A journey of how seasoned development workers, when armed with a camera and basic knowledge of photography, can bring out some arresting visual stories of survival, resilience, and transformation from grassroots.
In these sombre times when development workers (staff of Ekjut) were combining their webinars with field visits due to the coronavirus outbreak, an opportunity to attend a virtual Photo Documentation Workshop turned out to be a welcome job enrichment for them. These 30 participants, hailing from diverse geographical, professional, and social backgrounds attended weekly sessions with experts from Photography like Prof. J.B Mistry, photographers Indrajit Khambe, H. Satish and filmmaker Nirman Choudhury – a workshop anchored by Padma Shri Sudharak Olwe under the aegis of Photography Promotion Trust. The idea behind it was to equip these participants to capture stories of hope and change from the hinterlands of the country: from Rajasthan to Odisha and from the most vulnerable populations, like the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) living in Jharkhand, to the homeless people dwelling in cities.
Twelve such stories were woven around three themes – survive, thrive and transform – and presented on 30th October through a live streaming on social media to reach out to a wider audience. The storytelling was interspersed with reflections from experts from the field of Public Health and Sociology, like Akay Minz, Dr. Pavitra Mohan, Dr. Pranali Kothekar, Dr. Audrey Prost, Ratanaboli Ray, and Snehil Kumar. This initiative was supported by Photographer and founder of Photo South Asia Vasant Nayak and Co-founder Shay Taylor.
It all began in August 2020. The experts took intensive training on technicalities of still photography, wildlife, mobile photography, and videography, and editing and archiving of photos and videos. Long, exhaustive sessions not only threw light on different aspects of effective storytelling but also taught how to capture photos to bring in the human aspects through photography. Through the assignments and critical, constructive feedback from all the experts, the participants learnt to capture the emotions in images and convey their stories in words through the eyes of the protagonist. This creative assignment challenged them to re-establish connections with families who lived in remote locations and whose stories they wished to narrate.
Stories of survival:
The stories of Jogri Bai from Madhya Pradesh and Manju from Rajasthan – frontline health workers performing their duty during the critical period of childbirth and rearing for the tribal communities – were sensitively captured by Pradeep, Anushka and Malay. Parabita narrated the story of Reena, a Ho Adivasi from Jharkhand, who took timely decisions in identifying neonatal infection that saved her child.
Whether it were the inspiring stories of ASHAs like Manpati and Saroj who work tirelessly with the community to bring changes while overcoming their own struggles or the countless mothers who have saved the lives of their new born babies – each one of them need to be heard and acknowledged.
While learning about them was encouraging, Jhingi’s life, as told by Dr Nirmala, tells a lot about Jhingi’s perennial struggle with intergenerational undernutrition, multiple marginalization and poverty, highlighting the challenges that India faces.
Peggy Koniz-Booher, from John Snow International and one of the members of the audience, said, “Stories of hope! We all need a little hope – of human spirit and resilience in this world. Thank you for your work.”
Stories under (Thrive):
They say that it takes the community to nurture a child. Through powerful images, Ashish tells us about Kisan Munda, a two-year-old boy who was orphaned at a very tender age. Malnourished and weak, he was brought to the crèche (childcare home for children 6 months-3 years) where with the help of community and crèche workers, he recovered and survived.
One crèche worker called, Sukurmuni Didi from the Ho community, knew how much children love playing with toys that she makes, so when crèches were shut in the lockdown she continued making and distributing toys and joy to the children of her area. This story was captured by Debay from Jharkhand.
Given the fear that millions of children across the globe may slip into undernutrition during this pandemic, the story and the thought behind maintaining an uninterrupted supply of dry ration to the homes of children following closure of the crèches and the respectful and dignified way this is being done is worth replication and visually captured by Shibanand Rath.
Ms Vidya Nair, Expert – Leadership for Environment and Development, said, “The invisible became visible through the photo journey.”
Stories of transformation:
Covid-19 pandemic affected lives of persons with disabilities, elderly and homeless adversely. Difficulties faced by adolescents and youth were enormous with schools shutting down and their careers being hit. Subhashree talks about about Rani, an adolescent facilitator in Jharkhand who had gone through a difficult childhood, but stood by adolescents and counselled them at this time.
Binit Mohanty captured the inspiring story of January Bankira, who overcame all difficulties and won the state taekwondo championship in Jharkhand. Rajkumar narrated the story of Sanju, Kajal and Neha who challenged the mindset of the society towards resisting child marriage in Jharkhand.
The stories continued as we heard from Prathyush and Ashutosh about the ‘Adhikar sathis’ from the particularly vulnerable tribal groups who act to bridge the information gap and are the voice of the voiceless.
Sumitra’s story highlighted the plight of adivasi women with severe psychosocial disabilities of how a sensitively-designed, community-based treatment and rehabilitation program of tele-psychiatry, medicine, counselling, relief and support group meetings can go a long way on the path to recovery.
Ajay weaved a story using snapshots of the circumstances of how rural people are driven into homelessness in urban settings and the attempts to bring succour to their lives.
Ms Kirtida Oza, a development professional mentioned, “Interesting way of presenting stories of hinterlands. More power to all those who work in challenging environments.”
These poignant and uplifting stories of how the poor and the marginalized people have been braving the pandemic situation as captured by grassroots development workers for posterity will be a valuable resource for development and students of photography. And as for the participants, they are now viewing the world through a different lens.
Ekjut
Ekjut is a development organization working in the field of community health and women empowerment for almost two decades. It has touched the lives of people under the themes of survive, thrive, transform and resilience in the rural underserved regions of Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. While the impact of the work of the organization in terms of lives of children saved, nourished and livelihood secured has been evaluated and published in high-impact medical journals, the stories behind these numbers, the efforts of the frontline heroes, their struggles and small victories remain untold. And that needs to be heard and amplified.
Writers
Dr. Parabita Basu
Ms. Swati Roy
Dr. Nirmala Nair
Ms. Priyanka Yadav
Ms. Anushka
