Contours of deprivation, Contours of journalistic sensibilities
“The greatest temptation that journalists face is to regard the stories they write as their own.” – Mark Tully
Multiple stories, multiple struggles, some won, some lost, some not waged at all. Bred in cities, where every amenity is a ‘right’, a deprivation tour blurs the lines between rights and charity. As it sets out the contours of deprivation, it also sets out the contours of journalistic sensibilities. To battle the temptation to activism and attempt to glean stories with objectivity, yet feel the outrage of your subject and squirm in the face of reality of certain outrages is what one is faced with on such a tour.
The development, Nagapattinam district has seen in the past four years would have taken 50 years under ordinary circumstances, say the district authorities. When Nagapattinam observed the fourth anniversary of Tsunami, a 20 kilometers further, Keezhvelmani observed the fortieth anniversary of dalit killings, where 44 dalits were burnt to death on Dec 25, 1968. Even before we set out for the tour, a family member looked at the itinery and informed that things are settled in Keezhvelmani and that we overzealous journalists should not ‘re-kindle the dirt’. In Keezhvelmani, that dirt of human bigotry stands memorialised not just as a constant reminder of a past, but also as a flame of hope to future. For the visitor, it revealed a gory reality of rural caste-based power structures.
Grassroots democracy functions effectively, but is not without its foibles. When the elected representative of Kaveripoompattinam panchayat with a population of 3,500 people, takes an amateur journalist on a tour to showcase the works being done, a sense of immense responsibility to the electorate that voted him to power, settles in to unsettle the luxuries of a weary mind. When an emaciated young girl, just about old enough to vote, with a child in her arm and another clinging to her waist, is a beneficiary of a group housing scheme, which has given her four walls but not provided for a roof above her head, one cannot help but partake in that desperation.
When a shriveled Ayyakanu, a dalit labourer narrates what it was to live as a landless dalit, prior to a sarvodaya struggle for land re-distribution in Valivalam in the 70s and what it feels like to 'breathe freely' today, all that fatuous banter against reservations in the elite circles stands demolished.
Schemes and policies look fool-proof on paper, but logistics pose insurmountable hurdles. One understands the problems of skewed State welfarism, when it is taken as charity. Somewhere within, a thatched roof is seen as a potent symbol of poverty and a reinforced concrete roof sends across sighs of disappointment, among those desperate to capture deprivation. And, there is this constant effort to battle the feeling of scavenging on someone else’s poverty and deprivation.
When every descent of a cropped-haired journo from the hired Bolero sends across an aura of bureaucratic visit to the elected representatives and the deprived alike, one wonders how to take that visit to its logical conclusion, one that offers at least a semblance of a solution.
Deprivation is not just about poverty. It’s about institutions, about their receptivity, responsiveness and failures. It’s about politics as authoritative allocation of resources. As one wanders in the wilderness of contestations and counter-contestations, legitimation and de-legitimation of claims, in an attempt to place things in perspective, a magic wand is all that I yearned for.
Multiple stories, multiple struggles, some won, some lost, some not waged at all. Bred in cities, where every amenity is a ‘right’, a deprivation tour blurs the lines between rights and charity. As it sets out the contours of deprivation, it also sets out the contours of journalistic sensibilities. To battle the temptation to activism and attempt to glean stories with objectivity, yet feel the outrage of your subject and squirm in the face of reality of certain outrages is what one is faced with on such a tour.
The development, Nagapattinam district has seen in the past four years would have taken 50 years under ordinary circumstances, say the district authorities. When Nagapattinam observed the fourth anniversary of Tsunami, a 20 kilometers further, Keezhvelmani observed the fortieth anniversary of dalit killings, where 44 dalits were burnt to death on Dec 25, 1968. Even before we set out for the tour, a family member looked at the itinery and informed that things are settled in Keezhvelmani and that we overzealous journalists should not ‘re-kindle the dirt’. In Keezhvelmani, that dirt of human bigotry stands memorialised not just as a constant reminder of a past, but also as a flame of hope to future. For the visitor, it revealed a gory reality of rural caste-based power structures.
Grassroots democracy functions effectively, but is not without its foibles. When the elected representative of Kaveripoompattinam panchayat with a population of 3,500 people, takes an amateur journalist on a tour to showcase the works being done, a sense of immense responsibility to the electorate that voted him to power, settles in to unsettle the luxuries of a weary mind. When an emaciated young girl, just about old enough to vote, with a child in her arm and another clinging to her waist, is a beneficiary of a group housing scheme, which has given her four walls but not provided for a roof above her head, one cannot help but partake in that desperation.
When a shriveled Ayyakanu, a dalit labourer narrates what it was to live as a landless dalit, prior to a sarvodaya struggle for land re-distribution in Valivalam in the 70s and what it feels like to 'breathe freely' today, all that fatuous banter against reservations in the elite circles stands demolished.
Schemes and policies look fool-proof on paper, but logistics pose insurmountable hurdles. One understands the problems of skewed State welfarism, when it is taken as charity. Somewhere within, a thatched roof is seen as a potent symbol of poverty and a reinforced concrete roof sends across sighs of disappointment, among those desperate to capture deprivation. And, there is this constant effort to battle the feeling of scavenging on someone else’s poverty and deprivation.
When every descent of a cropped-haired journo from the hired Bolero sends across an aura of bureaucratic visit to the elected representatives and the deprived alike, one wonders how to take that visit to its logical conclusion, one that offers at least a semblance of a solution.
Deprivation is not just about poverty. It’s about institutions, about their receptivity, responsiveness and failures. It’s about politics as authoritative allocation of resources. As one wanders in the wilderness of contestations and counter-contestations, legitimation and de-legitimation of claims, in an attempt to place things in perspective, a magic wand is all that I yearned for.
posted by P.V.Srividya at 10:07 AM
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