TECHNOLOGY CAN RESOLVE CONFLICT; CREATE A DEMOCRATIZED COUNTRY

The Maoist insurgency is a grave issue concerning the country.  The Naxalite-Maoist insurgency began after the formation of Communist party of India (Maoist) in 2004.

The beginning can be traced back to late 1967. The Naxals are based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The name “Naxal” is derived from a village named Naxalbari in West Bengal, where the movement had its origin.They intend to wage a people’s war against the political power and proclaim democratic revolution.

The naxalites operate in 60 districts in the country, which include state of Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

An ongoing conflict between Maoist groups and the Government of India has dislodged the tribal people from their natural habitat and pushed them towards an untold misery. The Maoist operates in 60 districts in India. However, Chhattisgarh was declared as the epicenter of the conflict with 10 affected districts.

Aiming to resolve the conflict and to bridge the gap that stems from the collective failure of the government and indifferent attitude of the mainstream media, Shubhranshu Choudhary has been making a lot of efforts to give voice to the whole section of people in Chhattisgarh, who are usually neglected by the mainstream media.

Choudhury founded CG Net Swara, a creative platform in Bengaluru. Its main purpose is to focus and resolve the problems of people of Chhattisgarh, those who are unheard and unnoticed by the mainstream media.

Shubhrabshu Choudhary is a Knight International Journalism Fellow. He was a BBC South Asia producer for more than one decade. He serves as a media trainer for the BBC World Service Trust, the United Nations and Indian universities.

Choudhary for his remarkable novelty of CG Net Swara has been recently honored with a prestigious award for digital activism at the Barbican in London. The award was given by a prominent London based campaigning organization called Index on Censorship for freedom of expression. The award is felicitated every year to recognize the bravest journalist, artist, digital innovators around the world. 

His sense of belongingness, and proximity pulled him to these regions and to his people, to understand their problems. Choudhary was inspired to create a news platform for this region during his stint at BBC.  “I was travelling from one war zone to another, then wars started near my home. I grew up in central India and I also covered the region for the BBC. When something happens nearer to you, nearer to your heart, it makes you think more. The difference in this case was that I grew up in that area, and the backbenchers in my school – they were the ‘terrorists’ that the prime minister called the ‘biggest internal security threat’, and it unnerved me. These were the students that never raised their voices, and how come 25 years later they had become ‘terrorists’?” He expressed his concern.

While speaking at TEDx, Shubhranshu said, “I am a journalist, but when I look at journalism it is still very aristocratic, where a small number of people sitting on top have too much power and the huge majority of people don’t have any voice or have very little power to decide what is not heard and what should be heard.”

He argues, “When a group’s voice is not being heard, grudges accumulate. The absence of those debates leads to dissatisfaction and leaves communities susceptible to groups who come to the forest claiming that they can create something better: We call it the Maoist problem, but the number of people in the forest who are Maoist is 2 per cent or 5 per cent. They have simple problems such as water, roads, hospitals, jobs, and we don’t deliver them with these because we didn’t hear them.”

Thus, in an effort to democratize the media and to create new waves for the people who are abandoned, he did something revolutionary. He said, “We started a Yahoo Group which helped in restricting Government’s use of militias. As such, the group helped to stop genocide in the area with help of some citizen journalist. The mainstream media did not report it.”

Due to the reporting by their Yahoo Group, the human rights violation related to murder and rape in the tribal area came to a halt as Public Interest Litigations (PILs) were filed. The Supreme Court declared Government’s backed militia Salwa Judum as illegal and unconstitutional and ordered its dissolution.  Choudhary’s group helped in sensitizing people.

“As internet has very limited reach, and it is in English, in Chhattisgarh we have only 0.7% of people. So thinking of how to reach people in a democratized way, I thought about using the most democratized tool called the mobile phone. In fact, the Indian telecommunications regulator TRAI suggests that access to mobile phones stand at around 70 per cent, with this figure at 40 per cent in rural communities” he added.

He didn’t seek for technological expertise. He, instead, went ahead with his skills and knowledge. He, along with his team that included a researcher at Microsoft Research India and an engineer from IIT Kanpur, created a new innovative media service in which anyone can call in and leave a message in their own language and suggest or tell new stories. People can call and listen to the stories created or left by others.

Shubhranshu says, “What we have done is, we have put a server in the middle which is linked to a telephone number. People call and record their message. Once the message is received, we cross check, verify and translate the stories. We then put up the stories which are sometimes picked up by media, sometimes an activist takes it to court or somebody takes it to the secretary and the loop is completed.  This is how news is coming from people, by some people and going back to people and we are getting lots and lots of results. To reach those people who are not in the internet we need to resort to this last mile connectivity which is through the voice. This little initiative can be taken to many frontiers and become the audio book, a Google of the poor.”

His next step is a shortwave radio, which would allow them to reach much bigger audience and geography. He says, “The combination of mobile, internet and radio can really create a democracy in this country. If you can link with radio you have to do so from outside the country because India doesn’t allow shortwave radio. If we want to do shortwave linkage we can only do it from outside India.” He believes that the combination of mobile, internet and radio can really create a democracy in this country.

The article was originally published at theinteractiveinquirer- http://bit.ly/1hTTF6O