Parachute Radio on the Global Conversation has been dropping small packages of India down for our readers over the summer. As Radio Open Source host Christopher Lydon and colleague Paul McCarthy traversed India, they filed vivid shorts, vividly illustrated and decidedly ground level – toothbrushing techniques were not too quotidian for debate.

Now it is time for the parachutists to land and expand on Open Source. There, they have been producing podcasts of their encounters – with a historian, a novelist, a former driver, a social entrepreneur, and more – in which the fascinating talk is only part of the conversation and, in fact, inextricable from the changing audioscapes.

Just to sample:

“Brinda Adige, a self-starting social activist, in yellow sari, is our guide to the slum side of Bangalore and the virtual canyon between the public squalor and private affluence that are both hallmarks of the New India.

We’re in Lakshman Rau Nagar, one of several Bangalore slum districts that sprouted in the shrubbery alongside the info-tech boom two decades ago. Starting from a bridge over a vast open cesspool of human wastes, Brinda is making our path through what feel like opposites: tight-knit anarchy, foul stenches, brilliant rainbows of paint and fabric, acres of rubble next to dense clusters of shanties next to hand-crafted houses being rewired and gaudily repainted and redecorated, as we pass, by the artisan-squatters who live here.

Perhaps 10,000 families of high-tech service workers call this home: barbers, maids, drivers, baby-tenders, security guards, prostitutes, boot-leggers of all kinds, with of course their aged parents and dependent kids who are everywhere on the street, among the dead rats and live goats. The social atmosphere feels relaxed and, to the extent we visitors are noticed at all, welcoming. Most people seem absorbed in their individual projects, house-painting, baby-nursing, cookery or bicycle repair. Here as elsewhere you notice that in India stark borders of wealth and social class are crossed without fear, as they wouldn’t be in America or perhaps most societies. We are greeted with ‘what is your name?’ but never ‘what are you doing here?’ …”

Listen to Radio Open Source’s ongoing Real India series here. As you’ll see, it is also a continuation of a rich Year of India series of conversations from the 2009-2010 academic year.

Being in the business of new media, I have a particular interest in the journalistic representation of events and issues for public consumption.  The role of the media in modern India is an issue worthy of a blog discussion, given the often precarious relationship between media outlets and the national government. Shekhar Gupta, the editor-in-chief of The Indian Express, presented his views on this issue during the “Six Decades of Indian Democracy” conference held this past May.

Gupta’s contributions to journalism are numerous: he was awarded the Padma Bhushan civil award in 2009 and currently hosts the “Walk the Talk” program on NDTV 24×7, a major English network news source. In chronicling the changing and often contentious role of the journalist in the public sphere, Gupta pointed to his own experiences in the field, including his coverage of the 1983 Nellie Massacre in Assam that launched his career. The government, he emphasized, has increasingly utilized the media as a catalyst for social change. Gupta attributed this shift to an implicit “social contract” that arose between the media and the Indian state following the Emergency period (1975-1977).

http://www.vimeo.com/14067837

Following the technological innovations of the past decade, the purview of the media rapidly expanded. The ubiquity of the camera phone, for instance, has forced the government to grapple with the “tyranny of real-time” before a live audience. In response to these pressures, the State has attempted to save face by elevating the media as an agent of social reform. The media, Gupta warned, must be wary of the government’s recent overtures if they come at the expense of journalistic freedom and objectivity.

Gupta’s observations on the new role of the media in the public sphere are necessarily generalized; some journalists continue to jar with government in their portrayal of political issues. One such firebrand is Arundhati Roy, a fiction writer turned activist who is best known for her 1997 novel The God of Small Things. While Roy was awarded the Booker Prize for this work, she has shifted her focus to non-fiction and political commentary in recent years. Her activist efforts are well known and often controversial: Roy has vociferously supported Kashmiri separation, denounced the Narmada Dam project, and defamed George W. Bush as a “war criminal.”

Her on-going work has centered on the Naxalite Maoist insurgents who “infest” the jungles in the central and eastern regions of India. Estimates suggest that these Maoists occupy 40% of the Indian landmass. According to the government, the Maoists constitute India’s greatest security threat, for death tolls in both camps have been steadily mounting since 2000. As an imbedded journalist with the forest guerrillas, Roy presented her observations in a piece for  Outlook magazine. The Maoist insurgency, she determined, is but one example of “a biodiversity of resistance” against the effects of globalization and capitalist expansion in India.

Roy sat down with Chris Lydon for an Open Source interview this past April – a podcast of their discussion is available here.

By Zak Leonard ‘10

Flexibility, hierarchy, politics, non-aggression and horns — India reveals itself on the road. Of course street life is the lowest hanging fruit for an outsider of a society to witness, but after talking to all kinds of Indians for two weeks, these observations can be certified as higher-grade than your average tourist fodder.

The rule of the road here, and of much else, is flexibility: if the road is 30 feet wide, that means it is either 20 bicycles wide, 12 motorcycles wide, 8 autorickshaws wide, 4 cars wide, or 2 buses wide — or any combination thereof, sorted by a improvised dance that is adjusted second by second like the schooling of fish. They pack in so tight at stoplights that you can lean out the side of an autorickshaw without letting your ass leave the bench and touch three or four vehicles. Lanes are totally irrelevant, in the rare occasion that they are painted. Stoplights too, though these are even more rare. Flexibility and improvisation is key in a developing country with this many people, and this is on display in a major way on the road.

The second rule, which sometimes comes in conflict with the first, is that the road is very hierarchical, just like life itself — SUVs and luxury sedans are deferred to, if only because nobody wants to pay the bill for scratching them up. So “flexibility” means if you are lower down the food chain, get out of the way when I’m coming. But enterprising motorcyclists and autorickshaw drivers are nimbler and smaller than the luxury vehicles, so they can often move faster and sneak up ahead in the stream of traffic, just like the broader Horatio Alger hopes of the poor. Bicycles are at the bottom of the totem pole, but they can weave through tighter spaces that even motos can’t reach. Pedestrians don’t even count in this game (crossing the street on foot is like that old videogame Frogger — on the hardest level). And of course, the bullock carts actually get a preferential treatment, because who wants to bully a bullock?

But as in politics here, a display of power or wealth like an SUV is still not enough to stop the people-power of populist propulsion: the bus. The bus still reigns on the road, and causes luxury vehicles to move aside, for obvious reasons; so do the well-organized political groups of the poor like the communists in Kerala or the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh.

And while we’re on the topic of politics, India has never been a bully, as a country, and drivers also seem to carry this attitude on the road. Sure, they honk their horns every 30 seconds, and they drive very assertively — but somehow it’s not aggressive. It doesn’t have the menace of the American East Coast drivers, who are constantly on the verge of a fistfight over who stole a parking space or who is tailgating whom.

The honking does deserve more attention, because at first to an outside it does feel like aggression. But then you realize that’s not it at all. About half of all four (and three) wheeled vehicles in Bangalore have this message painted on the back: “Sound OK Horn” — or some variation (OK Sound Horn, Sound Horn OK, Please Sound Horn, etc.) These instructions are dutifully followed. If there is a stray dog in the street, honk. If you are passing someone, honk. If there is a pedestrian and it looks like they might be about to cross, honk. Friendly taps, long urgent blasts, anything goes. It’s just the way driving is done here. When you walk out of the doors at Bangalore’s shiny new airport this is the only thing that seems different from dozens of shiny modern airports around the world — the constant din of horns. I was told the smell of India would be the first thing to hit me, but in fact it was the sound. The sound of horns. Like the millions of argumentative (yet usually civil) voices of Indians themselves.

The naming conventions for roads is maddening for an outsider, because basically a 6 or 7 block radius will be named after one single road, but then it will have “crosses” and “mains”: so an address will be “Jaymahal Extension” (which is itself an offshoot of Jaymahal road) “second cross”. Sometimes the crosses will include “4a” and “4b” sometimes. Mahatma Gandhi road is always the “Main Street” or “Broadway” of every city or town, and there are some other fun major road names like “The Nice Road” and “Serious Road”.

And of course, we can’t complete the dramatization of road rules / real rules in India without remarking on who gets totally left out: those who don’t have wheels at all, who are destitute and using the sidewalks as a campground. In Delhi they sleep by the dozens just about anywhere, surely getting bitten by bugs (or worse) and woken up by the rain or sun, whichever comes first. They are sleeping on piles of construction bricks, in wheelbarrows, sitting up in lawnchairs. And yet still, some of them say, it’s better than the village they came from. Perhaps their children will have a shot at something better, they say.

- Paul

Here are some more photographs from my time working at the clinic with Maggie. Now you can see what I mean about all the saris. India is so full of color!

On the backside of the Bangalore boom, the stinky private squalor supporting the world-class private affluence is the shocker. The new Indian slum — growing up with the Information Technology capital — is a work-in-progress between shanty town and hand-constructed neighborhood. We’re hearing family tales of woe in a day’s immersion with community sister Brinda Adige, who began her career as a lonely intervenor in family violence cases. The “informal economy” looks lively, the tiny markets full of shiny tomatoes and fancy baby eggplant. Small children — with first writing tablets in hand — are bright-eyed and friendly. But amid the bootleg electrical circuits and steaming noxious waste drains, one keeps asking: where is the public sector, the cops, the schools that apparently nobody wants to pay for yet.

My favorite thing about India is the color. Even the poorest women wear beautiful, bright saris, when walking through mud puddles or living in huts made of trash. The culture is infused with silks and draping fabrics. I have always been in love with the elegance of saris, but I never thought I would have an excuse to wear one. But recently, Maggie finally convinced me I should get one. I guess my dorky tourist linen pants just weren’t cutting it. Plus, she explained, it was a very Indian experience to have. It certainly was! The last one in this video is the one I ended up picking. I was fitted for the blouse, and today I go to pick it up! A dream come true!

Okay. It’s time to come clean. Originally, I was coming to India to volunteer at the Pragati Schools and help make a presskit for them to use to increase their visibility and fundraise. When I was trying to organize my trip, I asked my contact, Arati, if she could find a place for me to stay: maybe a guest house I could rent for the month of July. Arati called her friend Maggie, who helps organize the health program for Pragati. Maggie’s husband Ajit was involved in the housing and real estate business, so Arati reached out to ask if they knew about what sort of options I would have for housing. Much to Arati’s surprise, Maggie responded by saying I was welcome to just stay with her and Ajit.

When I arrived here, Maggie explained the work that she did. Yes, she was in charge of the health program for Pragati, but that was really just as an addition to her other work. Maggie is a member of an organization called DCWA: Delhi CommonWealth Women’s Association. They have a center in Delhi, which has a hospital and pharmacy, with a dentist, radiologist, optometrist, and dermatologist, along with general practioners. They work as a social service organization; patients can come and be serviced for barely any money, which is amazing and especially important for the communities in the area who are struggling to make ends meet. DCWA also has a pre-school and a scholarship program where kids from under-privileged families are able to attend on scholarship.

Maggie visits the center often, to help out and take care of business, but her passion project is here in Gurgaon. Downstairs in the basement, there is an ambulance parked next to Maggie’s car. That is Maggie’s ambulance. Twice a week, she drives out to one of the nearby slums, with a volunteer doctor, and sets up a clinic by the side of the road.

After parking in whatever shade she can find, she pulls out two fold up tables, and puts fold up chairs around them. One table acts as the doctor’s station, and the other acts as the pharmacy. At the doctor’s station, a volunteer takes patient’s information and money, and then the doctor does their check-up. A new patient is charged 15 rupees to see the doctor. An old patient is charged 10. After the doctor does a check-up and writes a prescription, the patient walks the two feet to the back of the ambulance, where Maggie is waiting at the second table. Here, she has boxes and bottles and cans of pills and lotions and syrups, all donated by the pharmacy at DCWA. Maggie has had no real formal training, but she has been doing this for so many years, she now knows as much as any pharmacist. She takes their prescription and scrutinizes it, reading what the doctor has prescribed. She knows what every medicine is for, and places the right dosage into little paper envelopes or tiny syrup bottles. She then sends the patient back to the doctor, who explains in Hindi the times each medicine is to be taken. A patient gets whatever medicine he needs with no extra cost. Considering the current exchange rate is around 45 rupees to $1, the fact that someone gets a doctor’s check-up and their necessary medicine for 15 rupees is unbelievable.

There is no way for me to express what the experience is like to witness and be a part of this. I have taken to accompanying Maggie every time she goes out for clinic, and each time I go, the experience leaves me at a loss for words. First off, I ride in the back of the ambulance, which in and of itself is a feat; having to fit my fairly large frame in between folding chairs and large hooks hanging from the ceiling (meant to hold IV bags), while a siren rings in my brain. The slums we visit are ones that have popped up next to construction sites, and are usually full of women and children or old men and women waiting for the younger men to come back after work. There is dust everywhere, and we arrive at 4:30pm, when the sun has lowered, but is still excruciatingly hot. There are wild pigs and dogs everywhere, and kids constantly playing in the dirt. Men on motorcycles and pushcarts arrive straight from the construction sites, and women holding newborns that are smaller than my forearm.

The doctor and volunteers are usually middle aged women, and between them and me, there is a gentleness to the way that the whole thing operates. The women who arrive in need of medical attention still find the energy to smile; you can tell they feel comfortable here. It is a tribute to Maggie’s spirit and stamina that she has been doing this long enough to have people recognize her as a trust-worthy place to come to for help.

It’s incredibly intense, but it is remarkable the way it makes me focus on what I am doing, and gives me a bizarre sort of clarity. I am sure this sounds like some terrible cliché: “I found purpose handing out medicine to the needy,” but it honestly isn’t as heady as all that. I find it hard to articulate, but it’s much more simple. A task is in front of me, it needs to be done, nothing else matters. Find lotion for the baby with scabies. Find amoxycillin. Pour cough syrup into a bottle. Sign the prescription. Send them back to the doctor’s table. I never understood why someone would ever want to be a doctor or a scientist. I have always been in love with the creative impulse—writing, photographing, creating art—and could not comprehend how someone could find joy in the cold molecules of medicine. But for the first time I appreciate that this could be somebody’s passion. Because it really is amazing. It helps quiet all the usual anxieties in my head that stress me out, it makes me calm down and focus and work hard on what I’m doing, in the moment.

I haven’t stopped my work at Pragati, I’ve just added my work with DCWA. In fact, the two worlds collided the other day, when Maggie took one of the volunteer doctors to Pragati’s schools to provide medicine and check-ups for the kids.

Yes, things are coming together surprisingly well. And whether I find myself at the back of a classroom or the back of an ambulance, my heart is light. I am so blessed to be where I am, loving what I am doing.

After a week of being here, I’ve already seen so much, it’s hard to know where to start. The Pragati schools are wonderful. There are three of them, each named after whatever large building they are closest to. Vatika holds the first year kids, (the one with the cage in the back), Max is year 2 and 3, and Arcade is year 4 and 5. While the little ones are adorable, my favorite is probably Arcade, because all the tables and chairs are painted bright colors that make each classroom seem alive and glowing.

It’s wonderful to see the way these teachers work with the kids. I have been sneaking around the classrooms, and it’s pretty awe-inspiring the way each teacher is aware of which kids need extra help and how to go about helping them in a subtle way that doesn’t make them stand out in front of their classmates. There is such care and consideration taken with everything, it is like watching these women adopt a room full of children as their own. It’s especially impressive, because most of the teachers here are volunteers. There are one or two paid teachers in each school, but Pragati’s budget is so small that almost the entire staff is volunteers. Also, while there are a few male teachers, the majority are women, and the entire board of administrators are women. (The school was founded by 8 women in 2002.) And most of these women have other careers, and children (and some have grandchildren!) I am so impressed with how much they are able to accomplish. It’s as if running three schools is just something they do for fun. Even though it is an unbelievable amount of work. Walking in and out of the office every day reveals new obstacles that are constantly appearing; from newly admitted students to government demands, to missing uniforms, to parents who need convincing to let their child attend class. Haimanti, the current Secretary General always has her hands full, even with the help of everyone else.

The kids themselves are great. In class, they concentrate so hard, I often catch them mouthing words out loud as they read and straining every muscle in their body to raise their hands for the answer. Most of them are pretty aware of how fortunate they are to be in school, when there are many kids living in their neighborhoods who aren’t able to. They work hard, and take their lessons seriously. But outside of class, they are regular kids. Recess is like a race to expend as much energy as possible in a short period of time. There are cartwheel competitions and wrestling matches and tag games all over the yard.

Most of the older kids are well behaved about ignoring me while I’m photographing. But every once in a while, a couple of them get the camera itch, and beg me to take a photo for them. One day, I was sitting in the office changing a battery, and the teacher of the class next door left the room. While she was out, the boys in the class came into the office and asked me to take a video of them. After trying to ward them off, I finally gave in, but told them I would only video if they would sing me a song. First, they had to have a quick conference about what they would perform, and then they started strong, but before long… well, I’ll let you see for yourself!

As for my life outside the schools, things are bustling along. You may recall, back in the States, I ran into some serious visa trouble. When I finally did get my passport back, I went to check the visa, and it had a big stamp on it that said, “must register within 14 days of being in the country.” At the time, I was just so relieved to have my visa, I didn’t think much of it. But when I got here I mentioned it to Arati, and she paled. She said we needed to go to the mini secretariat to fill out paperwork to register me. This didn’t sound so bad.

In truth, it was a great undertaking, involving lots of paperwork, and time spent waiting around, and procuring documents that I did or didn’t have and photocopying everything, and poor Haimanti having to print out multiple letters on “Pragati” stationary and stamp it to make it official. But I’ll hold back on the gritty details, and instead say that the mini secretariat itself was quite an amazing place to behold. The building is mainly dark, without lights in the hallways. Natural light shines through the windows, but everything seems a little sinister, as if this building served some other purpose in the past. Inside the office where I was meant to register, there were papers piled high to the ceiling, and I couldn’t help wondering, after I handed in my four copies of paperwork—each with an unsmiling passport photograph of me stapled to the top corner—if my little face would be added to one of these giant stacks, rotting away for years to come. The police officers in the office were an unsmiling lot, with tan uniforms and short hair. There was no AC and no fan, and the air was so hot, I wondered how they could possibly work in there for several hours of the day, and decided that I too would be unsmiling if I was in their position.

On the other hand, nearby the mini secretariat, there was a place you could go if you needed something notarized. In the U.S., whenever I have had to get something notarized, it involves an unfortunate trip to a bank or someplace similar. Here, there is a giant open area, filled with un-matching tables and chairs, where notaries just sort of hang around and wait for someone to stop by. It was like this bizarre picnic area, with no picnics. I thought it was hilarious.

And of course, I am stuffing myself with delicious Indian food, every opportunity I get. I had my first dosa the other day, which was amazing. More soon!

There have been a lot of highlights of my trip so far. But this is one of my favorites.

Yesterday was a down day, and I spent the morning vomiting, the afternoon scurrying around trying to find a new converter (the one I brought doesn’t work), and the evening running through all of my equipment, making sure it all worked.

The vomiting was probably just caused by dehydration: even though I made sure to drink lots of water, it turns out my body requires way more water when I’m out here. I’ll make sure to walk around with two water bottles from now on.

This morning, Arati picked me up at 8:30, and we headed to the primary school of Pragati. (There are three school buildings, and I am going to visit the other two in the coming days, but today Arati brought me to the building with the youngest kids.) Today was the first day of school so things were a little hectic; full of that lovely first-day-of-school chaos. Most of the students who attend Pragati live in nearby shantytowns, and most don’t have a place to store a school uniform over the summer holiday. Pragati supplies each student with a uniform, and since today was the first day, some students received theirs today, and others were still in their own clothing and will receive theirs tomorrow or the next day.

The building is small, with three classrooms inside and one small office, all connected by open doorways. Teachers and students walk freely through the rooms, and the chatter of the other classes is constant. These are not the closed, quiet classrooms of the west. Out back, behind the building, there are two more classes being held outside. Well, sort of outside. They are in these giant… cages (for lack of a better term) which allow them to hold class outside, but protect the students from the brazen monkeys who sometimes come around.

Even though it was just day 1 teachers were already teaching lessons; reviewing things to check what the students remembered. Days of the week, shapes, numbers, and fruits were all chanted back and forth, with children literally jumping out of their seats to answer.

I got to take a sneak peek at recess time, which involved a rigorous game of duck-duck-goose, and then it was back to lessons.

One of the amazing things about Pragati is the way they provide everything for each child. The uniforms, books, daily snacks and lunch are all provided by the school. Lunch was an amazing sight to behold. Each child is given a large silver plate, and the food is dished out one by one. Some of the children are so tiny, the plate is almost as large as they are. Then everyone perches on steps, stairs, desks, and outside to eat.

Class ends by 12:30 at the primary school. Soon after lunch, the children put back on their backpacks and march out the front gate, back to their homes, where they help their parents work for the rest of the day.

As for me, I had lunch with Arati, and then she dropped me back at Maggie’s, where I went through the footage I had shot today, and backed up all my footage and photos. I got some reading done and took a quick nap, and then went to see if Maggie needed any help in the kitchen. To my joy, she was making chapatis, which are these wonderful little Indian breads, that puff up when you cook them! Maggie kept saying that she wasn’t very good at making them, and said I should find an Indian woman to really show me how it’s done, but they tasted delicious to me!

After a quick skype with the folks back home, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow’s another bright and early day!