Dears, Below is last paragaraph of my column in the GT on the eve of the Republic Day last month. It talks about P.Sainath ...who will deliver a lecture in the Datta Damodar Kosambi FESTIVAL OF IDEAS this week, as will Vivek Monteiro [brother of Dr. Nandita de Souza of Sethu/Sangat fame]:
"Creating awareness among the people of India is imperative. India's well-known development journalist P Sainath has been awarded the 2007 Magsaysay Award, Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, for his contribution to journalism, literature and the creative communication arts. The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation recognised Sainath for his "passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India's national consciousness". Sainath is best known for his hard-hitting book "Everybody Loves a Good Drought" wherein he wrote about a world that "belied the giddy accounts of India's economic miracle". There is a growing need to share such information so that the people may make an informed choice about who makes the Republic of India tick: "We, the people." The exhibition is on "Women & Work in Rural India." entitled "Visible Work, Invisible Women" is another facet of his commitment to give a voice to the lesser known and acknowledged people of India. Maria Aurora Couto has taken a great initiative to mark the anniversary of DD Kosambi in a meaningful way. It was nice to hear so many references to temples and churches at the inaugural function, including one in fluent Konkani from Prasad Lolayekar the Director of Art and Culture ,Goa, which roughly translates thus: "There are some individuals whose presence sanctify any place they are in and make it into a temple." If I remember right, DD Kosambi was of the Marxist philosophy and did not subscribe to any religion. It was nice to listen to our Vice-President, Hamid Ansari. It had great content but , alas, he sounded more like an academician than an orator. The delivery left one unimpressed. My sincere appreciation for the handling of the traffic by the Goa Police. After the Vice-President, The Governor and the CM left along with their Police escort vehicles, they let us out of the Kala Academy Complex. This would be unthinkable in Delhi, where cops are used to holding up traffic for hours, till petty IAS Babus and still pettier politicians have all left ...and leave one wondering whether India is a democracy or a demoncracy. Mog asundi. Miguel Braganza. Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 07:33:30 -0500 From: "Vidyadhar Gadgil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Goanet] P Sainath: Visible Work, Invisible Women flyer The Sainath exhibition described below will be taking place from 4th-7th February in KALA ACADEMY, GOA, as part of the D.D. Kosambi celebrations. Sainath himself will be speaking on the 6th February. www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/asia/southasia/sa_events/sa_event_flyers/p_sainath_flyer_photo_exhibit.pdf Visible Work, Invisible Women When thousands of women, mostly landless labourers, queued up in Vizag city in India to see a photo exhibition less than 40 months ago, it was an unusual one on their own lives. Consisting of about 70 black and white photographs with text, the exhibition is on "Women & Work in Rural India." It is titled "Visible Work, Invisible Women"... The pictures, shot in ten states across the country by journalist P. Sainath, show the astonishing labour that poor women put in every day of their lives and the gigantic -- yet unacknowledged -- contribution they make to the national economy. A contribution worth, literally, tens of billions of dollars. Each of ten panels deals with different kinds of work that women do. The text details the scope, significance and centrality of that labour to the Indian economy, particularly to agriculture. The exhibition has so far been seen by over half a million people in several venues in the east, west, north and south of India. One set has also toured over 20 venues in the United States and Canada. It was shown at the Asia Society, New York in November 2002. In this time, it has collected 29 notebooks full of comments in nine languages from all over India. Hundreds of pages with literally thousands of comments. It was inaugurated in Vizag city in late November 2001 by four of the landless women agricultural labourers who figure in the photographs. They sang a song of working women from the fields and declared it open. ... -- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. Miguel Braganza, S1 Gracinda Apts, Rajvaddo, Mhapsa 403507 Goa Ph 9822982676 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
