Soni Sori, The Teacher, whom we failed

I’ve a very hazy memory of my first ever visit to a police station. But i remember one thing and that was fear, intimidation, trepidation. This despite the fact that I along with a friend of mine, had only gone to the police station to seek permission for a farewell party for our seniors and for no civil or criminal offense. This was way back in my under grad. For some reason, I was very very nervous about the entire 10 – 15 minutes ordeal, am not sure why and I never had a reason to understand why i felt the way I felt.

I can’t even begin to imagine what Soni Sori felt when we she visited the prison the first time, can’t imagine what she went through when her husband was jailed for allegedly involving in a criminal offense, can’t imagine when she was arrested for being an alleged maoist. The torture she was subjected to, the trauma she was put through both mentally and physically, the injustice she had to face, time and time again, there are not enough words to describe the state of Soni Sori.

Amidst this, her husband is arrested on a charge that is still not proven in the court of law even after 1 year, her nephew, Lingaram, a journalist , rather an outspoken journalist is arrested for being an alleged maoist, her father is shot by maoists, her house is all burned down, in short, her life is in a total dis array. Why is Soni Sori such a threat to the establishment or to the maoists. Her only crime, she didn’t take sides. She didn’t want to be a police informant neither did she want to be a maoist. She just wanted to be a teacher, a teacher who believed in the values of education, a teacher who believed that education is the only way out of the vicious circle that has engulfed most of the tribal villages in Chattisgarh. It’s hard enough to be teaching in a government school, and it’s next to impossible to teach in a tribal village affected by naxalism and yet Soni Sori continued her fight against the situation and put herself in the line of fire for the sake of the tribals and their future.

Being tortured in the prison in ways that are not just sadistic in nature but completely inhuman, being separated from her three kids, being on the run and being in and out of the prison, Soni Sori has paid dearly. Her life ; her struggle ; her sacrifice ; her fight ; her determination; her resolve are un parallel to any other real life hero. She is a teacher who led by example and is living by every word she preaches and she teaches.

Too bad even our so called education institutions lack teachers of such high moral values and high moral responsibilities. And when did find one in one of the most demanding and testing conditions, instead of holding her on a pedestal we have desecrated her.

We failed you , Soni Sori ! We all collectively did fail you. You won’t believe me, then check this,

• the Dantewada police officer whom Soni Sori identified as the person responsible for her torture in the police station has been awarded the gallantry award on the republic day
• the mainstream media has been shy to talk about Soni Sori
• the systematic targeting of Soni Sori’s family and well wishers
• no proof to support the police charges and yet she is being arrested, tortured

References:

• Gallantry award to Ankit Garg : Click Here 
• Soni Sori interview to Tehelka : Click Here
• A Chhattisgarh police official admits to staging an arrest: Click Here

If this trend continues, even after 100 years, we would be talking about Gandhi’s, the Bose and the Bhagath Singh’s which is a shameful admission that we failed to produce any hero’s whom our kids could look up to.

Behind the scenes of NRI Samay

It’s weekend and it’s almost 10:30am EST. Had to rush to make it to the studio on time. The show was to begin in 30 minutes. To give us time to settle down, I played a song from Rang De Basanti as a filler. In the meanwhile the other team members also got ready and were ready for the show.

It was 10:45am EST. I called our guest from India to give a heads up that the show is going to start in 15 minutes and also make sure there are no connectivity issues or problems with the phone calls. Our studio manager then took over. He made a gentle announcement about the show, about our guest and about other protocols.

It was 10:57am. And the the stage was set. The guest was on the show, the studio manager was set , the team was set and so was i , for I was hosting the show that day. The show began, the team was standing by to assist with the questions or comments, the studio manager was ready to take any live callers, and before I realized the one hour interview was almost coming to an end. It was 11:55 am EST and I was thanking the guest for being on the show and asked the guest for any closing remarks.

Welcome to behind the scenes of NRI Samay.

A brain child of 2 passionate individuals, which now grew into a team of 7 volunteers, NRI samay, an online radio, making a humble effort to bring the “Untold stories, Unheard voices, Honest perspectives” weekend after weekend after weekend.

Covering wide range of subjects from

• farming issues to RTI activists
• to budding politicians to kabaddi champions
• to anti corruption,

NRI Samay has come a long way. The show is just an interview, an interview for one hour, an interview where the discussion is based on the questions and comments either posted online or asked live during the show, an interview which is worth 1 hour of the time.

It’s just an hours show but there is a lot of preparation that goes into making this 1 hour worthwhile. From scouting for the guests during the early part of the week, to preparing for the interview during the week, to advertising for the show online, to prepare communication material for the show, to collate questions/comments online, training the volunteers for being the host or being the studio manager or for online support and finally the 30 minutes before the show.

Despite all the preparations, just like everything else, there are setbacks. There are setbacks when the guests can’t make it and have to back out in the last minute, there are setbacks when the phone connections just go bad,  there are setbacks due to technical issues with the hosting service. But each one of the set backs has taught us a lesson, made us a little better than the previous show. It has made us to prepare even for the unknowns, made us have back up plans, made us look more professional when it comes to handling the unknowns.

But the end of the show, there is a great sense of satisfaction knowing that we as a team have brought out a voice that was either untold or unheard or honest.

Looking forward to an even better and bigger and an even more effective NRI samay !

Would also like to congratulate the two brains behind this who had shared the passion, developed the idea and had the courage to bring it to life.

So if you are just as excited as the team, as eager and anxious for that one voice, then what are you waiting for ! Reach out to us on http://facebook.com/nrisamay or visit us @ www.nrisamay.com

Voting on a long weekend

The year was 2009 and the month was October. The date for GHMC elections was just announced.  The other parties began the race to identify the candidates, LokSatta was no exception.

Except it was seeking resumes from potential candidates and sort of going through a formal interview process.  Never heard of this before, and was a good enough reason for me to get excited about it. Didn’t feel like squandering this opportunity any further and I wanted to jump right into the action. To understand & learn the whole election campaigning process. I wanted to know

• How the candidates are selected ?
• What are their qualifications ?
• How is the election manifesto formed ?
• How is the campaigning done ?
• what happens on the election day ?
• etc, etc

Of course, I knew I wouldn’t get answers to all of them, but I knew I had to start somewhere. I was in touch with the then party representative for the Defence Colony constituency to find out who the candidate was, as that was the starting point. After a couple of rounds of phone calls with the contestant, who btw was very enthusiastic and energetic and was already well know for her social activism in the area.

The Team

I needed a team as it was no one person’s job to work on this, but luckily my partner in crime was none other than my wife . So it all started at home.  More people joined us once we started off the phone campaign. We quickly narrowed down on the following campaign aspects, it was almost as if one of us was contesting and thinking what should we do to put ourselves on the radar. And below were some of the answers

Calling the voters: 4 reasons for calling the voters

• to let them know about the GHMC elections ( most of them don’t know about these elections )
• to encourage them to register so they can vote
• introduce loksatta as a formidable alternative
• Nov 23rd 2009 was a holiday on which the elections were supposed to be held. It’s a long weekend and the general tendency is why waste the holiday on casting a vote.

We obtained the list of voters from the party head office or the same information can also be obtained from http://hardoi.nic.in/about_hardoi/about_main.htm.

A standard template was created to help assist the callers in case they needed a jump start.

Broadcast Automated call: at a cost of Rs2.25  per phone call. A recorded voice message ( My wife recorded this in Telugu asking people to vote for the whistle symbol ) and we emailed the mp3 file to a friend who helped with broad casting the calls. The messages were played to

• 1500 landline numbers
• 3257 mobile numbers

Public Announcements: The same audio recording was then used in their road campaign using a loud speaker.

Helped with the manifesto: contacted the LSP and got a sample manifesto based on which the manifesto for the constituency was also prepared

Increase the ground network: Made an effort to bring together the colony presidents and secretaries so as to discuss the pressing needs of the constituency, so that they can be addressed as part of the election manifesto.

There were a few other proposals but were never implemented because of lack of time

RTI workshop:

• a community hall in the near by colony was chosen as the venue
• RTI expert were contacted to fix the appointment
• started to rally people but had to drop off mid way

Track the development of the constituency : RTI to track the development of the constituency in the past 10 years: this was supposed to help focus our efforts more than highlighting the opposition parties short comings. The idea was to share this with the press.

I had done some previous analysis ( click here )

Write to the press or media for coverage

So what did difference we made ?

It never occurred to me that I should blog about this experience that I had way back in 2009. Luckily I had all my emails to refresh my memory. This is just a small effort to prove that in this day and age of technology distance doesn’t mean anything. No matter where we are, we are always connected by the one common thread, I’m an Indian. And once that is established, if one wants to make a difference, one can make a difference.

With the combined efforts of the ground team ably led by the contestant Surya Chowdary ( thanks for giving us the opportunity ) and the team in the US, below excerpt from a Times Of India article sums up everything

“In Defence colony, where repoll was conducted, Congress candidate Iype Mariamma won by 341 votes over TDP candidate Babitha Madhav Yadav. Here again, it was Lok Satta candidate Surya Chowdary who ruined TDP’s chances by polling 2198 votes.“

Click Here for the Times of India Article

Lessons learnt: While this was a very humbling experience for all of us, it also taught us some very important lessons.

1) Defence Colony was a predominantly an urban population but despite that the voter turn out was only 37%. Out of a total of 51,000 voting population only 19000 casted their votes

• Lack of awareness i.e. most of them didn’t know it was GHMC elections
• timing of the elections, happened to be on a holiday
• voting is not as important as we all think it is
• Lesson learnt : Voter education is very important. Irrespective of which party they vote for, there should be efforts put in to encourage them to coming to the polling booths

2) Short notice for elections: Both the ground teams and the virtual teams had just a month’s time of preparation, which is not enough especially when one is dealing with contestants who are not afraid to pump money into the campaign

3) election commission guidelines: Demand a strong enforcement of election commission guidelines. for GHMC elections, the EC had restricted the campaign spending to be 2 lakh rupees. It was very much evident during the campaign that the other contestants had easily spent crores of money.

4) personnel @ polling booths: We didn’t have enough volunteers at the polling booths directing people. There was a polling booth where recounting had to be done because of some rigging allegations. We need to bolster the support at the polling booths

5) Plan activities to create awareness among the women. Primarily the women.

Dont write the obituary

This is not just about cricket.

India lost 4-0 to England in the test series in 2011. Fast forward to Dec 2012, India is trailing 0-2 in the 4 match series with Australia. So it’s quite obvious to point fingers, pick on players, blame BCCI, blame IPL or even blame astrology. And I’m no different, i blamed BCCI and IPL to some extent.

The Ex-Cricketers or now the Experts 

The criticism against the Indian team while the cricket series is not helping either. Even the Gavaskar’s, the Kapil Dev’s, the Ganguly’s , all having played cricket for such a long time have gone through such a phase and fully understand the stakes and know that such criticisms mean that the players have to fight extra hard not just the opposition but this never ending scrutiny.  Comments to replace senior players or commenting on how the Indian team went for gokarting between the games instead of playing practice games is also unfair. The teams were announced well in advance and so was the itinerary. They had the time to comment and criticize but they chose not to !

What could they have done ?

Instead of criticizing in the media, they could have kept their personal comments to themselves and if they were so concerned should have directly spoken to the coach or the team manager or the staff and rendered their help or advice.

The Media

The Media have become so big that they wont listen to anyone but money. Anyways, if they are so concerned by India, the Pride, Glory etc, I dare them to do this in depth analysis, expert commentary on what is going in Chattisgarh and what is happening in North Eastern states. Would they ever do that ? Beyond this i don’t have much to say

We don’t criticize , We don’t comment , so what should be done ?

This is a no brainer. Instead of writing obituary of the Indian test cricket, talk about the rebirth of Indian test cricket. If we have the right people in the right places, i’m referring to BCCI, then can we not have a visions, a goal for the future of Indian Cricket.

• Why not Australian pitches in India: Our players can get the exposure and experience right in our own backyard instead of getting beaten up in the most unfortunate way possible.
• Test debutante’s: A player performing well in Ranji’s gets a break through and gets picked up for a very important series. Gets badly beaten up and dropped subsequently from the team. Munaf patel, Abhay Kuruvilla, Laxman ( although he fights his way back ), just to name a few.  If someone gets picked up, they need to be backed up , backed up in a way that even if they perform badly, they should at least not loose hope.
• Obviously if the one’s who played cricket think through this, i’m sure they would be 50 different things that can be done to make sure a healthy environment is established and further nurtured.

This is not just about Cricket. Cricket is just a metaphor and anybody and anyone can find parallels with this. It’s easy to write off and be done with it, but not so easy to talk about revivals. You don’t believe me. India was knocked out in the first round in the world cup @ Carribean, came back the next time to win it.

Take politics. We love to criticize the politicians and why not they deserve it. But we can’t be simply criticizing all the time. We need to understand why things are the way they are, think what can be done to change it and take the reins in our own hands, support good candidates. So this is not just about cricket.

Don’t write the obituary, write the revival.