The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 31 July 2012

DEAR PUSSY RIOT, IT'S PUTINISM

Dear, dear, don’t you know Putinism? It was always there, in post-2000 Russia. Now it is exerting itself more audaciously.

Now you may be a punk rocker, synonymous with the rebellious origin and evolution of the genre, but, beware, Russia is Putin’s precinct. Also, one should not forget that Putinism sees Russia’s world might in protecting and nurturing the mercenaries of death like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Russia has been in a mess in the recent past and developments tell it is to continue. A run to democracy was the undercurrent that led to the dismantling of the erstwhile USSR. But the subsequent run to instill institutions of democratic values did never have a smooth run. And it gave the tough guy Putin to raise hopes and takeover. But on the way, he started showing his dictatorial colours. It was intensified during his third term at the helm of the affairs as the Russian prime minister when the global recession started brining down the economic highs of oil and gas revenue figures.

Russia, with an increasingly autocratic Putin and a middle class fearful of bad days of recession, started slipping into chaos. Naturally, the results were emergence of many power centres. There is the state, there is the church, there are the protesters – and then there is Putin, who is hell-bent to symbolize Russia with Putinism after he wrested away the Russian presidency again.

While tens of thousands of Russians, powered by the social media tools spread the protests to the length and breadth of Russia against the rigged parliamentary elections last year continuing their rally to the presidential election this year, Putin kept on oiling his ambition to become the ultimate master of the Russians. Now that is he is fully in charge of the affairs, the Russian state is coming down hard on the protesters.

Latest in the series of clampdown is the court trial of the punk-rock band Pussy Riot. Three members of the anonymous feminist band had mocked Putin with a performance on the altar of a cathedral.


Photo sourced from Internet - AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel - From left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit behind bars at a court room in Moscow, Russia, Russia, Monday, July 30, 2012.

Pussy Riot formation follows Putin’s announcement of running for the 3rd presidential term. They chose a rebellious name and theme to declare their intent visibly clear in words of one of the Pussy Riot members, “Sexists have certain ideas about how a woman should behave, and Putin, by the way, also has a couple thoughts on how Russians should live. Fighting against all that—that’s Pussy Riot”.

They joined the group of protesters like bloggers, opposition figures and youth activists, supported by the increasing lot of the unsatisfied middle class. Two of the Pussy Riot members facing trial are mothers with children to look-after at home.

February this year, five members of the Pussy Riot managed to perform on the altar of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral of Moscow targeting Putin and Orthodox Church ties. No charges were placed then for this less than 60 seconds of performance but on March 3, a day before the presidential election, two Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina (24), Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (22), were arrested while Yekaterina Samutsevich (29) was arrested on March 16. They have been charged for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility” and arrested.  President Putin sailed in to victory for another six-year term on March 4.

The group is an anonymous collective, formed with intent of protesting Putin. They have no records out in the open. No one can say about their membership count. They mix with protesters in their coloured masks. “[The mask] means that really everybody can be Pussy Riot… we just show people what the people can do,” the Guardian quoted one of the Pussy Riots members saying. They sing protest songs and try to organize flash mobs to denounce Putinism.

Russia has tens of thousands of grudges against Putin and the dwindling economy can easily make them tens of millions. Putin understands this but he cannot control and dictate the economy the way he wants. He badly needs the oil prices to shoot up but that doesn’t look like a plausible possibility right now.

So he is doing what he can do. Suppressing the anti voices systematically. The Russian court is complicit in his mission. Anyway, courts in the dictatorial regimes have never been autonomous institutions.

Three arrested members of the Pussy Riot went to trial this Monday only, after five months of arrest. They have been consistently denied bail by every court they approached. It is when the charges are non-violent in nature and two of the arrested members are have children at home.

Clearly, Putin is out to there to show protesters that they need to be ready for the tougher times ahead.


©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Monday 30 July 2012

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: ROLE OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA – THE AFTERTHOUGHTS

I wrote this write-up for a research journal during May 2012. In its concluding part, I am writing my afterthoughts here.

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 
 
“In North Africa and the Middle East, relatively new youth movements have been surprised by the speed, size and success of protests they have organized over social networking Websites.  Over several years they have found their political voice online and have held their meetings virtually.  Each of the dictators in these countries has long had many political enemies, but they were a fragmented group of opponents.  Now these opponents do more than use broadcast media to highlight their claims.  They use social media to identify goals, build solidarity, and organize demonstrations.  During the Arab Spring, individuals demonstrated their desire for freedom through social media, and social media became a critical part of the toolkit used to achieve that freedom.” - The Project on Information Technology and Political Islam, University of Washington

Social media has been a buzzword for quite sometime now. But what one would find if one went to google the term until the ‘year of the protester’ happened – eight out of the ten links would be based on information detailing out the use of social media as strategic marketing tool. “Companies that actively experiment with social media in their business processes will transform their relationships with customers and create value in unforeseen way,” (an Accenture report) - management dictums like these were happen to be the norms in the online search sphere on ‘social media’.

That was until recently. 2011 has changed much, and for good.

The observation from the report of ‘The Project on Information Technology and Political Islam’ is just one example of the increasing role of the social media beyond its marketing uses.

If we consider the simple corollary of basic marketing anthem, i.e., developing relationship between the need of the product and the consumer with a designed communication package, any new communication platform is used strategically first by the marketers in a world dominated by capitalist/neo-liberal economies.

It’s beyond marketing or sociological use depends on the scale with which the communication platform is adopted by the masses as an interactive mode of communication.

And social media being driven by the interactive power that the new media technologies like the Internet and mobile communication provide has gone much beyond any mode of communication in reaching to the masses as the events of 2011 tell us.

Social media was the most significant outreach tool in the most disturbed parts of the world. It rode well on the robust growth in information technology usage.

The reach has increased significantly. Globally, Internet now reaches to over 30 per cent of the population. And much of this growth has come in the last decade – at scorching pace, a factor that can be attributed to the ‘speed, size and success’ complement for the Arab Spring – when the sense of ‘uses’ satisfaction ‘gratifies’ for enhanced ‘uses’!

True, much has to be done in the Arab Spring countries. Egypt and Libya recently saw elections but chaotic times are still ahead. Yemen is more an eyewash and is bound to see further activity. Other Arab countries, where the protester tried to make his voice heard, i.e., Bahrain and Syria, remain in dark. Tunisia, though, is a green patch.

Putin has comfortably reinstated him as the next Russian President and in a way has qualified to the high scales of the dictator-in-making tag. China, in the year of its supreme political body power transition, is being very cautious.

India’s anti-corruption movement looks to have fizzled out by the well-organized con of politicians as well as personally motivated and misplaced agendas of the so-called Team Anna members. There was always the talk of Anna and Team Anna being two separate entities but then Anna Hazare could not get sensible advisors to rework and strengthen his vision, something that he lacks in his personal capacity.

Occupy, though has occupied a place in the psyche, seems to have taken a back seat if we count the upscale activities.

But, 2011 has shown us the possibility of the ‘impossible’ getting ‘possible’. It has sown the seed.

Unrest was there, on the grounds, where movements spoke. It needed expression, connect and mobilization. Social media was the most significant tool to realize these three fundamental factors.

Unrest is there where the voices were suppressed or movements were manipulated to go awry. Let’s hope the ‘spiral of silence’ is going to hold its validity even here.

On July 29, 2012, when Anna Hazare started his anti-corruption fast again, he got supporters reaching to the fast venue in large number that was not there when his other team members were on fast. While writing anything positive for the fate of the movement at this stage would be premature, the large number of supporters tells us the unrest is brewing. It needs expression, connect and mobilization.

True, China is being very cautious but the whole world became witness to the high-profile and daring escape of the blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng from house prison and his subsequent flight to the US.

With ever-increasing role of information technology in our day-to-day lives in a technologically borderless world, the positive avatar of social media is going to stay relevant in playing its pivotal role in informing, motivating and connecting – the basics that movements riding on brewing unrest need.

Let’s see when the next spark comes. It could be anywhere, in the Arab Spring countries with uneasy calm; in China and Russia inviting more State machinations; the ‘Occupy’ may witness a revived fervour; or any from any part of the world where unrest has been brewing for a long time, even in our very own backyard.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Sunday 29 July 2012

EXPRESSIONS (THE CONTEMPLATIVE AFTERTHOUGHTS)


EXPRESSIONS (THE CONTEMPLATIVE AFTERTHOUGHTS) 

CATEGORY: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
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©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Saturday 28 July 2012

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: THE NEW MASS MEDIA

I wrote this write-up for a research journal during May 2012. I am now publishing it on my blog in parts.

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS - PART-XI

THE NEW MASS MEDIA

The Internet is the modern mass media and is bound to become the dominant mode of communication with rapidly advancing technologies that make convergence of electronic media, print media and mobile communication on Internet platforms a ‘viable to masses’ option in the near future. A simple corollary of 2011 protests puts it in the right perspective:

Protests grew rapidly in countries and precipitated in significantly large mass mobilization where Internet was free or somewhat beyond regulation to work as the mass media giving, in-turn, free run to the social media platforms. The borderless world of the technological communication helped build the global audience as the domestic news spread through the conveniently porous borders.

In case of Tunisia, Egypt, Russia and India, the feeling of unrest or betrayal by the rulers was there among the masses. Social media fueled that feeling to become large protest movements.

In, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, the potential of social media to fuel the unrest was either absent owing to poor technology infrastructure or was almost suppressed.

Yes, the Internet has its own negatives and its increasing use is bound to bring many issues of concern with it, but at the moment, it is being used as the foreground where some of the biggest mass uprisings are taking place. And Internet is doing it by bringing the prominence of the public sphere back again.

Citizens are discussing the problems that affect them. They are getting feedbacks in real time. They are connecting to the like-minded ones in the pursuit of the speedy grievance redressal giving rise to the group formation trends. 

And when there is something endemic affecting a vast stretch of the population, such discussions are giving way to the mass uprisings. It might be the return of the public sphere as Jürgen Habermas had once expected.

It is premature to write whether the current mass-uprisings would lead the ‘representative democracy-reliant nation-states’ to give way to ‘deliberative democracy-reliant political setup’ with an activist public sphere as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Russia, India and the global economic village, all are in the first stage of the upheaval and no one knows what shape the rehabilitation would take; how participatory would it be?

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Friday 27 July 2012

EXPRESSIONS (BLACK)


EXPRESSIONS (BLACK) 

A CHARCOAL DRAWING SKETCH BY RAGINI  

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Email at: interact@banarascalling.com 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Thursday 26 July 2012

HIS RUN FOR PEACE

LIFE - COLORES INFINITUM (10)

He had never seen a court room. In fact on one in him family had never been to any court. Except newspapers and television channels, they were totally unaware of what it takes to stand the might of the Indian judicial process. But don’t get confused by the word ‘might’. It symbolizes here the huge judicial apparatus fallen short of aspirations due to variety of factors like manpower deficiency, constitutional bottlenecks in the process of speedy justice, external manipulative effects on it, and so on.

In the last two years, he has seen quite a lot of it. He has to practice to remain unmoved by the increasing pace of sluggishness in his case as there is no other way out but to fight. But to put it on record, the way the proceedings take place, it is nothing but a nightmare to get even a taste of it. For example, in his case, when the court trial began (in a Fast Track court), it was supposed to get over within a year. That didn’t happen. Now it’s over two years. He has not seen much progress except the fact that Fast Track courts were dismantled in Uttar Pradesh even before the case was one-year old. Anyway, he has not been able to find any noticeable difference between working of a normal court and a Fast Track court.

He maps almost 100 Kms to the NCR court almost thrice a month for the court case where he is the main complainant. What happens most of the time?

In all the court hearing dates, almost 80 per cent have gone without any activity.

The maximum percentage goes to the formal witnesses (police and all) not making it to the court.

The other major reason has been the unaccounted strikes by the lawyers. Though he speaks to his lawyer before leaving for the court on the next date of hearing, on several occasions, he finds, on reaching the court premises, that lawyers have announced strike. Reason might be any, arising from administrative to legal to personal like a weekend day should be a holiday.

Then you have judges going on leaves or on different training sessions and no information is relayed about it. Mechanism for this sort of information update is available for higher courts but not for the district courts.

And above all, there are delaying tactics by the lawyers to buy time, to irritate you, to to make efforts for back-door deals, to frustrate you, to make you feel like running away from the case.

And there are similar stories all across, it seems, with the lower courts, be it in some small town, in a dilapidated building or in a sprawling metro, in a centrally air-conditioned complex.

Recently, he had taken an elderly person to a Delhi court for a settlement case. The 80+ grandpa was not ready to receive the summons as he was not able to commute to the court 30 Kms away from his place. The policeman assured him that he would send someone to take the person from his place to court and leave him back. Once, the grandpa signed the paper, the policeman very conveniently ditched him. Now like every law-abiding common man, this grandpa, too, was in a fix and was worried about the consequences if he didn’t appear in the court on the day.

When the grandpa contacted him, he requested him to let it go to next date of hearing as he had a packed day ahead. Based on his experience, he told the grandpa that extending court dates are the easiest thing in a judicial process. But grandpa was beyond counseling. So there they were, on the way to the swanky new court complex of the Indian capital city.

They reached there at 11:45 AM. Now see, what happened. The presiding judge was out on some training. Now, it was frustrating, for though he has been witnessing these things regularly, but the grandpa, who had difficulty in walking, had to walk for almost half a kilometer to reach to the court room just to hear this. Nothing happened except we got the next date.

If some of the court rooms enlighten the whole of the humanity by their judicial activism, the major lot is there to make you indifferent to it, for they sound indifferent on worst atrocities inflicted on you. (The eternal question of the unstable poise of the good and the bad aspects of every human trait!)

Court rooms, like railway stations, are places where you can see every sort of characters, a society can throw. There are judges who sit there to sift right from wrong. There are lawyers who defend justice or act irrespective of justice, just for the client. There are commission agents who offer to broker deals in every type of case. There are victims like him fighting the case to get peace for the pain inflicted on his innocent family. There are alleged criminals proclaiming innocence while making mockery of the victims. There is the court support staff but no one can define what sort of support they extend.

Certain pains in life one needs to learn to live with. They become a part of your life. He, too, is learning to make peace with the pain. He believes taking the court case to a just conclusion is a significant peacemaker for him.

Let’s see, for how long, it keeps on testing his determination.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Wednesday 25 July 2012

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: NEWS SOURCES HAVE SIMPLY EXPLODED

I wrote this write-up for a research journal during May 2012. I am now publishing it on my blog in parts.

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS - PART-X

NEWS SOURCES HAVE SIMPLY EXPLODED

News sources have simply exploded giving the rare opportunity to have a window into the most opaque regimes. We are not sure of the scale of the massacre brought about by Hafez Assad in Syria in 1982 but we are well aware of the terror unleashed by Bashar al-Assad on his own countrymen. The scale of human killings in the Tiananmen Massacre is still debatable but we had so many clear visuals of the villagers protesting in a small Chinese village Wukan challenging the state against forced land seizures.

Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Russia, China – scattered geographical dots with poor record of open communication, and yet, many of us in India, and in many countries like India, not directly engaged with the geopolitical realms of these iron-curtained countries, are very well aware of what happened in these countries during the protest phase.

And the source of the information in every such case has been the protester on the street.

He fed the social media platforms on Internet with information consistently. Direct access of the consumer to the Tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and YouTube videos echoed and connected to the strength of the protester. It was good enough reason for the media houses to go for these as the worthy sources to use the information (obviously with the rider, quoting the source as from this or that social media platform.)

If we say media convergence is basically Internet driven, it is an apt reference point.

Internet has made accessing information in the real time much easier and a lot more game. There are specific secondary research tools available to harness information from the Internet. And a tectonic shift in the social media usage habit towards serious issues like protesting corruption or despots has suddenly opened floodgates of information availability.

Sifting of desired from the rubbish is a meticulous task but it is compensated by the volume of the worthy information available.

So even if it might have been boring to monitor the social media trend analytics on Osama bin Laden, it was worth it for the news worms, for, a Tweet broke the news first that he was killed. The only video of Muammar Gaddafi’s fate available was shot on cellphone camera and circulated through the social media platforms. During his August fast last year, Anna Hazare released on YouTube his message from inside the prison. 

Almost of the media houses have presence across the communication platforms, print, electronic and web. With increasing count of smartphones, mobile version of the news sites is gaining a steady foothold. The multiplied news sources provide information ‘as-it-happens’. Producers go for instant packaging. Consumers get the information ‘almost-as-it-happens’.

Convergence helps media outfits to synchronize content by making seamless flow of information from one platform to the other possible with sharing and transmission in real time.  If being 24/7 counts, Internet has become the primary interface between the consumer and the producer, and in turn, modifying the way information is packaged and consumed. And the positive usage of the social media is the perfect toppings over it.

To continue..

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Tuesday 24 July 2012

SEEMA AZAD AND VISHWAVIJAY: WHY CAN’T INDIA ACCOMMODATE VOICES LIKE BINAYAK SEN?

It has been so commonly used to kill voices that mere its mention suffocates now. You can find it happening regularly, unabatedly, if you have the guts to explore the Indian hinterlands. You would find detentions and arrests, simply based on reasons as bizarre as anti-politician slogans to possessing anti-State literature.

It sucks.

‘Political prisoners’ have seldom been a hotly debated issue in India. Dr. Binayak Sen has been an exception but we need to keep in mind that it was not before three years and the mounting national and international pressure of the human rights networks and activists that he could walk free, even then on the Supreme Court orders.

Human rights activist and journalist Seema Azad and her husband Vishwavijay Kamal are the same story as Dr. Binayak Sen and so like many others. They were arrested in February 2010 by the Uttar Pradesh Police for alleged involvement in anti-state activities. And what was recovered from them – Maoist literature said to be seditious in tone. Now it has been a routine debate if such silly reasons could be grounds for arrest under a charge as serious as treason. Even the apex court has come down heavily on such reasoning most notably in Dr. Sen’s case.

But, at the same time, we need to keep in mind what happens at lower courts and most of the high courts. While almost of the lower courts toe the State line pushing the so-called anti-State elements behind the bar, many high courts, too, follow the suit. And unlike Dr. Binayak Sen’s case, many don’t see the mobilized activity and support to reach to the Supreme Court. Fighting a case against the State in SC is a financial problem too, until you get a Good Samaritan in some good lawyer to handle the legal tentacles. So many of such cases seldom come on the radar of ratings-hungry media vehicles as they lack ‘their customized’ news elements.

As reports say, Seema Azad and her husband were arrested from the Allahabad railway station while returning from the International Book Fair in Delhi.  They were labeled as members of the banned outfit Communist Party of India (Maoist). They were slapped with the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and other serious sections of the IPC. Let’s see the body of the evidence behind the police wisdom: (The Hindu, June 12, 2012)

Detailed programme of Krantikari Jan Committee from 1 to 26 (month not mentioned); a pamphlet carrying the message of CPI (Maoist); a ‘PLGA' pamphlet related to the arrest of Kobad Gandhi; agenda of ninth NPB meeting on 30 and 31 January; pamphlet calling for the fifth anniversary of the party; pamphlet pertaining to the arrest of central committee members and five activists of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh; pamphlet related to the oath on PLGA day; and about Rs. 50,000 in cash.

Now many of the journalists access and openly flaunt documents on TV screens that are otherwise classified top secrets like defence reports. One poor upshot is the FIRs. FIRs are not supposed to be given to anyone except the parties involved. Anyone can get a copy of FIR. Any one can obtain copy of the case diary of any case running in the lower courts though it is legally not possible. Kashmir separatists are making seditious speeches and organizing rallies every other day. It is happening all the time. Rarely we see action on these acts.

And here, as has been the norm, the police wisdom found its takers. An Allahabad court sentenced the duo to life imprisonment on June 8 this year.

When arrested, Seema Azad was Uttar Pradesh Organizing Secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the organization Dr. Sen has been associated with. A Psychology post-graduate from the Allahabad University, Seema has been branded an anti-State actor based on the evidence the apex court has already refused to accept. While granting bail to Dr. Sen April last year, the SC bench of of Justices H.S. Bedi and C.K. Prasad observed:

“We are a democratic country. He may be a sympathiser. That does not make him guilty of sedition.” Drawing an analogy, he asked Mr. Lalit: “if Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography is found in somebody's place, is he a Gandhian? No case of sedition is made out on the basis of materials in possession unless you show that he was actively helping or harbouring them [Maoists].”

If that be the case and if SC observations are seen as standards in the judicial process, why the Seema and her husband had been incarcerated and later on sentenced?

Like Dr. Sen, Seema, too, has been victim of her acts criticising the State policies. Dr. Sen was one of the pioneers of health care reforms and worked with the Chhattisgarh government on the ‘Mitanin’ project but when he started pointing towards State’s wrong policies and misdeeds towards the tribal and rural people, he was branded a Maoist and put behind bars.

Reports say, Seema too, is a victim of political vendetta. She consistently published articles in her magazine Dastak criticising State policies like Operation Greenhunt and a critical cover story on Mayawati’s land acquisition for the Ganga Expressway project. She was arrested when Mayawati was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

There is no wrong in being a Naxal sympathizer. Government is always on the lookout for mediators during any hostage crisis (we saw some of them recently) to talk to the Naxals to secure release of the abducted government functionaries. These mediators openly criticise the State and are soft-spoken towards the Naxals. Aren’t these mediators Naxal sympathizers then?

True, Left-wing extremism is a big threat for the country, but in place of fighting the menace in real terms with clear policies, we find it a mess of misplaced priorities. So, villagers are branded Maoists and killed again in Chhattisgarh and a flip-flop ensues on identity of the victims. So, social activists raising voice against State policies and politicians are branded Maoists and targeted by the State by manipulating the legal framework envisioned to control the internal security threats.

Today, the Allahabad high court was to hear the appeal of Seema and her husband against the lower court decision. It was not on the agenda of many news carriers except few. Later on this evening, when I tried to google information about what happened at the high court, I couldn’t come across even one. I checked the Allahabad high court website but couldn’t trace the information even there.

We need to work on this case and every other the way pressure was created in Dr. Sen’s case to undo the State’s wrong. It’s a long battle, but, we as a society need to realise its importance. We need to learn respecting the voices of dissent.

Why can’t India accept voices like Binayak Sen and Seema Azad?

For how long would we continue with the misplaced priorities to check the internal security threats and in-process, targeting and killing our very own people?

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Monday 23 July 2012

TRUE EMBODIMENT OF THE NEVER-SAY-DIE SPIRIT

LIFE - COLORES INFINITUM (9)

Day before yesterday, I received a mail from her on a jubilant note and why not. After all, it is what we all look for in life, something that deeply soothes our conscious, highly motivates our soul to do more, and it felt good to be part of her jubilation.

Two of the students of the residential school for socioeconomically weaker students run by her organization in collaboration with some sincere funders have secured seats in the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies that is a Triple IT (IIIT) institution. They have done it with flying colours. They now have a secure professional career ahead as the institute is to take care of the educational expenses of the students.

I. Srikanth and P Hemavathi are high scorers of the school (http://www.spreadinternational.org/activities/supportachild.html).   Srikanth’s GPA was 10/10 while Hemavathi’s was 9.2/10. Hemavathi is physically challenged. In a horrible accident, while working on a concrete mixture, one of her hands was crushed.


Achievers like these are true embodiment of the never-say-die spirit and they inspire by their approach towards life. Personally, I don’t believe in role-models but I have learnt a lot from these real-life achievers.

And equally significant are the outfits working at the grassroots level to bring more smiles by bringing qualitative changes to the lives of the marginalized.

Spead India Nilayam hostel facility as the Spread, the international partner of Sai Padma’s Global Aid, calls the facility, has been a success story providing quality education and living conditions to the needy students like orphans, child labourers, tribal children or similar groups from other weaker sections of the society. The Spread facility also covers tribal hamlets running hamlet schools.

I firmly believe the facility is going to give the society many more achievers in the days to come.

I do believe in the prevailing power of ‘doing and extending good’ and there are sincere and committed individuals and outfits silently contributing to the quest to achieve social parity.  

I would say it was a serendipitous movement during the IIT Delhi seminar two years ago. The professor who had invited me to the event was very emphatically talking about a lady who was looking after the hamlet schools and residential facility project of his US based organization in Andhra Pradesh’s Gajapathinagaram district. The management professor was all praises for the efficiency and commitment of the differentially-abled social worker. She was to attend the event and I, like others, was eagerly looking forward to meet her. But to our dismay she couldn’t make it to the seminar.

I asked the professor for her contact details and requested him to write her a mail with copy to me initiating the communication. Some calls thereafter, that is how the correspondence began, and it hit the right chord subsequently.  Though we are yet to meet in-person, we already discuss a lot on social themes.

Sai Padma epitomizes the never-say-die spirit. She is a committed disability activist. A Polio survivor with 70% disability, she is someone who has created an identity for herself that is beyond borders. And she has achieved a scale in her field of activity in spite of being struck by Polio very early followed by many other ailments. She has had to go through painful medical treatments.

Now she heads her NGO, Global Aid (http://www.globalaid.in/), raises funds for ‘differently-abled, runs the hostel-cum-school for tribal children, regularly writes, loves to travel and aspires to scale the Earth.

She is Commerce and Law Graduate and is completing CA (Final) and MBA (Finance). Married to Pragnanand Busi, a development professional and Human Rights activist, she lives in Vishakhapatnam.

Above all, she is one of most perfect human-beings I have ever been in communication with. She embodies grit and determination.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Sunday 22 July 2012

SOMETIMES, DIFFERENCES CREATE A BRIDGE (LIFE IS CERTAINLY BEAUTIFUL - II)

LIFE IS CERTAINLY BEAUTIFUL.. (II)

Life is certainly beautiful
Off late, it has been generous enough
To let me be with the rediscovery
Knowing I am not going to listen to it again

It is good to go unbound
It is bliss to feel the shared ground
I know I have marked mine
Thou shall be the next to join

Sometimes, differences create a bridge
That, the voice of the soul nurtures
Making existence one with the conscious
In conversation with the thoughts

Deciphering the rediscovered realms
That echoes, deep inside me
Reaching to the ‘self-contained’ me
Unraveling the forgotten mysteries

I cruise, to the known, to the uncharted
Steering clear of the thick sound
Creating ‘new’ is the pleasing adventure
Reclaiming ‘now’ is gaining the lost ground,

With you, with me, and with all
Yes, life is certainly beautiful..

To continue..  

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/ 

Saturday 21 July 2012

RENUNCIATION & ENLIGHTENMENT


RENUNCIATION & ENLIGHTENMENT 

CATEGORY: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Email at: interact@banarascalling.com 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/  

Friday 20 July 2012

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: MULTIPLIED NEWS SOURCES AND MEDIA CONVERGENCE


I wrote this write-up for a research journal during May 2012. I am now publishing it on my blog in parts.

2011 MASS UPRISINGS: SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS - PART-IX

MULTIPLIED NEWS SOURCES AND MEDIA CONVERGENCE

Social media, while playing a significant role in spreading protests throughout the globe, has changed the dynamics of the news flow dramatically. And media convergence has made it possible.

In the news media industry, source of information is the main driving force. News production runs on the values like proximity, authenticity, validity and relevance based on the circumstance and genre of the news. 

Traditionally, organizational channels and news wires have been the main source of the information flow. The next big addition to it came from the Internet. 

Now no one can expect a newsroom without Internet and googled information. And social media is giving brilliant dimensions to this change especially in situations when proximity becomes more important than authenticity, as in cases of the follow-up stories.

We often come across reports that Twitter and Facebook intend to exploit the information flow through their networks to significantly alter the news industry and they have a point here to make, for they led the revolutions in the closed regimes like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. They have started sounding significant in iron-curtained regimes like China, Russia and Syria. 

Social media has made a difference in countries where the traditional media is totally controlled. Social media mobilized opinion of millions on issues like corruption and corporate greed, considered dead issues not so long ago.

The last year was the year of the protester, a year marked by the protests when the common men took to the streets, from Tunisia to India, from Egypt to USA, from Canada to Greece, to protest regimes and to protest on issues. Most of the protests were operated in a way totally amorphous with no figurehead. 

Instead, there were so many heroes, unnamed, leading from the front, fighting in the streets and on the communication platforms, outdoing the regimes and the controls, by disseminating their stories of struggle, plight and momentary triumphs.

And convergence gave them the global voice. The human aspect of the media convergence blended so well with its technological and business counterparts - that it is going to be the next big thing in the news production industry.

Redoing the definition: Websites, print editions and television programming – on any given day, they all have multiple stories based on important Tweets.  Tweets form major chunk of breaking news stories these days and the trend effectively began with the Arab Spring.  

Hostile conditions for working journalists in these crisis hotbeds left very few international media persons there and the global media largely depended on the social media feeds by the protester on the street. That contingency measure looks well to become a model now. Right from the office of the Indian Prime Minister to the junk celebrities of Indian film and sports industries, to the global newsmakers, everyone has now microblogging presence and it is significantly aiding to the news pool of the organizations.

To continue..

 ©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/