[Reader-list] the act of leisure

[iram at sarai.net]

 A delayed reaction from Bikas: one of the three persons captured on video
by `pandu' in New Friends Colony Community Centre.

iram

From: bikas ranjan mishra <bikasranjan at rediffmail.com>
To: iram_g at rediffmail.com
Subject: No Subject
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 22:52:23 IST

this is what i've to say ( if i'm in my senses)

  A cop with a movie camera

A couple of things need to be thought about before getting into any
discussion on the encounter with this cop with a movie camera: -

·     Surveillance in itself is a different issue altogether
·     What use the footage shot by Pandu will be put at, should not be
confused with whether he should be allowed to shoot it at all?
·     Thirdly, even if one can argue that asking for privacy at a public
place-is really asking for too much, but my question is why the right to
choose the victims of this camera be left to someone’s subjectivity?
·
·     And off course, a community centre is certainly not a shopping mall
and people have every right to waste their time as well as have every
right to not waste their money? Law enforcer should understand that they
are-only law enforcers not custodians of (their own understanding of)
morality.

This was not an isolated incident; Taha would rememer how we were asked to
vacate the place during Diwali and Republic days. Once a loud speaker was
put there announcing of the menace of the (seemingly so likely) terrorist
threat. This made a conversation impossible at the place. I remember Pandu
mincing no words to reveal the truth about the cam to us-it’s meant to
discourage the people who habitually come here and hang around without any
purpose (though, still it leaves me wondering-how he can interpret
purposefulness and lack of it, perhaps and in most probability he was
talking about the people who don’t come there to spend)

It was not only a surveillance cam put at any public place covering the
crowd. It’s a deadly combination of technology and human bias. This cam
had the advantage of mobility. It can zoom into faces, go closer to them.
Spend more time on a particular face than other. Who decides if the faces
are suspicious? Who decided to zoom into some one and not on the other?
Who decides what is worth shooting and what is not?

Surveillance cams are now a part of our everyday existence. However, we
might have objection to their intrusion in our lives but a cop with a
movie camera is a different proposition altogether. When we as a society
hand over a cam to a cop we also validate his subjectivity (or his bias).
This is not the question that what happens to the footage this ‘pandu’
shoots rather what i find more compelling is who authorizes him to do
that?
Whenever we step out of our private spaces-we come under the
scanner-subjected to public gaze. We’re being watched. In a public space
one can not stop anyone to subject you to his/her staring eyes, however,
when one of these staring eyes become a tool in the hands of the state-it
is justified on the grounds of some perceived threats-and its gaze can be
technologically reproduced, it sounds an alarming bell.

There is another aspect of the encounter- we're sitting at a seemingly
public space (as the name justifies-community center). Despite this, the
cop wanted us to leave. He informed us that this is a place to shop. If we
want to hang around there are cafes and bars. Is this the agenda of the
state (it reminds me of Huxley)- pastime should be spent in
spending-consuming. We work to earn and leisure is meant for spending,
there is no third possibility?

So even if we buy this argument that we can’t seek privacy at a public
space but the question is-are we left with any?


Bikas