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Breaking a silence

Meena Menon

Narsamma's fingers expertly move the knobs on a mixer to regulate the sound of folk music being played. It's an engaging song sung by Arya Dora, a beggar. ``We met him one day in the nearby village of Pastapur and asked him if he could come to the studio and sing for us,'' she says.

Arya Dora's song -- a rare form of folk music -- covers an entire 60-minute audio cassette. There are many dying traditional folk songs sung by women, some relate to their crops, others to the mind-boggling cropping diversity in the region, and these hav e been faithfully recorded by Narsamma, nicknamed `General' for some reason, and her two colleagues, all rural women.

For two years now, a neatly designed radio station, complete with a studio, part of a unique `Green' school campus in Machnoor village in Zaheerabad Mandal of Medak district in Andhra Pradesh, is all set to make broadcasts. ``We can broadcast two hours o f programmes daily,'' Narsamma says. ``We have programmes on agriculture, gender, children not attending school, bonded labour, health, tips in cropping, weeding, organic manure and other subjects. We interview people with traditional knowledge and skill s, record discussions on current issues and have over 300 hours of recordings,'' she says, not without some pride.

Set up by the Deccan Development Society (DDS), which has been working from Pastapur village in Zaheerabad mandal for the last 15 years on traditional cropping and bio-diversity issues, the station, however, is yet to receive a licence for operation.

According to P.V. Satheesh, Director, DDS, there was no hope of a licence in the near future. Satheesh, who was senior producer and had worked with Doordarshan for 17 years, got some of his associates to train the young women informally in the rudiments of running a radio station. The FM radio station with a 100-watt transmitter, has a 30-km radius and can cover up to 100 villages.

``Licence will be certainly a struggle. It is an issue of national policy and has engaged the attention of a number of groups. IGNOU has got licences for about 50 stations from the Indian government. We had made a suggestion that they could use our stati on as one of the experimental stations which is completely handled by the community. They had agreed it in principle. But they want it to be shifted to Hyderabad! So much for the common sense of the urban academia!,'' says Satheesh.

The women who run the radio station are not to be put off by the non-issual of a licence. They continue to plan and make recordings for the future. Six years ago, DDS partnered UNESCO in a programme called `Learning Without Frontiers'. Much of the fronti ers seen by the UNESCO were between the villagers and the rest of the world.

Satheesh, however, contested this hypothesis. ``If we recognise that there is a frontier, then there are two parties on both sides of the frontier. One is rural and the other urban. Once the frontier is erased, both must start learning from each other. T he question was how we can start learning from rural people, particularly women, who pack so much ecological and other knowledge with them. One of the answers is whether we can create some formal structures for this,'' he points out.

His point was found valid and was supported by UNESCO which helped start the radio station by funding the structure. The total cost of the radio building and equipment was Rs 22,00,000. ``Comparable costs for an AIR FM radio station will be between three and five crores,'' says Satheesh.

The station is part of the `Women Speak to Women' programme of UNESCO, which has supported this venture. Once the station is operational, dalit women from 75 villages will own and operate it.

In a film, Sangham Shot, featuring the women of Zaheerabad mandal, Narsamma from Pastapur village, explains how in mainstream films, the camera looks down on rural people. She calls this the `Patel Shot'.

The dalit women have evolved their own style of filming -- the camera looks at you as an equal. ``We call it the Sangham Shot,'' says Narsamma. The sangham or group being the identity for rural women's collectivisation and articulation of their own ideas and media.

``Through letting grassroots groups and individuals speak for themselves, participatory video fuels political struggles over democratic rights and power. This can be challenging to powerful stake-holders and attract attention from politicians and policy makers, while disturbing the predictable project cycles of development agencies afraid to rock the boat. But then -- How long can development workers continue to talk about participation and empowerment without allowing people to speak for themselves?'', asks Satheesh.

Films made by Narsamma and others have been telecast on Doordarshan, ETV and Mana TV, a Government channel, and there is a demand for more films which the women cannot keep up with.

Since 1998, 12 women were trained in video filming over a period of eight to 10 months. Each workshop lasted four days. Most of the women were illiterate and dalit, in the age group of 16-35 years. The trainers in these workshops who have long experience s in training professional television practitioners in the Afro-Asian region, were amazed by the ease and quickness with which these non-literate women were able to learn and use video. The women using their own traditional skills, narratives and folk fo rms, have made their films stand apart. Their programmes incorporate oral traditions and subjects and concerns native to their culture -- something they believe the mainstream has never dealt with.

The women have made films on balwadis, documented the community bio-diversity knowledge, the way dalit women have designed and executed their special watersheds, Sangham Participatory Rural Appraisals (PRAs) and other major events in their area. They eve n filmed news capsules for World Food Day, Women's Day and other occasions which were shown on Doordarshan and ETV.

In 1987, Satheesh organised a Communication jatra in DDS. About 3,000 women took part. Most of the people managing the jatra and trying to communicate with the women were from Hyderabad -- from environmental and feminist organisations. ``They made a roya l mess of it. They could hardly communicate with the village people This set me thinking. What do urban people have to communicate with the rural people? And if they can, does it have any meaning? That is when I started looking for local contents, local idioms and local languages in the communication processes. In the next ten years we organised four more jatras. Each of these were taken over, in design and management, by the DDS sangham women. Their participation increased exponentially with each new j atra. That was when the need to formalise and institutionalise these processes came up. And one of the tools was a communication media centre consisting of a radio station and a video production facility,'' says Satheesh.

Central to this approach is that the educators are not necessarily from outside. The rural people can run an educational media -- by them, for them and of them. On October 2, 1996, James Bentley, Regional Communication Adviser (Asia), UNESCO had a consul tation with about 35 dalit women from the sanghams of the DDS. Most of these women were agricultural labourers. Extracts from the consultation reveal a deep sense of marginalisation by the women and the feeling that the so-called mainstream has no room f or issues concerning them.

Twenty-eight-year-old Metlakunta Susilamma, says, ``We can't accept the government radio. It becomes their propaganda tool. They will go to a village and say we have given so many buffaloes in this village; we have given so much land in this village ... that radio will not allow poor women to dialogue on their own problems and issues. Our radio helps us in our own analysis of our experiences and our problems.''

Chilukapalli Anasuyamma from Pastapur, says, ``The mainstream radio is still steeped in the traditional gender roles. If we depend on it, we have to go back in time. All that we have done in our sanghams will come to a nought. If we have our own radio it can help us continue this progress we have made on gender issues.''

So that is why despite physical problems, Laxmamma and those of her ilk rush to a village far away to film a wedding, or meetings at the DDS office, or in New Delhi, and elsewhere. For these women, communication is a means to extend their expression, art iculate their ideas and concerns without any interference from an educated elite, whose language is alien to them.

Pic.: Making media magic at the FM radio station in Machnoor village.