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By Hemangini Gupta A non-governmental organisation, IT for Change, and a government-initiated programme for women’s empowerment, Mahila Samakhya Karnataka (MSK), have helped women in rural Karnataka voice their concerns by making community videos, radio shows and short films
On a hot January day, just before the important harvest festival of Sankranti, the sangha meeting in Hunsur has dissolved into loud chaos. A diverse group of women from several surrounding villages has gathered in the taluka headquarters of Hunsur, in Karnataka's Mysore district, for a meeting. But the group is still six executive committee members short of the quorum required to begin. After much puzzling over the absentees, it turns out that a local jatre (fair) nearby is responsible for the missing women. The absentees certainly cannot claim ignorance as a reason for failing to show up. Postal services may be unreliable in rural Karnataka, and 77% of the sangha women may never have attended school and therefore cannot read printed notices anyway, but in recent times important information is being communicated in a different way. Two years ago, a Bangalore-based non-governmental organisation called IT for Change partnered with a government-initiated programme for women’s empowerment, Mahila Samakhya Karnataka (MSK), to use technology (audio, video, telecommunication) to enhance the effectiveness of the latter’s work. The Mahila Samakhya programme works in nine states across the country (Assam, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkand, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala) and is funded by the central government but independently run by state-level organisations like MSK. It works in rural areas, to empower women through education, helping them to access basic rights and needs, in areas such as health and income. The programme works through village-level mahila sanghas or women’s collectives that periodically interact at the taluka and district levels. The concept of the self-help group is utilised to encourage women to pool savings and other resources and to undertake community actions under the aegis of the sangha. Media initiative Mahiti Manthana is the media initiative resulting from the collaboration between MSK and IT for Change in Karnataka. It aims to strengthen this grassroots work through better communication. On the day of the January meeting Shivamma, Mangalamma and Prabha, three recent graduates employed by IT for Change to work with Mahiti Manthana, bustle around the sangha women, wielding a video camera, tripod, boom mike, reflector and tapes. Their objective for the afternoon is to film the sangha meeting to demonstrate to MSK members that video can effectively reduce dependence on the written word: instead of someone taking minutes of the meeting, the entire proceedings can be video-taped and replayed at the next meeting to serve as a quick recap. Photographs are taken to help the documentation process. While development initiatives frequently use film and video for education in the style of a documentary, or base their work on the concept of community videos, IT for Change has adopted what they call an “integrative approach”. Radio shows, short films and tele-centres (run by adolescent girls) all feed into the larger goals and priorities of MSK. Community information and facts about government schemes which MSK would earlier pass on to village women through printed material, or verbally, during the regular visits of field workers, are now available in catchy little radio clips or on short thoughtful films made by Mahiti Manthana staff. Mahiti Manthana’s Roshni Nuggehalli, based in Bangalore, explains that the use of audio and video technology overcomes the problem of information ‘wastage’ that earlier communication efforts ran into -- printed pamphlets are not much use for women who cannot read, for instance, and the ‘top-down approach’ of teacher-led camps do not always translate into concrete learning. The new use of video through short theme-based films, and audio, through a weekly radio show called Kelu Sakhi or'Listen Friend' -- broadcast weekly on the Karnataka State Open University slot of All India Radio, called Gyaan Vani -- packages information and advocacy efforts in an interesting and engaging way. After filming the sangha proceedings, Mahiti staff interview individual women on film. First to be interviewed is Lakshmi from Atiguppe village who as executive committee secretary answers questions with ease, explaining why the sangha meeting was not able to set its agenda for the coming year for lack of a quorum. Later, she laughs that this confidence and experience is relatively new. “In the beginning I was really afraid to speak: I would even be afraid to speak to you if I met you,” she says in Kannada. “Even now if my friends were to meet you they would be too afraid to talk. But my grandmother encouraged me to join the sangha and now my confidence has grown and I am not afraid to speak in front of the camera. Even the first time I was to come on Kelu Sakhi (the weekly radio show), I didn't know what to say but now I have even sung alone on air.” Kelu Sakhi's weekly shows are a vibrant burst of energy, scripted partly by Mahiti Manthana's Aparna Kalley. Each show is divided into segments. So, for example, the talent segment invites women to sing songs on air, eliciting admiration and recognition from neighbours and family members when it is broadcast. A humour segment might follow a section where a mixed group of men and women debate child marriage. Information about upcoming MSK meetings and schedules, issue-based conversations, hard facts about available schemes and women's personal testimonials – all run back-to-back on the half-hour Kelu Sakhi show. Kalley suggests that the success of these shows owes in part to their tone, which refrains from being overly didactic. Men are not painted as “evil” -- even if a segment on dowry or child marriage features men voicing typically patriarchal views, they are shown as wanting to engage in dialogue, or admitting that they are not entirely convinced by an argument. Balancing reality with important messages from MSK is part of Kelu Sakhi's brief – rather than alienating men, it seeks to involve them. And, in different ways, men have begun to validate the show and learn about their wife's activities in MSK through it. Explaining how the radio show boosted her standing at home, Lakshmi explains, “Initially when I was going for a sangha meeting, my husband would question where I was going and insinuate that I might be going elsewhere, but then he started hearing me on air and now there are no questions asked when I have to go out.” The radio programme also seems to have broken hierarchies within the same gender. Women often listen to programmes sitting around the same receiver, and after the show, discussions break out and, prompted by the local dialect and conversational nature of most shows, women have become confident enough to speak out about issues as personal as domestic violence, often breaking a silence of many years. In January 2008, Kelu Sakhi celebrated its first anniversary and, with it, the achievement of having created a sense of a larger women's movement, as women in one village hear personal stories and experiences from those in another. Nuggehalli says that this access and reach has legitimised voices and issues and prompted a clamour to participate from villagers who can hear the broadcast but do not have an MSK sangha in their village – now they want one, too. Currently broadcasting over a 15-kilometre radius, Mahiti Manthana staff stress the need for a system that will provide public infrastructure that allows non-government organisations to share both resources as well as experiences in the field. They have conducted two radio training workshops: one five-day-long workshop for disadvantaged women from Mysore district in December 2005 and a three-day workshop just for sangha women and telecentre employees in April 2007. At today's sangha meeting, after the brief video interviews, Prabha invites women into a little ante room where the three girls together record women's songs for an upcoming Kelu Sakhi programme. After some whispering and humming, the women introduce themselves one by one, bending slightly over the audio recorder and then burst into song – both solos and duets renting the air of the tiny closed room. Telecentres disseminate information Outside, another set of young women are talking to the sangha members. They are sakhis who work at village-level telecentres – Namma Mahiti Kendras, or NMKs -- which contain computers and information about official schemes, including facilitation of the powerful Right to Information Act. Working at the telecentre involves finding out about government policies and programmes and how women can access their entitlements. This necessitates constant liaison with state government departments to gather information that can be passed on to villagers, as well as collection and documentation of information about the community (health indices, for instance) to provide a database accessible to the government. The young sakhis conducting this two-way process are monitored by a management committee of older women. Telecentres currently exist in five villages in Karnataka -- Attiguppe, Chamanahalli Hundi, Hosavaranchi, Raje Gowdanna Hundi and Bannikuppe -- and there are plans to set up four more. By entrusting the important task of acquiring details about entitlements to the young women, Mahiti Manthana can demonstrate how access to information might bring about positive shifts in the power balance in society. Perhaps it might even begin to redraw caste lines by empowering the most discriminated. When a dalit woman becomes a sakhi, for instance, and when government officials visiting the village drop in to see her first, she is assured of a new standing and increased credibility and respect in the village. Even among her peers, Kalley explains, she becomes a role model: “A girl who was supposed to be seen and not heard, who was seen as a liability till she gets married, now gets a voice, gets respect and gets recognition. She has become a role model for other girls to negotiate their own decisions regarding their future.” Learning through films Apart from audio, telephones and computers, Mahiti Manthana also works with video. A series of short, inexpensively-made films is available in resource centres called sangha shales (classrooms for sangha women) where they can watch the videos and discuss them while also accessing help sheets and other resource material. Whereas structured classroom sessions involve a linear method of learning, with knowledge ostensibly passing from the teacher to the taught, the films and subsequent discussions allow for women to engage with the subjects on hand more spontaneously and in a participatory manner. In the film Makkala Manasaninda (‘From the minds of children’), short interviews with children as they play or work in the fields touch upon issues of work segregation and discrimination against the girl-child while gently probing children about their ideas of gender difference. The girls are heard speaking out about wanting to study further, to become doctors, to be outdoors more often and under less control from family and society, pointing out that boys play freely and are able to move about with few restrictions. The boys also agree that men should be doing work traditionally reserved for women, such as cleaning the house and fetching water, and that girls should be allowed to keep going to school. In an interview where children were asked where they thought they would be in ten years, a boy replied thoughtfully, “married”, whereas a girl promptly said “a doctor”. Asked what activity currently restricted to men she would want to take up, a young girl replies, “Drive a car.” Weaving issues of independence, mobility and ambition around the realities of gendered constructs of work and freedom, the film raises questions about differences in the way families treat children. Other films are more direct: using sangha women to explain how they opened a bank account, for instance, or how they set up a separate sangha space that they could call their own. Information is presented in the form of brief answers from bank officials, MSK workers and the women themselves, thus providing legitimacy to their words since their real life examples are used as case studies. As the filming and audio recording draws to a close in the late afternoon, the sangha women have already decided when their next meeting will be. Those who did not attend this meeting will hear about the next on the weekly radio show. There is no need to struggle over a printed pamphlet, wonder if it will reach on time to convey important information or indeed, if it will reach everybody. Through their initiatives, Mahiti Manthana is using technology both to leap over gaping holes in development as well as to use the captivating qualities of video and radio to capture audience attention in order to share information and stimulate debate. Bridging the communication gap A Mahiti Manthana brochure elaborates the background of their target group: more than half the women are from disadvantaged caste and tribal backgrounds; average schooling is one year; 62% of the women are daily wage agricultural labourers; 92% do not own any land in their name; more than one-third of the women's households do not have access to electricity and 80% have no access to private water supply. If MSK were to restrict itself to traditional methods of communication, it would perhaps be faced with the daunting task of battling basic gaps in development before their work could make an impact. Yet now, with immediately visible and attractive methods of communication and information-access being put into place, Mahiti Manthana has created an environment in which women are receptive to imbibing information and spurring growth. There is a sense that not only is change possible but that the women can bring it about. Among the challenges remaining for Mahiti Manthana is growth, says Kalley. Their skeletal staff places them in a vulnerable position should some employees leave – the resignation of a sakhi who runs a telecentre could cause the entire NMK to come to a standstill. The Namma Mahiti Kendras and sangha shales are increasingly being viewed even by women who are not a part of the MSK sangha as crucial sources of information exchange and sharing. Kalley explains that the sanghas are now an integral part of women's lives, and they use their collective strength to even address personal and domestic conflicts and problems. In many villages, MSK sanghas are only one amongst many others, such as the state government-run Stree Shakti Sanghas, for instance. Observing the Namma Mahiti Kendra’s potency, women from non-MSK sanghas, and indeed women across caste and interest-groups, now also want to access Mahiti Manthana resources and join in communication efforts. The MSK sangha’s management committee members can choose to work with women from other sanghas, indicating that access to MSK resources could bring women from different interest-groups together in their need to address larger developmental deficiencies: uplifting the disadvantaged by empowering them. (The author is a freelance journalist who has previously worked with The Hindu and CNN-IBN. She is interested in gender and how new technologies can be used for development.) InfoChange News & Features, August 2008
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