War and unknowing

A wonderful new review for The Seasons of Trouble in The Caravan focusses on one of the hardest experiences of living in a postwar society: unknowing. The reviewer Vidyan Ravinthiran seems most drawn to the disappearance of Sarva in the book. This pleases me no end, given that it is Mugil, the former female child soldier, that most readers have connected with most till now. I had begun to feel bad for Sarva, as I am guessing many writers do for their less loved characters, so this review is reaffirming as it acknowledges the struggles of living in a "bleak, windblown space, in which rumour and cultural superstition projected their own horrors". More:   

Mohan has a writer’s eye for the telling detail, whether psychological or sensuous, and reading this passage, it struck me that a short story, even a novel, could be written about a Tamil mother’s “hours of not knowing.”

Another unexpected review in Bookforum continues the idea of unknowing, extending it to how governments wield the absence of information to wage war against communities, people, individuals. The author is the fantastic Anand Gopal, who wrote No Good Men Among the Living, on America and its war in Afghanistan through the eyes of Afghans. His piece is an astute treatise on conflict writing itself, and on how 9/11 and the "war on terror" narrative has influenced international politics. 
 
Terrorism, terror, or terrorist, or Kottiya (Tiger), he writes, 

is perhaps one of the greatest linguistic and legal tools for repressive governments ever devised: By branding an opposition movement a terrorist organization, they can justify all kinds of atrocities against anyone they suspect of being associated with that group. Political dissidents and social critics of all stripes are languishing in prison cells from Damascus to Cairo to Colombo because of the term’s sheer power, as codified in an ever-expanding web of anti-terrorism laws.

On the book itself:

The effect of these three interwoven narratives is haunting, and The Seasons of Trouble is a work of daring empathy.

... after the prologue, Mohan’s first person is entirely absent... This form, for all its shortcomings, can work as an act of translation. The Seasons of Trouble and its predecessors appear to be animated by a deeply political concern: How to make the lives of the poor, the remote, the brown and the black, legible? How to make their actions and aspirations meaningful, their deaths grievable? By doing away with the traditional authorial intrusions, and by recruiting the full array of techniques from literary realism, these works sometime succeed in grounding us so thoroughly in the inner logic of others that empathy becomes easy and solidarity possible.

Do It Yourself during Chennai floods

Chennai, the unique, wonderous city that introduced me to journalism, freedom and politics, has been flooded for weeks. It has had the highest rainfall in a 100 years, perhaps a sign of climate change, but the chaos is purely due to short-sighted urban development. The airport over a river bank, entire residential colonies over lakes, an IT hub over marshlands. But this stock-taking and course-correction must come after the water recedes. Today, Chennaiites are showing remarkable creativity and community spirit to survive. I wrote this story for The Economic Times on December 4, 2015.

On Monday, December 1, Bharani MB walked down from his terrace, stepped carefully into the muddy water in his ground floor house, balanced himself by holding the edges of submerged sofas, his parked motorbike and finally his front gate. In his neighbourhood of Virugambakkam, rainwater had risen to his chest.

He climbed on the gate and waved at a passing rescue boat on the road, ferrying five people already. Bharani had done this for three days, without avail, but today, the boat stopped. "Doctor-a?" the boatman shouted. Bharani was wearing a white headband with a bright red cross drawn with a felt pen. "Yes!" shouted Bharani in Tamil, relieved. "I have medicines in my backpack!" The boat made its way towards him. Since then, Bharani has been staying at a marriage hall, giving pro bono medical help to flood victims at nearby shelters. "A red cross is a code everyone understands," he said. "It was my only way to survive, and now I still wear it while volunteering."

Elsewhere in the city, Krishna Bharadwaj was stuck at work, and heard it was starting to flood near his house. He quickly logged on to youtube and downloaded a video showing how a car battery is removed. He sent the video to his mother who was at home, and the 59-year-old homemaker with no prior experience with automobiles, removed the car battery by watching it.

When techie Sivabalan saw the Adyar river overflow and water levels near Kotturpuram house rise, he filled gunny bags with sand from a construction site and guarded his compound for just long enough to save valuables like documents and appliances before the water gushed in. Some call it survival instinct, some profound resilience. Whatever the driving force, Chennaiites have shown phenomenal creativity in an overwhelming moment that was set to consume the city. They have done it before: during the tsunami in a December more than 10 years ago, fighting another kind of water rage through individual courage and community effort.

Today, as Chennai has received unprecedented rainfall, the young and old, techies and cops, drivers and engineers, have been showing that same old creativity under pressure. They are quick thinking, organised and miraculously generous. Groups of neighbours in an inundated Velachery were seen making home-made rafts to make food runs or rescue people. "It's just plastic oil drums lashed together with a construction plank and a clothesline," said Jayanth Vincent, a resident.

In Saidapet, Dandapani, an electrician, turned an old fridge into a float, using the space inside to distribute donated blankets and mosquito repellant around his slum. Driver Purushothaman went around Taramani, setting up a rope way so people could walk through deep water. Phones are crucial for rescue and communication, but there was no way to charge them. Power supply was cut off for over 48 hours in many areas to prevent accidents with live wires in water. College student Shilma Joseph waded through knee-deep water, boarded two buses from Mogappair to reach Central railway station to charge her phone.

Journalist Karthik Subramanian tweeted offering his solar powered WiFi. Sriram Krishna, a law student in a high-rise with solar power, swam in Perambur with 12 full power banks in a waterproof backpack, half-charging dead phones for people. A resident named him "Charger Sriram". As phone networks were too spotty or jammed for calls, most people used Whatsapp, Twitter and Facebook to share information, pictures and call for rescue.

Social media has been a life-saver, but as fake messages mounted - crocodiles on the loose, lakes breached and bridges collapsed - myth busters too were born. "Don't believe until you hear it from an official," tweeted musician Krish Ashok. Others tweeted contacts for the NDRF, Practo and @DoctorsForSeva had doctors on emergency, Sathyam Cinemas and Phoenix Mall declared their doors open to the stranded.

A website called ChennaiRains.org has Google forms to aggregate rescue requests that they then forward to Emergency 108 and NDRF. Another group started Floodmap Chennai, an interactive map that shows which of the more than 3,000 streets are flooded. Chennai Flood Virtual Communication room, set up by IAS officer Manivannan from the Tamil Nadu Water Board, works on behalf of senior civil servants to coordinate relief activity via Whatsapp and phone. BangaloreforChennai.com in Bangalore collects and delivers donated power banks to Chennai. They suggest buying banks online and delivering to their address in Bangalore, from where volunteers drive twice a day to Chennai for delivery.

Several Chennaiites with relatively drier homes simply opened their doors to neighbours, policemen worked overtime, women cooked all the meat in their freezers and distributed it in shelters, citizen journalists uploaded video testimonies of marooned people to alert officials, and animal-lovers offered to taxi dogs to a dry place in Bangalore.

Through individual courage and community effort, most of Chennai has been staying afloat. Videographer Sathish Alex Paul said he was shooting a woman being helped through deep water. “She saw my camera, waved, and said, ‘Thambi, make sure you get my pretty side, ok?’” Perhaps that’s the most heroic of all: that even in neck-deep water, Chennai retains its sense of humour.

The Discontent of Hardik Patel

After he brought Ahmedabad to a standstill last week, Hardik Patel was surprised to face a tougher audience in Delhi on August 30. “This is a new empire. It will take some time to conquer their hearts,” he told me on Monday morning, trying to sound upbeat. “But we are one and I will build a national alliance with them.” 

For the first time since he burst into limelight in Gujarat, Hardik seemed unsure. He wanted to take his agitation for the Patedars community’s inclusion in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) list to a national level, “uniting all sidelined castes”. But laying bridges between Jats, Gurjars, Kurmis and Hoodas is already proving difficult. At the meeting with Gurjars and Kurmis in Delhi on Sunday afternoon, Hardik was interrupted minutes into his speech. Rajendra Mavi from the All India Gurjar Mahasabha asked how Hardik could support the Jats’ inclusion in the OBC list when many OBCs have objected to it in the Supreme Court. Gurjars are in the Rajasthan OBC list, and even counted as scheduled tribes in other states; it was in their interest to clarify how Hardik’s “reservation for all” demand would affect them. Did it actually mean reservation for none? 

In Gujarat, among his own – “27 crore Patedars”, as he likes to say – Hardik could easily swing between conflicting positions: “I’m not against reservation for OBCs”, followed by “OBCs with 45% marks steal seats from our smart Patels”. In Delhi, Hardik is a Patel out of the water, facing warring caste groups, each with their own community history and political influence. A week after he emerged as a young, brash enigma, Hardik repeats his catchy quotes, and the media poses tougher questions. 

The first scepticism around his ability to lead a national reservation movement – anti or pro, he is still unclear – stems from his age. It has been hard to ignore that Hardik is 22, especially when he so often acts his age. He called his own mentor Lalji Patel “bogus”, and after one massively successful rally, began to refer to himself as the “hruday samrat” of Patedars. He appears largely indifferent to facts. He has addressed more than 160 rallies on the issue, but in an interview with me in Ahmedabad, he said he didn’t care to know how many castes were in the list. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. When I asked if he had applied formally to the OBC Commission for inclusion, he said, “No, all that will take too long.” 

Yet, it would be a mistake to ignore Hardik Patel as a passing headline. He represents the desire of politically influential communities like the Patedars and Jats to corner more power by doing away with reservations entirely. Most of all, he represents a real sense of injustice among some dominant caste youth, stemming from frustrated aspirations and shifting social hierarchies. He is struggling in Delhi today, and a lot of his speech is hyperbole, but when Hardik says he is the face of lakhs of dominant caste youth in the country, he might be uncomfortably close to the truth. 

Hardik Patel giving an interview in Ahmedabad on August 29, 2015, as I waited my turn

Hardik grew up in Chandan Nagri, a lush agrarian village in Viramgam taluk, two hours from Ahmedabad. 90% of the 700-odd families here are Patedars. His family cultivates cash crops like groundnut, sugarcane and tobacco, hiring largely Dalit farm labour.

The family history hugs that of the Patedar community, 12% of the state population, owning large tracts of prime farm land, and considered upper caste. (The term Patedar means one who owns land.) When the community launched massive protests in 1981 against Dalit and tribal reservations, and then against Gujarat’s OBC quotas in 1985, Hardik’s father Bharatbhai Patel joined in. The agitations displaced the Congress, inaugurated the rise of the BJP and consolidated the Patedars’ hold over Gujarat politics. 

By the nineties, Bharatbhai started a shop for submersible pumps. Like him, most agrarian Patedars had by then invested their surplus farm income in small and medium businesses. They dominated ceramic, textile, private educational institutions, diamond polishing, real estate and pharma industries. Migration to East Africa and subsequently to the US and UK, started to bring in substantial remittances. Nearly every family in Chandan Nagri has a relative abroad. 

Like many Patedars, Bharatbhai invested in his children’s education. Hardik however admits to being an “average, actually below average” student, more interested in cricket, passing four subjects in Class 12 only through grace marks. After scraping though his BCom degree in a private college, he started to run the family business, like many of his friends. Soon, however, he joined the Sardar Patel Group, which campaigned for Patidar rights. Having been a campaigner for the BJP earlier, Bharatbhai didn’t object to his son’s choice. He believes it is from this experience that Hardik “understands the power of our votes.” The chief minister and 37 of 162 MLAs are all Patedars. The community can swing the votes of 62 constituencies. 

Today, as Hardik demands inclusion in OBC quotas, he rarely refers to this evolution of the Patedars. “Because it will not support his claim of backwardness,” says Gaurang Jani, sociologist and member of the OBC Commission in Gujarat. The predominant images of the Patedar rallies were of young men arriving in Pajeros, Dusters and Innovas. Jani explains that Patedars are in every way a dominant caste, beneficiaries of social, political and economic developments over decades. “If we apply the 11 criteria of backwardness for OBCs, Patedars will not qualify in even one instance,” says Jani. “All 146 communities in the Gujarat list applied legally for inclusion. The Patedars haven’t applied. They don’t really want reservation; they just don’t want anyone else to get it.” 

When Hardik speaks, it is his sister that he invokes. Monika’s grief about missing a state scholarship is now legendary in the state. “I got 84% in Class 12 but still didn’t get the government scholarship for my Bachelor’s. But you know who got it?” asks Monika, her voice rising like Hardik’s. “My best friend who got 81%. Because she is an OBC.” 

On stage, Hardik repeats, “A Patidar student with 90% marks doesn’t get admission in an MBBS course, while reserved category students get it with 45% marks.” Rallying young Patels roar in response, but this claim may be weak. A state medical admissions official says, “Of 4256 open seat in medical admissions, Patels got 1099 seats, which is nearly 25%. It’s about the same every year.” The cut offs for open seats and those reserved for socially and economically backward classes only differ by 2 to 3 percentage points. The reputed BJ Medical College, for instance, requires a minimum of 95% for open category, and 93.10% for backward class students. 

An Ahmedabad-based pharma company founder called it “nonsense and a shame” for affluent Patels to demand quotas. But some say that in the past few years, Patidar-dominated businesses have been in crisis. The diamond industry is in limbo; more than 20,000 small firms have shut down. Thousands of unemployed Patel stone-cutters and polishers have returned to their villages. Real estate prices have fallen, and so have farm incomes. “The Vibrant Gujarat ventures favoured more large conglomerates than local medium enterprises run by Patedars,” says historian Achyut Yagnik. 

Hardik agreed. “What has Gujarat model done for us? Rich got richer, poor got poorer. I think Modi fooled us, and helped his friends,” he said. Another young protestor, Varun Patel, said Patedars might have owned large farmlands earlier, but after division over decades, “men of this generation have only 2 or 3 bhigas each”. Many sold off their land to industries, but received no jobs in return. “We are not farmers anymore, economy is not great for our businesses and factories haven’t created enough jobs,” said Varun. “So what do I have left? Professions like doctor, engineer.” Today, as jobs dry up, businesses falter and the economic pie shrinks, the unrest among youth like Hardik is simmering. 

Sociologist Vidyut Joshi says that decades of reservation and development processes have created shifts in Indian society along caste and class lines. “Many upper caste youth are disgruntled seeing their OBC and SC neighbours get jobs,” says Joshi. “We can scoff at it as sour grapes, but in the hands of politically and socially powerful communities, it can have a significant effect.” Poor and well-off youth experience this differently. Studies have shown that within SC/STs and OBCs too, the more affluent castes corner benefits – the Dhodia tribe gets more ST scholarships than Bhils, Vankars more than Mahadalits. “Each caste group is not homogenous. Poor sections exist even within Patedars and Jats, and rich among the OBCs,” says Joshi. “Class stratification within castes is a social reality today – and reservation does not address that.” 

Some experts have understood this leg of the reservation agitations as an attempt to forward the RSS’s interest in economic reservation, instead of caste. “This is impossible in India, until caste and social discrimination really ends,” says the sociologist Gaurang Jani. The system addresses class in some ways; the OBC quota uses the creamy layer clause, using income levels to weed out prosperous candidates. But Joshi suggests that class can be considered more robustly, by including assets, traditional-modern occupations and urban-rural residence criteria, while not diluting or removing caste criteria. (This was once proposed by sociologist IP Desai in a dissent note during the Mandal Commission) 

Part-competitiveness, part-entitlement, Hardik’s demands are not just about Gujarat. He represents a churn in agrarian, land-owning communities especially in industrialising states like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Through all his confused bombast, he might touch a nerve because he takes caste pride and this sense of injustice – real and perceived – to dominant caste youth across the country. 

(An edited version of this appears in The Economic Times on September 1, 2015)

Reviews and the debut author

I usually skim reviews of my book, leaping across the paragraphs that describe the plot, my eyes now trained to scan for knowledgeable comment and of course, praise. It is as much an exercise in vanity as it is in humility. "Hey! Another reviewer likes my book!" but "Oh hey, they haven't gone into its soul, perhaps it is just like every other book they've liked." Maybe it's greed, maybe it's a realisation that while reviewers of non-fiction will judge the plot, facts and writing, few can really tell me anything about the book that I don't already know. 

Why do I want this? Because writing it was a lonely process, and while I can pretend I was in control of every one of the 100,000 words in it, the truth is that on many mornings, I took a gamble. Here's the speech I gave to myself multiple times: "I have to write 1000 words today, so here, let me write about Sarva's mother cooking for him, and maybe that will get me a 1000 words closer to finishing this book, argh!" Many decisions were instinctive. Answers to plot questions - Do I reveal this horror here, or is it to soon? - or location descriptions - Do I need all this blah blah about the house? - or even facts - How can I write accurately about this hospital bombing when I have witness accounts but official denials? - were often made simply on a certain feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was writing a book for the first time in my life. What did I know? Of course, my editor loved it, but he was on my side. So was my husband. So was my kind writing companion. Can someone who thinks nothing of me, hasn't seen my face or eaten my (very good) rasam rice, please tell me what works or doesn't and whether I should be allowed to do this at all? 
 
Thankfully, this eagerness to know if my gambles paid off is only rare. But it rears it ugly head occasionally. It makes my breath quicken every time I see a review. One of the earliest reviews in India, by Aditya Sinha in Mint overwhelmed me with how well it conveyed my unsaid intention: 

Rohini Mohan's The Seasons of Trouble... takes a micro view of the war’s end by, metaphorically speaking, selecting a couple of the corpses from under that loose tile and telling their stories, and the intimate stories-within-those-stories. It depicts the past as that which cannot be escaped, and memory as a tool for survival.

Now, this review in Art Review by Niru Ratnam is one of the few that explores the book's struggle with truth, as vague, compromised, and crucial as it is in times of conflict. It was published some months ago, but I only saw it this week. He begins by quoting me from page 368: 

About halfway through her 368-page study of the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s devastating civil war, Rohini Mohan writes about the problems of quantifying its effects: ‘In the cacophony of different accounts, attempts to measure the cost of the conflict – the counting of the dead, lost, disappeared, raped or displaced… became fraught with motives and desired ends. Propaganda eclipsed facts, denial extinguished compassion. The war’s end produced two aggressive parallel narratives, which ran fast and strong, never meeting.’

Agreeing how difficult it was to write about Sri Lanka when facts, histories, and timelines have long been contested by all sides, Ratnam sees my focus on three personal narratives rather than the documentary approach as "brave". 

Mohan confidently restages her characters’ motives, thoughts and conversations even when they might be hazy recollections in the minds of her very real subjects. It is a brave move – one that puts an element of creative writing into the most fraught of arenas. But if the ‘facts’ are so contested by both sides as to form a block to any dialogue, perhaps this is not as unlikely a strategy as it might first seem... Mohan is able to generate a highly nuanced account. 

Other than this, it is readers' reviews via email that have really told me things I couldn't possibly have imagined: what parts of the book people loved, which characters they identified with, what made them have to stop, the reason they recommended it to certain friends, why they felt lost after they finished, and how they'd have preferred a proper resolution in the end. Someone said it was their mother's first English book. Someone else - another journalist - said it made him jealous. A writer from Sri Lanka said it didn't tell them anything new, but hey, Rohini, thank you for writing. It is not negative or positive feedback, it is considered, deeply personal reaction that I have come to cherish.

The small, sincere ambitions of Selfie with Daughter

Yesterday, I had a long phone conversation with the man who is really behind the #SelfieWithDaughter, which many have been attributing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leaving it open for heightened praise and criticism. The real architect of the campaign is Sunil Jaglan - he is 33, a panchayat head of Bibipur village in Haryana, and he does not believe it will alone solve gender imbalance. It was just a fun idea, he says, but it was never meant to be the only one. Here is the story.

(An edited version of this appeared in Economic Times today with a more excited headline)

--

Soon after he woke up on Sunday morning, Sunil Jaglan posted a status update on his Facebook account. “Today, I will listen to honourable Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat on the radio,” the 33-year-old Panchayat head of Bibipur village in Haryana wrote in Hindi. After breakfast, Jaglan sat at the Sunday chaupal, or community meeting, with about 10 other villagers, his ear to the transistor. His three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Nandini was playing noisily at his home nearby.

At 11am, PM Narendra Modi’s address began. In the speech, Modi spoke of tourism, Yoga, school toilets, Raksha Bandhan, rain water harvesting and fertilizers. Someone at the chaupal passed around some channa to snack on. After a few words on urban rejuvenation, Modi switched to his love for social media, which Jaglan too was keen on. “I keep communicating with you through social media, and I get to know a lot of new-new things from you too,” Modi said. “But sometimes, in a remote village, a single individual does something that touches my heart.” He said the Central government scheme of Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter, launched on 22 January, was strengthened when individuals made it their own. Then, the PM uttered Sunil Jaglan’s name.

“Hain?!” Jaglan gasped, laughing. Some villagers clapped gleefully, others who had been distracted asked what had happened.

“Some days ago, a Sarpanch in Haryana's Bibipur village, Sunil Jaglan, had come up with a fun idea,” they heard Modi say, trying to shush each other at the same time. “He started the Selfie With Daughter initiative, which created such a storm that all fathers felt like clicking selfies with their daughters and posting it on social media.” The PM then asked more people to post selfies, to boost the pride in the girl child.

Since the radio address, social media saw #SelfieWithDaughter trending. Parents, especially fathers, posted pictures with their daughters. Jaglan spent the rest of the day trying to convince many villagers that he had not known that Modi would mention his work on the radio. “I really didn’t know, but I’m glad I tuned in! I try to be cool about it, but the selfies pouring into my Whatsapp account remind me. It’s amazing what can happen a political leader backs a sincere idea,” says Jaglan.

Jaglan announced the Beti Bachao, Selfie Banao campaign, now christened Selfie With Daughter, on June 19, his birthday, by posting a selfie with his own daughter Nandini. “Everyone’s taking a selfie these days, so I thought that would click,” he says. On his public Facebook account, he invited people across the country to Whatsapp him their selfies, the best of which would win a prize of Rs. 2100. Local newspapers and channels reported it, and so did some English national newspapers. A Zee News anchor called the idea “modern, cute and emotional, like Indians!” Jaglan says such coverage spread the news of the contest, but he hasn’t selected a winner, “because the contest is not even the point anymore.” Until Sunday, he had received nearly 700 selfies, but after Modi’s speech, he has stopped keeping count.

The campaign is Jaglan’s 101st. Since he became Bibipur’s sarpanch in 2010, Jaglan says he has launched 100 programmes on women’s empowerment. Many of them have his unique creative twist and sharp understanding of what will have mass appeal. For instance, he occasionally holds an objective-type quiz for Bibipur’s women, with questions like “What IPC section will apply if a boy teases you in the bus?” and “What evidence is necessary to file an FIR if your husband beats you?” Around the 2014 general and state elections, he set up an Unmarried Men’s Collective (Avivahit Purush Sanghatan), to highlight Haryana’s abysmal sex ratio of 841 females to 1000 males at birth, and the worrying practise in Haryana of buying brides from other states. “I’m all for cultural exchange, but buying women is not the way,” says Jaglan. In 2012, he held the first women’s khap panchayat, which decided to charge with murder those found killing female feotuses. The village also has a board at its entrance: Bibipur- The Women’s World. 

When asked what inspired his focus on women’s empowerment, Jaglan says grew up in a community where girls were considered a burden, but in his family of four siblings, gender discrimination was “totally absent”. He also offers his education – a bachelors in computer science and a masters in mathematics from Kurukshetra University – as a possible reason for his “liberal views”. He says he always disagreed with people’s views against intercaste marriage, or the acceptance of domestic violence, but did so quietly.

It was a personal moment that crystallized his resolve to speak up. When Jaglan’s wife gave birth to a healthy baby in January 2012, he bought his favourite sweets to distribute at the hospital. “The nurses refused to accept them,” says Jaglan. “They said I’ve had a girl and I should start saving my money now.”

Something gave that day in the hospital. “I was bursting with joy, and around me, people had the opposite reaction,” says Jaglan. “It made me wonder, is this the world my daughter is going to grow up in?”

The 2011 Census found that India’s child sex ratio had declined with “an all-time low of 918” to 1000. Women & Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said in April that about 2000 girls die every day in India – aborted, starved, poisoned or killed after birth. Women so gone missing are estimated to range from 2 to 25 million.

The task is onerous, and since Modi endorsed the daughter selfies, critics have called it shallow and inadequate to tackle real discrimination and rampant female feoticide. Reports find that the Rs. 100 crores allotted under Modi’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme had not reached the 100 gender critical districts in May.

Having occasionally faced the criticism himself, Jaglan asks, “Why do I like social media?” and replies himself. “Because when you scream there, people listen, media amplifies it, it creates awareness. But I know it only gives you a headstart for the real race.” His work on women’s rights range from cute media campaigns to a focus on harder changes like ensuring a quorum of at least 50% women in panchayat meetings and stopping prenatal sex determination. In just 3 years, he says Bibipur has recorded an even sex ratio at birth, and along with it, a gradual change in the gender attitudes of young parents. “No one wants to listen to gyan, but you can’t forget to sneak it in along with the selfie,” says Jaglan.