Young directors redefine success in Mumbai
Saibal Chatterjee
Mumbai
A new breed of spirited filmmakers have been chipping away of late at the shibboleths of mainstream
Bollywood and using the medium to articulate social and political concerns of contemporary
relevance. In their hands, Hindi cinema has acquired a new edge, a fresh vitality and a degree of relevance that it
hasn't had for years.
"This had to happen," says Anurag Kashyap, maker of the quirky Dev D. "The 'new wave' has gone
mainstream with a vengeance thanks to the advent of a crop of writers and directors whose creative
impulses stem from the diverse 'real India' environs that they have come from."
Kashyap has mellowed with time but has lost none of the inner frisson that triggered films like
Paanch, Black Friday and No Smoking.
When he asserts that his latest release, Gulaal, a simmering love story with strong political
undercurrents that plays out in a benighted feudal setting, is "an expression of my anger at the system",
Kashyap, in his thirties, speaks not just for himself but also for all young Mumbai filmmakers.
The spirit of adventure and non-conformism that this brand of reality-oriented cinema represents
was once largely confined to the fringes of the Hindi film industry. It has moved centrestage today.
"Outsiders bring with them stories that are unusual, surprising, and firmly rooted in the actual
world," says Kashyap, a middle class Varanasi boy who was educated in Gwalior's Scindia School and
Delhi's Hansraj College
Read more...
Interview: Govind Nihalani on the recent spurt of films that seek to
explore the complexities of the contemporary Indian reality.
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It’s a clear verdict and here is what people are saying
Rita and Umesh Anand
New Delhi
THE Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) has come back to power with a handsome
verdict in its favour. The victory can be
seen in many ways. It is a vote for stability, peace,
balance, pluralism, secularism, genuine economic
reforms. It is also a vote for a new generation of
leaders who the Congress has been projecting.
But above all, this is a vote for development. It is a victory for people’s movements and recognition of the issues that they have been raising with regard to land and water.
The old order has been thrown out in Chengara, Jagatsinghpur, Nandigram, Singur, Saharanpur and several flashpoints.
The Congress' willingness to listen, reach out to the grassroots and address issues of poverty has created a groundswell of expectations reflected in the votes it has got.
People clearly want the UPA government to complete what it set out to do in its first term.
Reforms are needed but they can’t be only designed to benefit the corporate sector. The script for this victory began being written five years ago when the National Advisory Council (NAC) with Sonia Gandhi as its head tuned into the voices of activists and campaigners.
Read more...
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Biswajit Padhi
Khariar (Orissa)
SEVEN women die every day in Orissa due
to pregnancy-related causes. The Union
government's Janani Surakshya Yojana
(JSY) is a scheme which seeks to prevent
maternal mortality, but it is feeble.
Despite an incentive of Rs 1,400 in rural areas
and Rs1,000 in urban areas for an institutional
delivery, more than 50 per cent of women
in Orissa still deliver in their homes – a pointer
to serious flaws in the programme. The
state government has hired the services of an
additional workforce of 35,000 ASHAs
(Accredited Social Health Activists) to facilitate
JSY. An ASHA is supposed
to link the government
health centres
with her village. Yet, the
allegation here is that
the JSY has only succeeded
in raising the "fees" of
doctors and nurses in
government hospitals.
While the maternal mortality ratio, on the whole, has come down from 401 per 100,000 live births to 301 per 100,000, Orissa continues to lag behind at 358 per 100,000. Maternal mortality ratios are indicators that no country can overlook as they indicate the well-being of its citizens.
The recent Maternal and Perinatal Death Inquiry in eight districts of Orissa validates the claims of local NGOs that the poor are facing lack of access to services. About 10.46 per cent of deaths of women between 15 to 49 years are maternal deaths. Nuapada tops the list with 17.17 per cent and Rayagada has an unbelievably low figure of 6.62 per cent.
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Shree Padre
Amai (Karnataka)
HOW does a dog serve its master? That's easy.
A dog warns its master against thieves and
alerts him about strangers entering the
house. But two-year-old Bollu helps his ailing master,
Mahalinga Naik, by working as a farm labourer.
The dog collects arecanuts and coconuts and
piles them up neatly in a spot.
Mahalinga and his wife Lalitha live in Amai, Karnataka. Bollu has turned out to be a true friend in need. "He understands most of our instructions so nicely," says Mahalinga proudly.
Because of an accidental fall from a coconut tree, Mahalinga can't bend to pick up nuts. Bollu does the job for him. During the arecanut fruiting season, Mahalinga and Bollu go to their garden early morning.Mahalinga holds the dog's chain in one hand and a bucket in the other.
Both search for fallen arecanuts. Bollu spots the nut, picks it up with his mouth and drops it into a bucket. This way, in about an hour or so, dog and master finish the task together.
During the peak season, they manage to collect a couple of buckets of arecanut. It is Bollu who picks up all the naturally fallen arecanuts.
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Umesh Anand
IN recent months we have often been asked why we
in Civil Society haven't been doing "election stories".
Our response has been that our coverage of these
elections began all of five years ago ---- when the UPA
government came to power.
Reporting politics becomes interesting when you go beyond the politician. For journalists interested in issues, the UPA's first term in office was an exciting one. We tracked the deliberations of the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi. We reported extensively on RTI and rural employment guarantee, going from one public hearing to another and witnessing a rising tide of support for both ideas.
As we observed the troubled birth of new legislation, we realised how difficult it is to take causes into the mainstream of government. Without the NAC, which listened to voices from the grassroots, the UPA may not have gone in for RTI, rural employment and other social initiatives that have brought it to power for a second time.
Civil Society also reported on forest rights and the turmoil over land acquisition. We were the first to do a cover story on SEZs and the real estate scam that they were going to be. You had only to meet those farmers facing displacement to realise how flawed the SEZ policy was. Harivansh did a cover story for us on Naxalites. We were similarly at Nandigram and Singur and in touch with the agitation by fishermen. It was easy to see that the CPI(M) was out of sync with the times.
Read more...
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Microsoft's learning centres trigger empowerment
Civil Society News
New Delhi
PROJECT Jyoti was launched under Microsoft's
Unlimited Potential initiative in 2004 to promote
computer literacy. Under this project, a
Community Technology Learning Centre (CTLC)
is set up at any convenient location in a semiurban
or rural area. It could be inside a school, a
panchayat office or a community building.
You will see young boys and girls at these centres. They learn how to use computers and the Internet and explore career options. Many of them are dropouts. The CTLC helps them clamber back on board. It gives them skills, helps them learn English and generally positions them for entry level jobs.
CTLCs also have a much wider role. They speed up the availability of information, be it on crops, market prices or the weather. They empower communities by teaching them to use information technology to secure their rights. They also link people with government schemes.
By giving women access to computers, CTLCs
bring about a change in their social status. They
help them earn and run small enterprises with
greater efficiency. In April, buoyed by the programme's
success, Microsoft released additional
funds to NGOs they work with.
Civil Society spoke to Vikas Goswami, head of
CSR at Microsoft India.
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Himanshu Thakkar
THIS is a true story of a real city. The city gets a lot of rain every year, more than sufficient for its needs, but it does not use that rainwater.
It had hundreds of water bodies, but it has destroyed most of them and continues to destroy the remaining ones.
There is a massive river flowing through the city, but the city has used up all its water and made the river a dirty drain, releasing untreated effluents.
Proper treatment of those effluents can actually make this water fit for reuse for most purposes, but the city does not bother to treat the wastewater properly. It has wastewater treatment plants, but they are functioning at less than half their capacity and even then are not treating the water sufficiently to make it reusable.
Groundwater levels once were very high in the city, but urban residents used it at such an unsustainable pace that levels are plunging at most places.
The city is also using up the flood plains, further endangering the groundwater recharge system.
The city gets a huge quantity of water from long distances, equal to one of the highest quantities of water in India, when compared on a per capita basis. It is getting water from big dams and rivers from far off places. However, official reports say that at least 40 per cent of the water that the city gets is lost in leakages. But the city does practically nothing to fix those leakages. In fact, the city's water supply body does not have functioning meters at most bulk water lines, so it does not know where the water is lost.
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Susheela Nair
Anegundi (Karnataka)
THE picturesque hamlet of Anegundi, perched on the banks of the Tungabhadra, has many claims to fame. It is steeped in mythology and history. Anegundi is the legendary kingdom or Kishkinda of the monkey prince Sugriva. It is also the cradle of the Krishnadevaraya dynasty of the glorious Vijaynagar Empire and falls in the core zone of the World Heritage Site of Hampi.
What's more, Anegundi is a pioneer in the Endogenous Tourism Projects programme. Started 2004 in 36 destinations across India, the programme is being carried out by the United Nations Development Programme in partnership with the Union Ministry of Tourism.
Recently, Anegundi added one more feather to its cap. With the help of The Kishkinda Trust (TKT), the implementing agency of Endogenous Tourism in Anegundi, the village has become a role model in heritage conservation and sustainable rural tourism.
Under the Rural Tourism Project, programmes are designed to ensure that local people benefit economically and culturally by conserving their heritage. The project promotes and preserves the physical and cultural characteristics of Anegundi village. Local people work for the programme as employees and stakeholders through self-employment schemes.
"Preserving vernacular heritage is of paramount importance to us," says Shama Pawar, founder trustee of TKT. "The Rural Tourism hardware scheme provided us with a wonderful opportunity to integrate conservation and empowerment."
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