lakra, Anita and Anisha decided to learn boxing at the sports complex. In 2008, at the subjunior nationals at Kakinada, Anisha won a silver. This was followed by a bronze at the junior nationals in Patna the following year. Anita’s career has been following a similar trajectory. Both sisters spend long hours at the boxing ring after having achieved a level of success at national level. Like Anisha and Anita, countless children from underprivileged families have built a career in sports thanks to Tata Steel’s sports programme. You can say the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar awarded to Tata Steel in August 2009 by the Government of India for ‘Community Sports Identification and Nurturing of Budding Young Talent and Establishment and Management of Sports Academies of Excellence’ has been well-earned over the years. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
During the day, Amandeep Gill is a diplomat, tall, urbane and well travelled. Catch him in his apartment in Chanakya Puri and he will offer you a drink, play some exotic music from his iPod and hold forth on a Chilean singer who lives in France. But on weekends, 41-year-old Gill becomes a farmer. He is the driving force behind a non-profit called the Farmer’s First Foundation which runs a model farm in Bilaspur village, around 65 km from Delhi. The farm demonstrates that integrated organic farming is sustainable and propagates this idea around the countryside. Gill says the farmer has lost control of agriculture. Small farmers think innovation belongs to a guy in a lab coat, marketing to a guy in a suit and farming is only about chucking some seeds. “This is the result of decades of spreading a one-size-fits-all solution. We want to change that and make the farmer think like an entrepreneur. Our inputs to him are information and managerial ability and not just seeds, manure, labour,” says Gill. Farmer’s First partners government institutions and the private sector. “They are large consumers and have resources. Urban consumers will also be partners. The farm will be a spiritually recharging experience for them. They could come when they have time and buy their weekly needs. We have linked about 20 families to this farm,” says Gill. “Our goal is to reach produce from the farm to the consumer within 12 hours,” adds Ashma, Amandeep’s wife who promotes the farm and looks after the consumer network in Delhi. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
A unique festival that celebrated the diversity of brinjal was held in the heritage city of Mysore on 13 December. Called the ‘Desi Badane Samskruthi Mela’ it took place at Rangayana, a theatre institution of national repute. Indigenous brinjals of all shapes and sizes converged here from the southern states of Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Around 50 varieties of brinjal with their wild relatives were on display. Each variety has a unique feature and is used for different culinary preparations. Some varieties have medicinal value, like sunde kai is used for joint pains and ramagulle badane, a wild variety, is used to remove tooth cavity. Mattu gulla, from Udupi district, is cultivated for its distinct flavour. The festival was organised by a number of consumer groups from Mysore to spread awareness about the threat posed to indigenous varieties of brinjal by Bt Brinjal. The government is all set to approve genetically modified (GM) crops and Bt Brinjal will be the first to be launched for human consumption. The consumer groups who came together to launch this festival were Nesara (Organic Farming Services Society), Nisarga (Centre for Marketing Naturally Grown Crops) and Aaramba (Fraternity of Organic Farming Growers). They partnered the Sahaja Samrudha (Organic Farmers Association) which is based in Bengaluru. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
IN more than six workshops for handicraft producers held in state capitals in the last one year the resource person asked this question to participants, including artisans and some heads of NGOs: “Have you ever heard of Geographical Indication (GI) goods or do you know about the GI Act? Surprisingly, none of them had heard of either. This Act in India is supposed to protect the community rights of producers over their products. But the irony is that communities themselves are unaware about the features and provisions of the Act. The purpose of the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 with rules 2002, remains largely defeated even after seven years of its enforcement in 2003. Since our childhood days we know of India’s rich regional diversity which yields unique products, either because of the distinctive environmental characteristics of the region or the inimitable skill of its craft workers. We did not know about the need to legally protect our unique products until it was noticed that Darjeeling tea was being sold in world markets more than what was being produced. The message was clear – producers of non- Darjeeling tea were selling their tea in the name of Darjeeling tea. Darjeeling tea is not an isolated example. Many fake varieties of rice are selling outside the country riding on the reputation of Basmati rice. Even within the country, Benarasi power loom saris are sold as Benarasi handloom saris. While deceptive producers and traders make money, the livelihoods of real producers suffer a severe blow. The GI Act is intended precisely to remedy this. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
THE only sound you can hear from the
Rainforest Resort overlooking the Athirampilly
Falls is of water plummeting down the mountains
and joining gurgling streams. It was a heady
experience to watch the Chalakudy river crashing
down on hard granite rocks and breaking into a There was something magical about the undulating hilly regions which stand sentinel to the Falls. The ceaseless music of the myriad falls and the hush of the densely wooded forest surrounding it lend a special charm to the small hamlet of Athirampilly which has been drawing holidaymakers and filmmakers. Once unexplored, Athirampilly used to be a fatal attraction claiming the lives of many tourists who ventured to take a dip. From a filmy location and a suicide spot, Athirampilly has metamorphosed into a popular tourist paradise. The pristine environs of Athirampilly have formed the backdrop to many fighting sequences, rape scenes and romantic interludes of various movies. Heroines have crooned and danced beneath the falls. Heroes have bashed up villains under this beautiful canopy of green. Athirampilly attained tinsel fame with the release of the Tamil blockbuster Punnagai Mannan starring Kamal Hassan in the eighties. Many other blockbusters were filmed here. Incidentally, Athirampilly shot to prominence when Mani Ratnam chose it as a locale for the movie Ravana starring Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. The Athirampilly Falls originate in the Sholayar river and traverse through the Vazhachal Falls just past the Peringalkuthu Dam. To the east of Athirampilly are the lesser known Charpa Falls which plunge down to the road during torrential rains. The Vazhachal Falls are not as breathtaking as the Athirampilly Falls, but they hold a special charm being close to the dense forest. Although this spot is called Vazhachal Falls, it is not a waterfall in the true sense. The river tumbles over myriads of rocks down a slope at this spot, creating a profusion of foam and a waterfall like impact. Further east from Vazhachal on SH 21 are the Anakkayam Falls. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ About Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ©2007 Civil Society....................................... .Webmaster Vishwanathan ( vishu4@rediffmail.com ) |
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