[Reader-list] Gareeb Admi ka kaun Dekhta hai? Post 1.0 by Aman Sethi

[Shivam]

That was an absolutely rockacious first post, Aman. I was particularly
struck by how the idea of "abjectification" has been internalised by
the subjects as a bargaining tool.

To add my two cents, I think the problem is not one of language alone.
Cliches such as "the poor and the oppressed" could well be symptoms of
a larger problem - that of the lack of imagination and creativity in
writing developmental journalism. I realised this some time ago when I
read some very fine stories written by foreign correspondents, like
this one by John Lancaster of the Washington Post on the Japanese
Encephalitis epidemic in Uttar Pradesh:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001208.html

You write: "Thus, narratives like "She lay helplessly in her tiny ,
smoke filled hut, oblivious of the misery and poverty that surrounded
her" would fall into this category.  Such narratives sometimes slip
into "stream of consciousness" mode where the sensitive journalist
divines the inner-most hopes, desires and feelings of his subject."

However, narrative journalism need not always be condescending, and
Lancaster's story is a good example.

Japanese Encephalitis is an annual feature in UP, but in 2005 it
killed way too many children - over a thousand even by skewed official
estimates. Yet it did not catch the attention of the national (read
Delhi) English media, which covered it as a routine story. For
example: http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=326105 That's a
link to a wire report which has five banal, single-sentence
paragraphs.

I would tend to think that the lack of space that developmental
journalism gets in the media has to do at least partly with the
media's inability to make developmental journalism appealing. I
excitedly look forward to your experiment with the labour mandis.

Shivam



On 1/16/06, Aman Sethi <aman.am at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Gareeb Admi ka kaun Dekhta hai?
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> Have you ever read something in the papers, watched it on television, or simply seen it happen around you, and asked out loud, (in a manner reminiscent of Arjun questioning Krishna on the eve of battle), "Why is no-one doing something about this?  Why isn't there a law to prevent this?" or, more crucially, "Why doesn't the government do something about this?"
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> As a journalist for Frontline, I often found myself in situations where such questions seemed thoroughly appropriate; in fact they seemed absolutely essential.  As I looked around, and read the work of others who had come before, I realized that I was in very good company.  Practically even other newspaper, or magazine, had been there, done that, and in some cases, launched a campaign with a grainy photograph and a catchy kicker.(The Indian Express is particularly good at campaigns; their latest being the graphically titled "Building House, Breaking Law" on demolitions in Delhi).  The other thing that struck me was that they all said the same things, often about rather different people, and came to conclusions that could be best described as "foregone".  To quote my I-fellow proposal, " they could well be an extract … … describing the plight of the Indian farmer, factory worker, construction worker, woman laborer, child or dalit.  The narrative usually begins with a laundry list of loss, deprivation, anguish and oppression, followed by the shrewd, rapier-like, query – "After fifty years of Independence, why is Kallu/ Mohandas/ Mohammed Ashraf / Bannodevi still hungry?", and is finally closed out with a  plea to politicians, bureaucrats and civil society to put aside their petty differences, and work towards the emancipation and empowerment of India's "poor and oppressed."
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> What made things worse was that my observations in one particular case were markedly different from what I had expected to find.  Quoting again, "for my most recent story on construction workers in Delhi, I found it difficult to reconcile the reality I saw with the journalistic mode I had subconsciously chosen.  There was no doubt that the workers I met were financially impoverished migrants, but they were a far cry from the helpless, anguished "beings" that I expected them to be.  Instead, I met  a group of skeptical, often humorous, workers; completely alien to the "official" world with its formal institutions of schools, banks, and hospitals, yet deeply enmeshed in vibrant, dynamic, trust-based networks of their own."
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> While it is nobody's case that poverty and oppression do not exist, two basic questions need to be asked of the existing discourse – Who are such texts written for? And, what purpose are they supposed to serve?
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> While I agree that the two questions listed above are rather "eve-of-battle"-ish themselves, I shall attempt to play with them through the course of my fellowship, titled "Alternative ways/ means of representation of the "poor and oppressed" by studying informal networks at labour mandis in Delhi." While that is the official title, I hope to come up with a less boring title at some point in the future, preferably in a foreign language.
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> At the risk of making a rather obvious point, one of the most basic problems of the existing journalistic narrative is the fixity of language.  Words/ Phrases like 'poor', "oppressed", "under privileged' and (my personal favourite) "the economically weaker sections of our societies' conjure up images that are often counter-productive.  Years of media coverage have fixed the pictures in our heads, ensuring that all we know about India's "poor and oppressed" is that they are "poor and oppressed."  Often, there isn't even an acknowledgment of the fact that some of the "economically weaker sections of our societies" might be less or more "poor and oppressed" than others.  And so my fellowship shall not just look at different ways of writing about people, but also look at different ways of writing people.
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> The difference between writing about people and writing people is a rather subtle one.  When you write about people, you describe them as a zoologist would describe a fruit bat – their appearance, diet, ecological threat to their habitat (forest clearance or slum clearance as the case may be), future as a species etc.  Thus, narratives like "She lay helplessly in her tiny , smoke filled hut, oblivious of the misery and poverty that surrounded her" would fall into this category.  Such narratives sometimes slip into "stream of consciousness" mode where the sensitive journalist divines the inner-most hopes, desires and feelings of his subject.
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> Writing people themselves is a far trickier exercise.  It is usually a sub-conscious exercise where by repeatedly using the same metaphors to describe someone you create an icon, that can clicked to get a spontaneous, yet utterly predicable, response.  Over the years, the media and the state have successfully written people so vividly, that as a journalist, one no longer feels the need to talk to anyone at all.  You already know what they are going to say, and the real thing is invariably a poor step-cousin in comparison to the idealised creation, unable to describe their "condition" as you would like them to.  One perfectly written person is the "old man from the village".  No description is required.  One can already imagine the wrinkles on his face, the salt and pepper subtle, and the shawl (usually greenish-brown) draped over his shoulders.  If intelligently deployed, he is devastating as old farmer remembering the partition, the Naxal movement, the time Indira Gandhi came to their village, the drought of 1965 or the flood of 1976.  The chances are that he will say something like, "Mahaul badal gaye hai, ab gareeb aadmi ka kaun dekhta hai?"
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> I would like to call this process "abjectification".  The process by which a person is reduced to an "abject" – devoid of individuality or expression beyond an articulation of the condition of "abjectness".  I find that, apart from opening up interesting avenues for wordplay, the word/term "abject/abjective" conveys a sense of what I am trying to express without the accompanying pictures and sounds that are associated with so many of the other words that we encounter.  To use it in a sentence, "An examination of existing media trends suggests that to be successful as a journalist today, abjectivity is a must."
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> While the point that such discourses essentialise their subjects is an obvious one, what is interesting is the fact that the subjects often take on the role that the media assigns them.  While photographing people for a story on slums in Delhi, I noticed that slum residents had a certain trademark expressions, that could only be described as "abjective."  Thus, skeptical, animated faces would transform into masks of sorrow at the earliest sighting of a camera of any shape, size or description.  Many would attain heightened states of "abjectment" at the first indication that I was, in fact, a journalist.  However, to conclude that this is a sign of how the media has beaten an entire population into thinking, and seeing themselves, in a particular way would be to draw the wrong lesson.  In fact, it would be just the kind of lesson that the "meediyaa" would draw.
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> (The meediyaa, as I see it, represents the throng of television, and print, journalists who routinely descend on slums, and night-shelters in search of deprivation, and introduce themselves by saying, "namaste, hum meediyaa se aaye hai".  They are then taken to meet the pradhan, who says "Kaun se meediyaa se hai? Humari photo ekbar meediyaa mein aaie thi.")
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> The point that I am trying to make is that, well aware of the meediyaa's proclivities, the residents simply use it as a bargaining tool.  While quiet, hidden processes continue in the background, the media is used as a platform to issue ultimatums, raise the ante, or signal intention by government departments and slum residents alike.
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> To bring things back on track, through my fellowship (quoting once again) "I would like to focus on the concept of the labour mandi in Delhi, study its informal networks and institutions in detail and arrive at a possible template for representation of its inhabitants as other than abject, helpless and desperate.
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> Through detailed research, it should be possible to obtain a deeper understanding of the functioning of the labor mandi. This should facilitate a multi-layered narrative that does not rob the subjects of their agency or humanity.  While the present narrative urges the state to intervene, it also creates a distance between the subject of the story and the reader; placing the subject in a different universe, far removed from the reader.  I would like to explore a narrative form that reduces this distance between the subject of my story and the reader."
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> Over the next six months I shall try and generate text that shall break free from the existing discourse that I so irreverently described.  I shall also try and understand why it exists.  In the meantime, I shall also put up a blog with interesting articles that I come across.
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> In conclusion I would like to highlight the fact that, irrespective of how misguided they may be (or seem), meediyaa discourses prepare the foundation for state intervention and policy.  Thus,  alternative discourses that highlight the tactility and efficacy of informal networks should prove useful in enhancing the bargaining power of Kallu, Mohandas, Mohammed Ashraf, and Banno Devi, should they require it.
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> Aman
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