News feature published in Ceylon Today newspaper, 28 November 2012
L to R – Margaret Lowman, Rodrigo Jordan, Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli & moderator R Sukumar
Social and technological entrepreneurs shaping a new world By Nalaka Gunawardene in New Delhi
A new wave of social and technological entrepreneurs is reshaping our world, blending the best of enterprise, innovation and compassion.
The old divides of for-profit and non-profit are fast blurring in this brave new world where emerging economies of Asia are taking the lead, a global gathering of change-makers heard this week.
The Rolex Leadership Forum, held at the New Delhi Municipal Council Convention Centre, was convened by the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. It heard from inspirational innovators, scientists and adventurers – all of who shared their personal journeys and passions as they discussed their views on leadership and enterprise.
The core values identifies by these remarkable individuals as guiding and sustaining themselves were passion, integrity, resilience and a sense of humour.
“Follow your passion, think outside the box and seek solutions,” was how Margaret Lowman, pioneering US canopy ecologist summed it up. “Early on, I realized that you expend the same amount of energy to complain as to exclaim. I’ve chosen to do the latter, making things better as I go along!”
She emphasised that solving problems is far more important than simply gathering and analysing data or publishing technical papers. As head of North Carolina’s new Nature Research Centre, she is heavily involved in taking children and youth back to nature, and in public engagement of science.
“I would recommend that we try not to blend in, but stand up and stand out,” said Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli, Swiss economist, media and technology transfer specialist.
Rodrigo Jordan, Chilean social entrepreneur, educationist and mountaineer, who in 1992 led the first Latin American expedition to Mount Everest, has been applying team building skills to business, education and social development. His recipe for successful teams: right proportions of passion, expertise, a sense of purpose and generosity among team members.
“It is imperative for good teams to have members with a good match of technical and personal skills,” he said. “I climb peaks not with climbers but with human beings.”
Nandan Nilekani speaks at Rolex Leadership Forum 2012
“Giving people a purpose larger than themselves usually leads to extraordinary results,” said Nandan Nilekani, the Indian techno-preneur best known for co-founding and building the IT giant Infosys Technologies.
He described challenges involved in his current public sector assignment as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) – which is building the world’ s largest digital identification system that is web-based. When completed, it will store information on all 1.2 billion Indian residents.
Young change-makers
The forum also heard from three outstanding young Indians who have pursued their own passion for excellence, innovation and service.
Piyush Tewari, who was a Rolex Young Laureate in 2010, has left a lucrative corporate job to devote all his time to SaveLIFE Foundation that trains police officers and volunteers in roadside trauma care. His group responds to the highest road accident fatality rate in the world – an average of 15 deaths every hour. Yet, 80 per cent of victims don’t receive any emergency medical help within the first vital hour after injury.
Deepak Ravindran founded and heads Innoz, a tech company that runs SMSGYAN which serves 120 million users to access several Internet functions from simple mobile phones through text messages. By making every mobile phone smart, he aims to bring Internet within reach of more people in a country where Internet use is currently around 10 per cent.
Ishita Khanna is a social entrepreneur who runs EcoSphere that promotes community participation to achieve sustainable development in remote Himalayan communities through eco-tourism, renewable energies and indigenous wild produce.
These three mid-career professionals epitomise the new generation of Indians who are combining modern management methods and technologies with age old values of caring, sharing and taking on responsibility.
As Rebecca Irvin, director of Philanthropy at Rolex, asked: “The choice for today’s young people is: do you just want to do well in your lives, or do you also want to do good while pursuing your passions?”
The Rolex Leadership Forum 2012 in New Delhi was attended by over 300 people who came from all parts of the world and all walks of life. The distinguished gathering included past winners (laureates) of the prestigious award and its past judges along with journalists, activists and researchers.
Dr Wijaya Godakumbura, inventor of the safe bottle lamp and a Rolex Laureate (1998), was among the invitees.
Rolex Leadership Forum in Delhi, Ceylon Today 28 Nov 2012
Meteosat 7 weather satellite image of the Indian Ocean – 30 Oct 2012 at 6 UTC As Hurricane Sandy hammered the US East Coast earlier this week, we had our own meteorological worries. A tropical cyclone — belatedly named Neelam — swept past parts of Sri Lanka’s North and East. It then headed to southern India.
The two atmospheric turbulences were not comparable. Sandy was far more ferocious. But Neelam caused enough disruption as well — it wasn’t just a passing gust of wind.
As I followed the two disasters through print, TV and web media reporting, I wondered: how come we had more about Sandy in our own media than on Neelam?
Is it because, as some argue, the global media were so preoccupied with Sandy, and provided saturation coverage? Or are our own media outlets unable, or unwilling, to cover a local weather anomaly with depth and clarity?
This is the opening of my latest op-ed essay, Your Disaster is Not My Disaster, published in Ceylon Today newspaper, 1 Nov 2012.
Another excerpt:
“In today’s networked society, commercially operating news media are no longer the sole gatherers or distributors of news. Some members of their (formerly passive) audience are now mini news operations on their own.
“What does this mean for communicating in disaster situations that requires understanding and sensitivity? In which ways can we find synergy between mainstream and new/social media, so together they can better serve the public interest? What value-additions can the mainstream media still bring to the coverage of disasters? And what to do about ‘Chicken Little’ reporters who try to link everything to a looming climate catastrophe? I don’t have all the answers, but keep asking these necessary questions.”
Here’s the full text, saved from the e-paper:
Your Disaster is not My Disaster – by Nalaka Gunawardene, Ceylon Today 1 Nov 2012
Journalist Kanak Dixit in a protesting rally in Kathmandu on 5 April 2006, Kathmandu. Photo by Shehab Uddin
Expanded from introductory remarks at Ceylon Newspapers Limited office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 2 Aug 2012:
There are many ways to introduce my good friend and partner in crime, Kanak Mani Dixit.
Aunty Google, as well as his own website (www.kanakmanidixit.com) can tell you the basic info about his education and career path, which I won’t repeat here. Instead, let me personalise what I know about this courageous man I’ve known and worked with for over 15 years.
Kanak is a journalist, editor and activist – all rolled into one. And if you think that journalists cannot become effective social or democracy activists, just watch him balance these seemingly daunting roles. Study how he juggles reporting, commentary writing, editing and social intervention.
Kanak came from a privileged family background, and could easily have spent his life in leisurely scholarship and endlessly doing the cocktail and conference circuits in South Asia and beyond. He CHOSE to be different.
Kanak spent a few years with the UN Department of Public Information in New York, and yet chucked up a promising international career to return to South Asia – a chaotic, unpredictable but also exhilarating part of the world that we call home. Another conscious choice.
Back home, Kanak could have watched over his beloved Kathmandu Valley and simply commented or satirised about the politics, economy and society of his impoverished land, one of 49 least developed countries in the world. He does that, too, but when needed he takes to the streets. As he did back in 2005/2006 when Nepalis rose against a tyrannical king…
He paid a price for his frontline activism. He was arrested – along with thousands of others – for defying a curfew and demanding democratic reform. He spent 19 days in a Kathmandu jail that he once pointed out to me from afar. As an influential publisher, he could have worked out some deal for a quicker release, but again, chose not to.
How many other South Asia editors or publishers do you know who won’t peddle influence for their personal gain or safety?
Some editors and publishers think of themselves as ‘king-makers’ in the political arena. This editor-publisher was literally a ‘king-dumper’: Nepal’s People Power forced autocratic King Gyanendra to restore Parliament in April 2006. Two years later, the whole monarchy was phased out.
Kanak has spoken truth to power, stared authority in the eye, and yet he has not allowed himself to be corrupted by the temptations of political, diplomatic or other positions. He continues to critique and needle those in public and elected office.
In fact, the very revolutionaries he too helped to bring into office – through elections – now don’t seem to like him much: he was recently dubbed ‘an Enemy of the People’.
He must be doing a few things right to be reviled by both monarchists and republicans!
But Kanak is much more than a media and political activist. He has too many involvements and interests to keep track of.
To cite but a few: What Himal is all about…• He is a great believer in the idea of South Asian integration, going well beyond the bureaucratic trappings of SAARC. (His Southasia, which he insists on spelling as one word, includes Tibet and Burma.)
• He founded Himal Southasian magazine in 1987, and sustained it for 25 years with great effort and dedication. It is the first and only regional news and analysis magazine in our region of 1.4 billion people.
• He promotes documentaries as a means of cultural self expression and exchange, and in 1997 founded Film South Asia, a biennial festival that brings the best of South Asian films.
• He nurtures social science research and scholarly exchange, and is endlessly incubating new ventures or institutions in the public interest.
• He supports spinal injury rehabilitation in Nepal, having realised the pitiful state of such care when he suffered serious spinal injury himself a few years ago after a mountain hiking accident.
Amidst all this, he finds time to write regular columns and op-eds – in both English AND Nepali – as well as occasional books.
For these and many other reasons, Kanak Dixit is one of my role models, and a constant source of inspiration. He is one of the few human beings that I’d like to CLONE if and when that becomes a real prospect.
We need many more Media Typhoons like him to drive change in South Asia.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if there is more than one Kanak Dixit already! But that’s only speculation. For now, my friends, meet the one and only Kanak Mani Dixit confirmed to exist…
In this week’s Sunday column in Ravaya (22 July 2012, in Sinhala), I discuss the far-reaching public health implications of the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s recent assessment that diesel engine fumes do certainly cause cancer, especially lung cancer, in humans.
In December 2003, on the eve of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), I did a wide-ranging interview with Sir Arthur Clarke on satellite TV, internet, censorship and other challenges of emerging information societies. It was published in One World South Asia on 5 December 2003.
I adapted into Sinhala parts of that interview for my Ravaya Sunday newspaper column last week (18 Dec 2011),making the point that much of what he said about satellite TV at the time is now equally relevant to the rapid spread of the Internet.
For this week’s column, appearing in the print edition for 25 Dec 2011, I have adapted more segments of that interview covering topics such as: violence in society and media’s role; educational potential of television; does satellie TV spread cultural imperialism; and how technology – not politicians or generals – now determine the free flow of information across borders. This cartoon, drawn by David Granlund a year ago, aptly captures that last point!
A welcome dam breach, this one! - cartoon by Dave Granlund
Prof Anil Gupta sits in the Colombo study of late Dr Ray Wijewardene - photo by Anisha Gooneratne
What does an inventor look like?
A nerdy kid in glasses and a white coat, tinkering perilously in a lab? Or a tightly-focused technician toiling away in a greasy workshop?
Perhaps. But most innovators are ordinary people moving among us. For the most part, they are unnoticed and unsung as they try to crack problems that have engaged their attention — or frustrated them for too long.
At one level, many of us improvise everyday for personal gain — to save money, lighten our workload or boost yields. Only a few take it to a higher level. They are unhappy with the status quo. They probe how things work and speculate how it can improve. They tackle problems that daunt most.
Spotting them isn’t easy. Such innovators may come from any social, educational or cultural background but they all march to the beat of a different drum. While education and training help, some of the most successful inventors in history were entirely self-taught.
The late Ray Wijewardene was one quintessential ‘tinkerer’ who led a life-long quest to solve practical problems and improve the quality of life – for himself, those around him, and society at large. He left his mark in agriculture, engineering design, renewable energy, transport and aviation. Just as importantly, he nurtured other innovators to go after nagging problems. A firm believer in trial and error, he encouraged constant experimentation.
Ray’s spirit of enquiry and enterprise was rekindled this week when one of the world’s leading innovation-spotters delivered the inaugural Ray Wijewardene Memorial Lecture in Colombo.
With inspiring examples and illustrations, Gupta emphasized that grassroots innovations can provide a new ray of hope – if we let them grow.
Speaking of his own country’s experience, he said: “Outside of India’s major cities, unsung heroes of the country are solving, or trying to solve, local problems in spite of the structures that have bypassed them so far. Creativity, compassion and collaboration are the key characteristics of these voices from grassroots. Let’s listen to them and resonate with them!”
And it isn’t just an Indian phenomenon. At the outset, Gupta listed a dozen recent innovations made by Lankans. Some, like the safe kerosene bottle lamp, are widely known but most remain obscure. Yet, all have been authenticated, and many granted patents.
Home-grown inventions
Few among the packed Colombo audience of over 200 seemed to recognise these home-grown innovations — just the point the professor was making.
“You get innovators all over Sri Lanka, but most are not known or recognised even in their own communities,” he said.
To make matters more challenging, most innovators tend to be loners: they are day-dreamers who don’t follow the pack.
“They don’t come to meetings or speak up much. We have to reach out to them, make them feel comfortable and valued,” Gupta added.
His suggestion: Sri Lanka should launch a national effort to discover its own innovators — both technological and social. The media can play a big role in spotting and promoting innovators, as can schools, universities and state agencies with relevant mandates.
But Gupta also had a strong word of caution: “Whatever we do, we must never try to convert these precious ‘odd-balls’ into conformists.”
Ray would surely have applauded. He was an accomplished non-conformist, or maverick, who didn’t fit into the stereotyped academic or engineering circles. Now the Ray Wijewardene Charitable Trust (RWCT), set up to promote his legacy, wants to nurture innovation in Sri Lanka.
The Trust made an auspicious start by inviting Anil Gupta to deliver the first lecture in Ray’s memory. Gupta and Wijewardene were kindred spirits who stayed in touch over the years across the Palk Strait.
Gupta himself defies the standard notion of an academic. He is an unusual professor who walks his talk — and walks through the villages and slums of India in search of innovation. His mission for the past two decades has been to ensure that grassroots innovators receive due recognition, respect and reward for their bright ideas. He also seeks to embed an innovative ethic in educational policy and institutions.
The man doesn’t sit in his campus; he goes innovator-scouting all over India. “In our walks, we move from village to village spotting grassroots innovations and honouring them. We have come across very simple modifications make life easier for people, and also help save natural resources,” Gupta said.
A simple example: at a rural location, he found someone had fitted six tapes on to the outlet of a single water pump. It allowed that many to draw water at the same time, and also reduced pumped up water going waste.
The bicycle is another invention that has been adapted for multiple purposes across India. Genius improvisers are using it for moving on land (and water), generating electricity, helping with the cooking, and even in washing clothes.
The popular Hindi film 3 Idiots featured a pedal-powered washing machine, which was inspired by the invention of a 20-year-old woman from Kerala, Remya Jose. It has since been showcased on Discovery Channel as part of the ‘Indian Innovators’ series of short films.
Part of audience at Ray Wijewardene Memorial Lecture in Colombo, 13 Dec 2011 - photo by Anisha Gooneratne
Benefit sharing
One defining characteristic of such grassroots innovation is that those tinkering are also immediate benefits of any improvements. As Gupta puts it: “From agricultural innovations to the gas-powered iron or pressure-cooker-driven coffee maker, we find that solutions developed by producers who are also users reflect the concerns of both the production and consumption environments.”
Not all inventions need to be earth-shattering. In fact, many aren’t – and that is perfectly fine, says Gupta.
“Even basic improvements in a water pump, for example, can make life easier for millions of people. When we look for design improvements, we should consider not only the benefits to humans, but even to domesticated animals.”
How can society ensure that grassroots innovators not just receive accolades but also get paid for their creative ideas?
Much of innovation related knowledge is ‘open source’ – meaning it has been developed by a number of people collaboratively and non-secretively. But that doesn’t mean their knowledge rights should be trampled with.
Taking out patents is one way to ensure such rights. The Honey Bee network has successfully obtained over 550 patents for grassroots innovations – more than some well-funded laboratories in India! This was made possible by mobilising pro bono lawyers and other volunteers.
The spirit of volunteerism common in Asian cultures can do much to nurture innovation and safeguard intellectual property rights at the same time, Gupta said.
His hope: “The Ray Wijewardene Trust should be able to find public-spirited lawyers in Sri Lanka to emulate the Indian experience.”
And what about glaring gaps that often exist between inventive minds and the ruthless market?
Don’t try to turn every innovator into businessman, Gupta said. “Most innovators are not good entrepreneurs because they are incorrigible improvisers. In many cases, we try to persuade and counsel innovators to work on their products. There are some who do very well, while others take time.”
Instead of trying to turn every inventor into an entrepreneur, we have to create institutions, schemes and networks that bring these two types together – the one who tinker and those who market.
We have to find ways to link innovation with investment and enterprise. Together, these three elements form what Gupta calls the ‘golden triangle’ for grassroots creativity.
Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene is a trustee of the Ray Wijewardene Charitable Trust, and has been profiling Lankan innovators for 25 years.
As I have often said on this blog, Television used to be the favourite whipping boy of those who love to criticise communication technologies and consumer gadgets — until the Internet and mobile phones came along.
When it finally arrived in Asia in 1991, direct TV broadcasting by satellite scared the daylights out of many Asian governments and self-appointed guardians of culture and public morals. How can the unexposed (i.e. ‘unspoilt’) hundreds of millions of Asians cope with massive volumes of information and entertainment beaming down from the skies, they asked. Their real concern was the loss of control over what the public watched, which governments and ruling elites had tightly controlled for decades since radio and TV emerged as mass media.
So, for much of that decade, we witnessed howls of protests from them — but their worst fears never materialised. Satellite TV found its niche alongside terrestrial transmissions, and Asian broadcasters soon mastered the medium. Today, global broadcasters like CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera compete with hundreds of Asian satellite TV channels and the audiences have a far greater choice.
As I wrote in September 2008: “In 1990, most Asian viewers had access to an average of 2.4 TV channels, all of them state owned. This has changed dramatically — first with the advent of satellite television over Asia in 1991, and then through the gradual (albeit partial) broadcast liberalisation during the 1990s. Asian audiences, at last freed from the unimaginative, propaganda-laden state channels, exercised their new-found choice and quickly migrated to privately owned, commercially operated channels.”
Sir Arthur Clarke was the man who triggered this satellite communication revolution. In 1945, while still in his late 20s, he was the first to propose the concept of using a network of satellites in the geo-synchronous orbit for television and telecommunications. His vision became a reality in the mid 1960s, and within a generation, humankind has come to rely critically on the network of comsats placed, in what is now called the Clarke Orbit, some 22,300 miles above the earth.
In December 2003, on the eve of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and days before his 86th birthday, I did a wide-ranging interview with Sir Arthur Clarke on satellite TV, internet, censorship and other challenges of information societies. It was published in One World South Asia on 5 December 2003.
For my Ravaya column this week (18 Dec 2011), I have adapted parts of that interview into Sinhala, making the point that much of what he said about satellite TV at the time is now equally relevant to the rapid spread of the Internet. It’s also a nice way to mark his 94th birth anniversary this week.
Sir Arthur C Clarke: Opened up the heavens as part of information superhighway...
Arthur C Clare (extreme right) with Indian ISRO engineers who installed satellite antenna at his Colombo home, in 1975හොඳම උදාහරණය ලැඛෙන්නේ දකුණු අප්රිකාවෙන්. 1960 දශකය වන විට ලෝකයේ ඉසුරුබර රාජ්යයන් අතුරෙන් ටෙලිවිෂන් සේවාවක් අරඹා නොතිබූ එක ම රට වූයේ දකුණු අපිකාවයි. එවකට එහි පැවති සුදු පාලකයන්ගේ රජයේ සන්නිවේදන අමාත්යවරයා එරට ටෙලිවිෂන් සේවාවක් ඇරඹීමට කිසිසේත් එකග වූයේ නැහැ. ‘ටෙලිවිෂන් තමයි අප්රිකාවේ සුදු මිනිසාගේ පාලනය හමාර කරන්නේ’ යයි ඔහු කළ ප්රකාශයෙහි ලොකු අරුතක් ගැබ් වී තිබුණා. ^‘Television will mean the end of the white man in Africa.’)
Here's looking at you, people! The Love Bug had only two eyes, but the Spinal Beetle has four. Photo by Nalaka Gunawardene
Deep down in our hearts, we are all Volkswagen Beetle fans: some of us have owned one (my first car was a red bug!), others dream of doing so. The world’s most enduringly popular car design has a particular appeal in South Asia.
And now, South Asian VW Beetle fans have a adorable new mascot. Move over, Disney’s Love Bug (thanks for tons of fun); welcome, Spinal Beetle!
My friend – and hero – Kanak Mani Dixit and his wife Shanta have just completed a 2,200 km (1,100 mile) journey in their nearly 40-year-old Beetle that took them from Kathmandu in Nepal to Peshawar in Pakistan. It was a 12-day, 3-country drive that was to raise funds for spinal injury treatment in Nepal.
By happy coincidence, I was in Kathmandu on 4 Nov 2011 when the President of Nepal waved off Kanak and Shanta on their journey from the President’s House. It was an informal gathering of friends and well-wishers — with none of the pomposity usually associated with heads of state.
So the photos in this post are all mine. The text that follows is from Kanak and his media team:
President Ram Baran Yadav about to send off Kanak Mani Dixit and Shanta Dixit on 12-day journey in Spinal Beetle - Photo by Nalaka Gunawardene
The ‘Great Nepal-India-Pakistan Spinal Beetle Drive’ arrived in Peshawar on 16 November, ending a 1100-mile odyssey that took the 1973 VW Beetle from Kathmandu through Lucknow, Agra, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
“It was an exhilarating journey across the friendly landmass of Southasia, and I hope a pointer towards easy land-crossings for people from all our countries,” said Dixit. “Most of our journey was along the Grand Trunk Road, built originally by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century. The 21st century demands that we open this highway for the people, commerce and ideas to flow.”
The journey of the sky-blue Beetle was conducted with three goals of promoting ‘land connectivity’ in Southasia, developing links between spinal injury institutions across the Subcontinent, and raising funds for the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Nepal.
“The matter of land connectivity is important because airline links can never provide the mass-level contact that our people and economies deserve. One would want to see the same cacophony at the Atari-Wagah border as at the Nepal-India border of Bhairahawa-Sunauli,” said Dixit.
The trip was helpful in developing linkages between organisations such as the Spinal Centre in Nepal, the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi (ISIC), the Mayo Hospital in Lahore, the National Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine in Islamabad, the Armed Forces Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine in Rawalpindi, and the Paraplegic Centre in Peshawar.
As for the goal of raising emergency funds for the Spinal Centre-Nepal in order to cope with sudden rise in demand for its services, Dixit said that a little over half of the USD 110,000 goal had been raised. “We hope to complete our goal through a retroactive campaign because the spinally injured of Nepal badly need support,” he said.
Dixit is a civil rights activist, writer and journalist who injured his spine in a trekking accident a decade ago. The Spinal Centre was started in 2002 and inaugurated by the late Sir Edmund Hillary.
Kanak and Shanta Dixit setting off on their long journey in Spinal Beetle from Sheetal Niwas on 4 Nov 2011 morning - Photo by Nalaka Gunawardene
In the ‘Spinal Beetle’ driven by Dixit, he was accompanied by Shanta Dixit, educator and founding member of the Spinal Centre-Nepal. The back-up car, a Mahindra Bolero, included VW Beetle specialist Naresh Nakarmi, Spinal Centre staff member Suman Khadka and Eelum Dixit, doing videography and photography. Social worker Meera Jyoti is chair of the Spinal Centre-Nepal.
The Spinal Beetle drive was flagged off on 4 November by President Ram Baran Yadav of Nepal. In New Delhi, it was received by Maj. H.P.S. Ahluwalia, founder of ISIC, as well as journalist Kuldip Nayar and actor Om Puri. The physicist and peace activist A.H. Nayyar received the Spinal Beetle at the Wagah-Atari border. Throughout the Southasian drive, the team was graciously hosted by members of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy and other organisations, such as the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development in Agra, and Asha for Education in Lucknow.
Among the many interesting aspects of the trip, from the emotional to the historical, Dixit includes the following:
• The Spinal Beetle team responded to the request of 96-year-old Barkat Singh ‘Pahalwan’ of Jalandhar (Indian Punjab) that some earth be collected from his childhood village of Fatehgarh near Sialkot (Pakistani Punjab). Taking a detour from the GT Road, the team found the place, which had now become an urban suburb of Sialkot, and collected a jarful of agricultural earth for Barkat Singh. (for a picture of Barkat Singh and other images, go to ‘Selected Photographs’ on http://www.sirc.org.np)
• The memory of Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan sultan from present-day Bihar who ruled from Agra, followed the team through much of the route, which he had regularised in the mid-16th century as an administrative and commercial artery. His memory was revived by the ‘kos’ markers along the Delhi-Chandigarh stretch, a neglected postal station outside Wazirabad, the great roadside banyans providing shade to travellers then and now, and the Rohtas Fort on the approach to Rawalpindi.
A Nepali on wheelchair watches Spinal Beetle about to depart on a long journey to raise funds for people like him - Photo by Nalaka Gunawardene
• Having started in the Lumbini region of Nepal, where the Buddha was born more than 2,500 years ago, the Spinal Beetle ended its journey in the Gandhar region around Peshawar, a vast centre for Buddhist learning, art and architecture where the Sakyamuni was first etched in human form a few centuries later. In the Potohar Plateau near Islamabad, the Spinal Beetle visited the gigantic Buddhist stupa at the village of Manikyal.
• Arriving in Agra, the Spinal Beetle visited the Taj Mahal on the day of Eid ul-Azha. It arrived in Amritsar and visited Harminder Saheb (the Golden Temple) on the Guru Nanak’s birthday. Passing Gorkha District of Nepal (named after the Gorakhnath temple situated there), the Spinal Beetle traversed Gorakhpur, the base of the Nath sect, and ended its journey in Peshawar where the team visited the Gorakhnath Temple there, opened only a month ago after 60 years of closure. The Delhi-Amritsar leg of the journey was started with a visit to the dargah of Nizamuddin Aulia.
• After watching the mock-militarist show at the Wagah-Atari border between the Indian and Pakistani goose-stepping men in khaki, that very evening the team attended a play on Bhagat Singh and his fight for independence, put on by the Ajoka Theatre of Lahore.
• The Bharatpur government hospital in Chitwan District of Nepal was the first stop of the Spinal Beetle out of Kathmandu. The Bharatpur hospital sought help for setting up a spinal injury rehabilitation unit, which is in line with the Spinal Centre’s belief in decentralising rehabilitation. As a gesture of goodwill for the Nepal-India-Pakistan drive, the hospital committee donated NRs 50,000, which was gratefully received.
• In New Delhi, Maj. H.P.S. Ahluwalia of ISIC suggested that Dixit work to set up a Southasian network for spinal injury rehabilitation, given the specificity of the need. There was an enthusiastic response to this idea throughout the rest of the trip all the way to the Paraplegic Centre in Peshawar.
• At the Mayo Hospital in Lahore, the Medical Superintendent Dr. Zahid Pervaiz and Head of Rehabilitation Medicine Dr. Waseem Iqbal provided information on spinal injury and trauma response that had been developed in Pakistan. They graciously offered four-year full fellowships for two doctors to be sent by the Spinal Centre-Nepal.
Only a Nepali team and a German Bug could get past border babus like this!
• In Islamabad, the Nepal team got specific information on the response to the 2005 earthquake which hit Kashmir and the Hazara division. The team invited Pakistani specialists to Kathmandu to share information on the medical, rescue, social work and humanitarian aspects, so that Nepal would be better able to tackle the mega-tremor that is projected to hit Kathmandu Valley and surrounding areas before long.
• In Islamabad, activist and politician Nafisa Khattak introduced the team to the Melody Theatre, which had served as a staging ground for the sudden rush of victims from the 2005 earthquake. Poignantly, this only cinema hall of the city had been set to torch by a radical mob some years earlier.
• In Agra, members of the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development reminded the team that while there were 8-9 neurosurgeons in the city, there was no rehabilitation centre.
• The Volkswagen Club of Pakistan (VCP) took the Spinal Beetle under its wings in Islamabad and made sure that the car was made ship-shape after the climb up from the Punjab plains. Discussion was started with the club members about organising a VW Beetle rally from Islamabad all the way to Dhaka through India and via Kathmandu, as an exemplary means to develop people-to-people contact in the Subcontinent. This would require cooperation between the VCP, the Association of Nepal’s Beetle Users (ANBUG), the Volkswagen Club of Bangladesh and the Volkswagen Beetle community in India.
• At a meeting organised by the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy and the Islamabad Cultural Forum, Dixit spoke on the theme of ‘land connectivity’ in Southasia. “If on an old VW Beetle can do the Kathmandu-to-Peshawar trip with ease, imagine how easy it will be for everyone else.” At this time of geopolitical rapprochement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, a special push must be made for land connectivity, he added. “Let a hundred thousand networks bloom across Southasia, in the spectrum from spinal injury to VW Beetles and beyond, to bring the people together.”
More on the Spinal Beetle drive: The sudden rise of the number of patients over the last year has forced the Spinal Centre-Nepal to raise its service from 39 beds to 51. We seek to raise USD 110,000 from the 1,100 mile journey of the Spinal Beetle, at the ‘rate’ of USD 100 per mile from friends and supporters worldwide. By the time the Spinal Beetle arrived at Peshawar on 16 November, a little over half that amount had been raised. The Spinal Beetle Rally is also an effort to raise awareness of spinal injury prevention, rescue, care and rehabilitation in the Subcontinent.
The Spinal Beetle has done the Kathmandu-Dhaka stretch twice, in 2002 and 2005, and touched base at the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) in Bangladesh. The CRP would be a key institution in the networking of spinal injury rehabilitation institutions that is proposed.
The Spinal Beetle will carry their hopes and dreams across three countries, driven by that small man standing behind - Photo by Nalaka Gunawardene
Tareque Masud in Cannes in 2002. Photo by Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP
South Asia’s notorious killing fields, a.k.a. roads, have robbed us of another highly talented and committed professional. Bangladesh film maker Tareque Masud died on the spot when his microbus collided head-on with a passenger bus in in Ghior, close to Dhaka, on August 13.
The accident also killed Mishuk Munier, CEO of Bangladesh’s private ATN television news channel and three others, and injured Tareque’s film maker wife Catherine. The Masuds and team had been returning after scouting for locations for their next feature film, named Kagojer Ful (The Paper Flower). It was to be a prequel to his award-winning first full-length feature film, Matir Moina (English release title “The Clay Bird”).
That film, which tells the story of a young boy living at a madrasa or Islamic religious school, was inspired by his own childhood experiences. When it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, it won him the International Critic’s Award as well as the FIPRESCI Prize for Directors’ Fortnight for “its authentic, moving and delicate portrayal of a country struggling for its democratic rights.”
Matir Moina was received with critical praise and toured the international circuit. However, the Bangladeshi Government initially refused to issue a censor certificate for national screening, saying it gave a distorted image of the madrasa system, and that it could hurt feelings in this Muslim-dominated country. Confronted by Tareque’s appeal and widespread international pressure, the decision was later reversed.
Tareque made several documentaries before venturing into feature film making. I first came to know his work through Muktir Gaan (The Song of Freedom, 78 mins, 1995), the most famous film in early age of his career.
In that documentary, the camera follows a music troupe during the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. The members of the troupe sing songs to inspire freedom fighters. The film was made mainly based on the footage of American filmmaker Lear Levin that Masud got from the basement of Levin’s house in New York.
Muktir Gaan was an extraordinarily compelling film that was released theatrically in Bangladesh, blazing a new trail in distributing long-format documentaries in South Asia. It was also a strong entry at the inaugural edition of Film South Asia festival in Kathmandu, where I was on the jury. We awarded it a Jury Special Mention.
The Masuds followed it up with Muktir Kotha (The Story of Freedom, 82 mins, 1996), an oral history documentary about the experience of ordinary villagers during 1971 Liberation War. They also made many development related films through their Dhaka based production company, AudioVision.
I have fond memories of meeting Tareque and Catherine at the FSA festival. Our paths crossed at least a couple of times more in different corners of South Asia. Although we once discussed a collaborative project, it never happened due to the lack of funding.
As one film critic noted, “They were a delightful couple who managed to be deeply committed to the improvement of Bangladeshi society without ever being pompous or self-righteous.”
Open Minds! 