Members smile during a rehearsal break The group is performing qawwali at Goethe Zentrum for World Music Day Celebrations. Photo: G. Ramakrishna
A group of women qawwals share their experiences and the issues they highlight in their qawwalis
Hyderabad :
Away from the hustle and bustle of the bazaars in Charminar, a quiet lane in Sultanshahi resonates with qawwal claps and inside Shaheen Resource Centre, the chatter and laughter of young girls fills the air.
Amidst the harmonium preludes, the group wearing cheery yellow duppattas and feather caps sing a qawwali — Kab tak mera maula, dil mera pukara hai, shaadi meri marzi se kabhi hoti nahin hai, mujh ko kya pasand hai koi poochta nahin hai... Clearly this is not a regular qawwali where singers confine their performances to a spiritual context. The lyrics here carry a message that’s contemporary and temporal though it’s packaged in familiar qawwali tunes.
Jameela Nishat of Shaheen Resource Centre Photo: G. Ramakrishna
Jameela Nishat, the founder of Shaheen talks about using qawwali as a beacon of change. “Women are not given space in public; they are allowed to write poetry but not allowed to perform in public. This is our effort to bring a change in that mindset,” she shares.
A feminist Urdu poet who writes the songs which depicts reality, Jameela encourages women to take a step towards this change. As a result, the group from Shaheen has performed qawwalis at schools, colleges and other events for three years now.
Sania Fatima, a staff teacher and volunteer, shares the impact of qawwalis. “When we perform for special days like a Mother’s Day or Women’s Day, we intersperse the songs with messages like ‘beti bachao beti padao’ and highlight the abuse women face daily in their lives. The response is amazing as qawwalis are enjoyed by all,” she points out. Some popular tunes of classics like Tere mehfil mein kismet, aajmaake hum bhi dekhenge from Mughal-E-Azam have been used with lyrics changed to highlight contemporary social issues.
Tackling themes like dowry, education, taking care of one’s health, being independent and making life’s choices; lyrics in the songs asks tough questions. Sultana, who is a graduate, believes qawwalis can be used as instruments of change.
Zehra Jabeen recalls the experience of performing qawwali recently during the ‘Salaam Telangana’ event at Ravindra Bharati. “The crowd was restive and making lots of noise; it did not stop even when we started the qawwali. But within a few seconds, there was pin drop silence and they heard us with full attention.” .
It is a mixed group, comprising members of various ages and stages in life. A first year student Swati Kulkarni is also part of the group. “I have knowledge of music but singing a qawwali was new. Everything, from the costume, changing one’s voice, to singing in rhythm to the claps was different,” she smiles. The cheerful group looks forward to the qawwali performances.
“It is a big challenge to come out and stand courageously on a platform to sing. We hope our songs inspire many others too,” chips in Sania, the lead singer, and adds, “We brush aside minor issues of high notes and low notes. We make our voices heard as a group.”
The rehearsals for a forthcoming performance over, the girls break into a smile. “When we wear the costume and sing in rhythm, we feel so excited that we forget the world.”
(The group is performing as part of World Music Day celebrations at Goethe Zentrum on June 26; Entry: Free)
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Metroplus / by Neerja Murthy / Hyderabad – June 24th, 2016
The online fashion marketplace is here to provide a fillip to unbranded fashion
Sujayath Ali, founder of Voonik.com
Voonik.com, (both website and app) was founded with an idea to be a fashion marketplace for women looking for their everyday wear. As it’s labelled as the country’s first personalised shopping app, you’re curious about what it means in this context? “Voonik takes the skin tone, body type and preferences into consideration to see if the fit suits you. We’ve developed a 10000-rule algorithm in coordination with our stylists to assist users,” the founder Sujayath Ali states.
Finalising the criteria was a tough ask, but they’d readied them from a generalised questionnaire of over 150 questions in discussion with stylists that women consider as they shop.
Screenshot of the website
For now, its users are shown a series of celebrities with whom they can compare their body, tone and other preferences. Isn’t that objectification of sorts? “As it was a new idea, we needed a way out to familiarise our user-base. It’ll have an adequate replacement in the coming days,” elaborates Ali.
Voonik respects the fact that not everyone needs to be a fashionista for buying clothes online. “There are so many shopping sites that promote branded fashion but we’re here to show how potent unbranded fashion can also be. We didn’t want to sophisticate things and are clear of catering to the masses,” Ali elaborates. He justifies this saying, most women are focussed on the place and quality where a fabric comes from, than the brand altogether. It looks like their focused strategy has indeed paid off with nearly 6 million app installations in its 18-month run.
Beyond user needs, Voonik’s uniqueness shows up in their ‘Become a seller’ section. They have a one-of-a-kind image recognition platform that’ll help the management assess the quality of the fabric once sellers upload the images of the stock. That has helped them build a vast collection of 15-lakh clothing, the most for an online fashion outlet to date, globally.
They have interesting plans lined up for the times to come. Having just acquired a menswear shopping portal Getsty, they’re on the path to integrate men’s collection to their platform, which users can access through another exclusive app. There are two other acquisitions they remain tightlipped about, but with persistence, we get hints. “There’ll be a premium luxury section that’ll be launched too,” Sujayath manages to say.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Srivathsan Nadadhur /Hyderabad – March 07th, 2016
Most of the world’s disabled live in the global south. This is why India and other Brics nations must ensure their policies are both inclusive and accessible
Abidi says companies should not equate disability with corporate social responsibility.
Born with congenital spina bifida, a developmental disorder, Javed Abidi has traversed the world on a wheelchair, advocating the rights of the disabled.
Considered a pioneer of the cross-disability movement in India, he was instrumental in the drafting and passage of The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, and in the setting up of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People in 1996. He has been its director since 1997. In October 2011, he was appointed world chair of Disabled People’s International (DPI), a global organization working for the rights of people living with disabilities.
In July, Abidi also took over as the vice-chair of the International Disability Alliance, a global alliance working for disability causes. In his new role, he stresses that disability movements must focus on the global south (which includes India), for this is where nearly 800 million of the world’s one billion people with disabilities live. Edited excerpts from an email interview:
As the world chair of Disabled People’s International, what are your priorities?
The dynamics of the disability rights movement are going through tremendous churning at this point. In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) said one billion, or 15% of the world’s population, live with a disability. Of this, as many as 80%, or 800 million, live in countries of the global south. People with disabilities also comprise 20% of the world’s poorest. Yet the leadership and the mechanisms that shape policies that affect the lives of this 80% are controlled by people from the developed world, who have absolutely no idea what it means to be a person with disability—to not even have a wheelchair, to not even have a hearing aid, to live in abject poverty, etc. My biggest priority as of now is to remind the world, again and again, of this fact.
What is the DPI’s agenda for the UN general assembly’s high-level meeting on disability and development in September in New York?
In the past decade or so, it has by and large been established that disability is a cross-cutting human rights issue. But what the DPI and other global bodies are now trying to underline is that disability is also a developmental issue. Our first endeavour is to ensure that the respective governments send the highest level of delegations to this meeting. The DPI has also raised the demand for a global forum on disability and development—a platform for all stakeholders on the sidelines of the high-level meeting, along with a strong outcome document.
Most importantly, the DPI will try for a sizeable representation from the global south—from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean—to ensure that their disability and development agenda is not hijacked by people who have very different realities from ours.
How can workplaces in India be made disabled-friendly? What are the challenges, and how can they be met?
Companies that are serious and committed to being disabled-friendly will have to look at it as a policy issue at the highest level. Inclusivity is not just employing people with disabilities. It encompasses making all your facilities and systems accessible. Most companies approach this wrong and equate disability with corporate social responsibility. They first employ people with disabilities and then make their workplaces disabled-friendly. Very soon, India will have a strong anti-discrimination law on disability. Everyone will have no choice but to fall in line. It is up to the employers to decide if they want to be a role model or be forced to comply.
Post-2015, when the world prepares for a new development framework after the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), where do you see the disability movement going?
I think that in the past couple of years, development practitioners have become more aware of disability. The challenge is to translate this awareness into action and tangibles. Apprehensions are that disability will again be overlooked. Policymakers and decision makers do not seem to grasp the obvious connection between disability and human rights and development issues. For instance, if you talk about conflict and wars, disability has a direct and significant correlation to it. The same holds true for disability and natural disasters; disability and situations of humanitarian risks; disability and the effects of climate change, and so on.
The task at hand, especially for grass-roots organizations such as the DPI, is to ensure that we keep reminding the people who matter about us.
In what ways can India shape the global disability agenda?
If we go by the 15% theory of WHO, India would be home to more than 150 million people with disabilities, and some of these are the poorest and most vulnerable people on this planet. India’s policy on disability, hence, will have a significant impact on not only the region but also the world. With the new economic dynamics and the power balance shifting towards developing economies such as India and the other Brics nations—Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, it is imperative that their development policies are inclusive and accessible to disabled people. India should lead here by looking at reforms to advance disability rights, raising the issue at the UN and other bilateral and multilateral platforms. The nations of the global south, especially the Brics countries, are somewhat disillusioned by the MDGs and will therefore be critical to the post-2015 process.
What are the key hurdles in India’s disability movement and how can they be met?
The biggest challenge is to get the attention of policymakers and decision makers to put disability on the agenda and to convert the attention into political will. India made a grave mistake during the formative years, because of which our schools, colleges, universities and public infrastructure continue to be inaccessible to people with disabilities. Rather than rectifying those errors, we are continuing to build more barriers. In a budget analysis done by us, we found that in the Union budgets since 2008, India spends only 0.009% of its GDP on disability! A strong anti-discrimination law with punitive measures is also needed to ensure equal participation of people with disabilities.
What difference are you going to make for the movement in South Asia, especially since you are an Indian?
The MDG Report of 2012 says that by 2015, four out every five people living on less than $1.25 (aroundRs.70) a day will be in South Asia. It is anybody’s guess as to how many of them will be people with disabilities, given the vicious cycle of poverty and disability. My immediate aim is to build a strong cross-disability network in South Asia to highlight these issues. We have already started this process and some progress has been made.
As a major development aid donor, India also needs to rethink its “no-strings attached” south-south cooperation policy. A democracy cannot possibly fund projects that violate the human rights of people with disabilities by creating barriers for them.
source: http://www.livemint.com / Live Mint & The Wall Street Journal / Home> Lounge> Business of Life> Indulge / by Pallavi Singh / Sunday – April 28th, 2013
