Challenging as it is to channelize the energy of the boys, over just one grueling week, we’ve compiled “Shayad nahi…Shayad haan!”- a story of the juveniles and their journey to the home and their hopes for their lives ahead.
(photo credits: Noopur Patel and Subhadra Kamath)

For today, all our facilitators came together to help prepare the boys for a spectacular evening of dance, music, theatre, puppetry and sharing of their experiences. Videos and still of today’s performance coming soon!!

I traveled to Gujarat in the month of April – May to do my internship as part of my academic requirement with the hope that I will see some realities about the communal riots that are always talked about in most of the mainstream media. Fortunately I could manage to visit some of the worst affected areas and interacted with some of the renowned civil society activists who are well known for their fight for social justice. The clear picture of what was happening in pre and post riot Gujarat was given to me through interactive discussions with some of these activists, and I was, to be honest, shocked to learn that all the systems (I mean the state agencies) are infected and corrupted with communal chauvinism.

Imagine how hard lives will be in such a situation where you cannot access  facilities  just because you belong to one particular community. Not only that ; your security is often at risk for the corrupted system can implicate you and put you behind bars however innocent you are just because of your identity. I was so sad that damages are made beyond recovery where some people regret being born Indian.

The interesting thing is that I find lots of commonalities with the North east states. To begin with both are the victims of communal hatred manifested in riots and ethnic feuds. North East states are haunted by the draconian law of the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA). Similarly Gujarat (I mean the section of the Gujaratis) suffered under the sectarian reign of Mr. Narendra Modi. The fact is both are killers- but the difference is in terms of its visibility and invisibility. People of Gujarat took pride in being followers of Mahatma Gandhi (limited to fasting though) but discarding the basic Gandhian principle of non-violence and truth. Yes of course they uphold the non-violence principle but only to animals and birds not to their fellow human being. Similarly the north eastern people, most of who profess to be Christian by going to churches every Sunday but denying the teachings of Jesus Christ like“Love your neighbour as you love yourself”, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

The recently launched “Dhansangrah” scheme in Gujarat to raise Rs. 500 crore for BJP to fight the assembly polls later this year compels  businessmen to pay under duress or else face the wrath of the state agencies. The harassment meted out to the businessmen by state agencies that refused to pay up is no different from the insurgent groups in the North East who are issuing demand notes to the businessmen failing which they are gifted with hand grenades or bullets. Extortionists disturb both.

I would like to recall the striking words of Mr. Sanjiv Bhat, suspended DIG and pivot to Gujarat riot witness which appeared in TOI, 9th May, 2012 “….as a Gujarati, I am greatly pained by the decadent evil that has permeated the government of Gujarat as well as the alarming shrinkage of the democratic space in all spheres and walks of life. It is very unfortunate and sad that, today in the land of the Mahatma, one has to fight against an incredibly clever Gestapo State and a brazenly Fascist government for truth and justice”. I wish all the Indian Police Officers (IPS) have the same spirit and courage to stand for the truth and not succumbing to pressure for justice sake no matter what.

One saddest thing is every time I posted comments in online news exposing the pervasive undemocratic governance under Mr. Modi, highest numbers of people online disagree with me but agree when Modi is extolled for all his actions. I wonder why these people are hell bent to sabotage democracy or are they paid to do so. If not, the question is how come these many people are still unaware of what democracy actually is? The situation is no different in the North east states where the existence of parallel governments makes the whole systems corrupt.

The sword of Damocles awaited our motherland’s fate. There is a crying need to act now from every responsible citizen, civil societies, and public servants for democracy and harmony to make our motherland a better place to live in.

Hejang Misao
(The writer is the student of Master of Social Work (MSW) at Bosco Institute, Jorhat under Dibrugarh University, Assam and doing research/study on the perception of youth towards insurgency and its impacts in their lives)

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“Into the Box”- an hour long performance through sixteen odd puppet characters manned single handedly by renowned contemporary puppeteer Varun Narain was staged at Epicenter in Gurgaon on the 5^th and 6^th of May. The audience which ranged from little children to those young at heart, mostly watched in rapt amazement or bursting into fits of giggles as Varun and his puppets churned out a thought provoking satire on our compartmentalized world. Fascinated kids walked out wondering ‘how does he make so many noises?’ The show was executed aesthetically and flawlessly and was received well by onlookers on all ages!

Using puppet characters that he’s created over the past two years, Varun conveys quite succinctly his views on the various ‘boxes’ that our world is divided into. Drawing from his experiences working in the corporate sector, the characters and boxes are highly inspired by his short encounter working amongst corporate people.

The story is about characters living in the noisy box, the forbidden box and the greedy box and those who are living in the boxless world.While the everyday drama in the noisy box continues, Katran, who is the daughter of poor Jhadan changes the world when she transcends from her boxless world to the forbidden box and finds the dust of wisdom. Using her newfound knowledge and the dust of wisdom she transforms everything by making people see things beyond what they want to see.

“For me, the noisy box was really about regular people who are emotional, loud and are mostly friends because they have a common enemy” says Varun, who drew a lot of his noisy box characters based on observations en route to work in the metro. He would hear these people conversing loudly in the cramped space and characters like Sheela, the loud dancer who is in search of her lost batteries and both the Badshahs seem depictive of the regular loud people we’d meet anywhere.

The Forbidden box is the fascinating secretive box where amazing things can happen, but the world forbids us from going there. Eventually we discover that it is there that wisdom lay un accessed. It could be a box in our own head that we didn’t really open.

The greedy box symbolizes competition, the silver claw constantly on the lookout for great things that they can nab and destroy!The boxless world is the world outside of the structured economic world where a lot of potential exists but goes waste because they’re not in a box.

“When I was working in the corporate sector, we had separate elevators and floors for people with different pay brackets- highly exclusive and hierarchical. You couldn’t interact with the helping staff and each floor, or box, was a little microcosm of its own.”

When asked which characters he associates with the most, he says “All the characters have a little bit of me at different points in my life. Although Jhadan and Katran are very close to my heart, and I also relate strongly to the Badshah who dares to step out of the box.”

Varun is currently working on puppets for an NSD festival and spends most of his time creating puppets and teaching kids puppetry. He is currently working with the Tehelka Foundation’s project with juvenile offenders and has worked with underprivileged kids with various NGOs. The show is expected to be back in Delhi in June and in the  meanwhile, he continues to work with corporates as an object-theatre consultant.

- Subhadra Kamath

SRK (as he is called by most) laughed off the incident by stating that whenever he starts feeling too ‘big’ or ‘famous’, he takes a trip to the United States to be brought back to earth, the issue brings up (again) the hot debate associated with racial profiling and national security, particularly in the post 9/11 context.

Now, racial profiling is a complex topic on its own. The concept originally came up in the United States, when the coloured community there accused the police to be indulging in discriminatory practices against them on the basis of their race; the difference between ‘regular’ racial discrimination and racial profiling is primarily to do with actors involved. Racial discrimination happens everywhere, whether we choose to accept it or not. This discrimination may be found largely in social life, jobs etc. where the actors involved mostly include the general public. Racial profiling, on the other hand, mostly has a state actor on one side as well. For example, in the United States, it was originally alleged that policemen on the road would target the blacks and other coloured people and pull their vehicles over without any conclusive reason. The only response that was given by the policemen was that these people were pulled over on charges of mere ‘suspicion’.

Post 9/11, the issue became hotter than ever before- “Islam” and “terrorism” became terms that went together. Cases of hatred attacks associated with race (against anyone who sounded or looked like an Arab or a Muslim in general) went up in most western countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. On the side, there emerged a regular practice of racial profiling by the state, especially at airports and other travel points. Although the then US President George W Bush vowed to end racial profiling in the country (early 2001, before the attacks), the situation drastically changed after the attacks. Apart from the general idea of racial profiling by humans, there came into being computer programs to identify and separate suspected people from others. (in SRK’s case as well, this seems to be the issue- the ‘Khan’ could be reason enough)

Now, I do not intend to touch more on the issue of racial profiling in the United States, as this forum aims to focus at issues within India. What I do intend to do here is to question the popular protest in India against incidents such as the one mentioned at the beginning in countries abroad. Racial profiling is a serious issue in the United States, but what I’d like to discuss here in the coming few posts is the idea of racial profiling within India itself, along with the changing nature of what many now call ‘suspect communities’. While incidents involving the rich and famous make it to newspapers and television channels, what happens to those who are discriminated within our country merely on the basis of belonging to a particular community or religion?

- Anuva

The questions I want to ask are these: does being secular mean we accept anything that anyone throws at us in the name of religion? Do we, as people, accept blackmail or the fear of backlash as part of our lives? If yes, then why? If no, then why is it that no one comes out and speaks against it?
I do not wish to make this into a personal rant about the troubles I’ve faced in  the past due to these occurrences, but rather a time to ask ourselves what this democracy means to us. If there is going to be constant occurrences where the law and rituals clash, what side are we going to be on?
One of the biggest problems in the ‘civilized’ world today is the utter disconnect with reality; not in the way we see reality, but in the way we perceive it. It is fashionable to be politically correct in today’s time, and accept everyone for whoever they are or whatever they do, despite a very high probability that one party may be (at least legally) wrong. We don’t mind spending hours stuck in
traffic jams in our air-conditioned cars, or hours stuck at home without electricity (no, I’m not talking rural India, I’m talking of the ‘millennium’ city of Gurgaon), but we will not go out speak up against it, because it’s the thing that the ‘upper middle class’ does not do.
I don’t know if there is much more that one would like to speak on this, but I would like to quote a famous anonymous saying: there is no hope for a ‘civilization’ which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock.

- Aashish

After more than a month of hardwork, the boys at Sahyog performed their dance piece for visitors from Leader’s Quest on the 24th. While the boys audience enjoyed the performance, the energetic dance left the audience quite entertained and bemused.

The fact that some of these boys are convicted of crime and were drug abusers was completely lost somewhere in the joyous dance that was performed.

All credits to the hardwork put in by the boys and by Himani and Sushant, who plan to now choreograph a completely new piece!

The boys have been responding to Varun’s workshop amazingly well and have been making great progress with their individual puppets and stories.

Here are Tede, Dracula, Phool bana Angara and Ghatak- four of the puppets that the boys made in groups for a puppet carnival on the 24th.

I’m going to take a slight detour from my previous post, where I promised to build more on the idea of Delhi and the Dilliwallah. This post is based on an ncident I personally experienced on the road sometime back, and although we’ve all spoken and heard about such things, going through one was an entirely different ballgame.
I was driving along an empty stretch of land late at night in the middle of gurgaon with a couple of friends, listening to some music and enjoying whatever little was left of the winter, where we suddenly drove past something that initially looked like a sand bag, later like a dead dog, and when we finally crossed it, figured was a dead man.
Now, I’m not proud of what we did after that, but it made me ask a few questions to myself and to the others with me about what it actually means to get justice in this country.
We drove off, shocked and frightened, because it seemed like the only possible thing to do; not the only ‘right’ thing to do, but merely the only practical thing to do. The question was why? Could we not check if the man lying there was alive? Could we not call an ambulance or the police and report the matter? Could we not do ANYTHING at all?
Sadly, the answer we gathered from our discussion was a plain straightforward ‘no’. Even more sadly, it didn’t take us much time to realize this. The reasons were simple: an empty stretch of land, in the already crime-infested city of Gurgaon (currently furious and wild about the recent incident of
rape), late in the night: it all only added up to one thing: if we call the ambulance or the cops, we land up in deep trouble that we surely would not be able to get out of.
The larger question is: why is it so hard for anyone to prove their innocence in this country, while thugs and murderers can walk away free without much trouble. The recent exposé done by Tehelka magazine on the attitude of the police in Delhi and NCR towards women and rape just a few days
after this incident reaffirmed by (lack of) faith in the institution.

I think corruption is one little aspect of the justice system that needs to be tackled; when I say corruption here, I mean monetary corruption. We can probably curb this kind of corruption one way or another; but what about the corruption in the heads of the people who constitute these institutions? I think that is the real problem that we really need to tackle.

- Aashish

Here is a quick brief for those unaware of the Subansiri dam issue. Since 2001, the state government has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with private and public companies for building over 168 mega dams in the Brahmaputra basin, where the entire network is expected to generate 63,328 Megawatt of power. Of this gigantic network of 168 dams, Subansiri Hydroelectricity project in Gerukamukh which is expected to generate 2,000 megawatt of power alone has emerged as the centre of the anti-dam protest.

To begin with let us have a look on the downstream impact studies of the Subansiri Hydroelectricity project. In 2008, after repeated protests, the government of Assam along with the dam builder National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) and All Assam Students Union (AASU), a civil society group of Assam constituted a committee comprising of experts from Gauhati University, IIT Guwahati and Dibrugarh University to study the downstream environmental impact of the dam. The committee was co-ordinate by Dr Jatin Kalita, professor, department of zoology from Gauhati University. In August 2010, the expert committee submitted its final report and declares that the site of the Lower Subansiri dam was geologically not viable and it will have serious negative impact on environmental and livelihoods. Unfortunately those suggestions were never paid any heed; rather the government of Assam is singing a different tune of appointing a committee of international experts to study the issue and continue with the project work. This is nothing but dillydallying tactics on the part of the government. Moreover, what is the meaning in doing downstream environmental impact study once the project had been completed?

Looking at the geography of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, construction of Subansiri dam is a major cause of worry for the region. Assam is like a bowl surrounded by hills and is certainly to be a vulnerable flood prone area. Arunachal Pradesh comes under ecologically very sensitive and seismologically very active zone. According to Amateur Seismic Centre (ASC), along with several Major and minor earthquakes, Arunachal Pradesh has witnessed the 6th largest earthquake of the 20th century in 15 August 1950, measuring intensity of 8.9 on the Richter scale which devastated the area very severely. Keshab Chattradhara, a key  activist of the “Peoples Movement for Subansiri and Brahmaputra Valley”, in an interview to the local media said “If the dam over the Subansiri breaks, for 54 km, there will be 34 feet high waves that will rage on for 35 minutes, carrying a catastrophic 2,59,000 cubic metres of water every minute.” So it is obvious that if earthquake comes or dam breaks the people of Assam have nothing to do but wait for the deluge. Moreover, all this does not consider the sociological impact of displacing directly 8,000 people to build the dam. How does it make sense to put the lives of millions in stakes for so called development?

Finally, the 2,000 megawatt Subansiri dam alone will generate surplus electricity, beyond the demands of the entire North East region. Obviously it will be mainland India where the surplus power will flow and will be benefited maximum. Does the greed of the more developed part of India justify the cost that Assam and Arunachal is going to pay? I believe that the life of the North East people can’t be priced low merely for the greed of Midland Indian’s.

The Assam and Central government need to be responsible and should act according to the aspirations of the people rather than muddying the dam issue with false arguments. We must explore alternate forms of sustainable development. Let us consider solar or wind power before dams. It may cost more but when we can spend billions in sending satellites and buying arms and ammunition, then we must have money for public gain without civic risk.

- Likhakjyoti Gogoi