The World Comics Network (India), started by political cartoonist Sharad Sharma in mid nineties, looks at introducing Grassroots Comics as a tool for communication and social design. Working with different communities, they emphasise on the value of visual art, self-expression and awareness in creating social change. Through their practice they have truly embraced the idea of design for the people and by the people, acting as a catalyst for change in the social sector.

Grassroots Comics as a medium stands out distinctly from mainstream comics since it is not created by professional artists. As the World Comics Network(WCN) puts it,
‘these comics are created by ‘You and Me’, common masses themselves. Comics have given a new direction to representation of silences thereby creating a revolution in itself. These comics are easy to-make, reproduced by simple photocopier and distributed in a limited demarcated area, which invites local debates among people from different socio-economic stratum of the society.’

WCN answers some of the most frequently asked questions in a comic format.

How Grassroots Comics operate
Primarily through the medium of a workshop which travels to several rural and remote areas in India and other countries, the workshop leaders gather community members to visualise topics of importance to them. With the help of a manual, which teaches them basics of expressions and postures, the participants then start storyboarding and visually representing their stories, in a simple four panelled A4 comic poster format. It is then inked in black, and photocopied to make several wall posters which are pasted at prime locations within the community like the village panchayats, shops, electric poles etc.

WCN has discovered the potential in the visual storytelling form of comics to connect with people of varying levels of literacy and in the process targeting a much larger audience. It is also this visual and easy to comprehend nature of comics which they have tapped into to build it as a medium to address issues that otherwise become sensitive topics and are not discussed out in the open.
Like in the case of the comic below which questions the veiling tradition in Rajasthan but in a simple, light hearted way, by basing the comic on a humorous yet practical problem.

“Veil System”, a lady is unable to inform her father-in-law about the theft of their luggage because of the veil system. Both regret the incident and the old tradition of veil system.

In case of these grassroots comics, the content is based on memories and stories of the community, represented in regional languages and aided by a strong sense of the visual culture and local perception of that space. Shifting focus from aesthetics, the idea behind the comics is to create something which is more contextual. Through the past fifteen years, these regional comics have covered a plethora of social issues as well as instances of development and accomplishments in these conflict ridden areas. With the use of minimum resources they capture underlying issues and people of a community and portray them in a thought provoking manner.

Designer as facilitator
While going through the project, what struck me the most was the change in the role of a designer in the field. From being the outsider who orchestrates such conversations, there is a now a need for the designer to assume the role of a facilitator to build a participatory and more inclusive process, which looks not just at locating challenges but also collectively – designer along with community – finding solutions for them. Besides bringing in our skills,the role we play in mobilising the thoughts and voices of the community becomes pivotal to the project. As Andrew Shea, in his book Designing for Social Change says, “sometimes you may need to fade into the background and observe, while at other times you might need to work side by side with the members of the community.”

Design for the community, with the community.
The challenge for an urban designer working in the rural context can be understanding who the target audience should be. The World Comics Network base their primary audience and context in the same space that they work in, thus pushing forward boundaries of designing with the community in order to design for the community.

It is only when these stories are distributed that they call for action. Exhibiting the photocopied comics of the participants in easily accessible areas of the community, builds a platform to not just showcase stories and talent, but also open up local debates and discussions within the community on topics which are otherwise neglected. The close proximity and the direct communication between the makers and the readers in the space provide a setup which initiates conversations and drives change.

In a Grassroots Comics Campaign, Apni Dikri Ro Haq ( Girl child right) initiated in Barmer District of Western Rajasthan,India in 2005, more than 300 wall poster comics were created by children and youth on topics of girl child rights, female foeticide, child marriage etc. A selection of which were circulated in several villages by the help of a motorbike rally, which paved way to serious debates and several local people committing themselves in bringing about change in the situation.

Left: Apni Dikri Ro Haq campaign, Barmer, Rajasthan.
Right: World Comics network in another village in Rajasthan, India.
Image Courtsey: World Comics Finland.

“During various discussions and brainstorming sessions, one thing emerged very clear – if we want this campaign to succeed, it has to first start ticking like a clock in peoples’ mind. We remembered what Mahatma Gandhi had said years ago; something which we thought was very much relevant to what we were planning. He had talked about a movement being launched by not working along the periphery of the society, but after penetrating deep into it. He had also reflected upon the fact that villages were the true image of real India.We decided to make these two observations of the Mahatma the pivot of our campaign” – Sharad Sharma

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
WCN has successfully created a system of sustained engagement, which doesn’t stop at one project, but gives its participants the required skill sets to continue such efforts within the community, without any outside help. The merit of the network also lies in the simple structure of the workshop, which not just makes well informed participants, but also empowers them to make change. While the focus is not on skills, the WCN has created many participants, who find their calling in the medium, and with time and under guidance of the WCN master the art, to build similar workshops within their own community. Like in the case of the Apni Dikri Ro Haq campaign in Barmer,the Barmer Comics Manch, a local initiative, now continues the campaign.

A basic manual , introducing grassroots comics, is also available on free to download basis on the website in English and Hindi. Other languages for the manual can also be requested.

The easy to understand and cost effective nature of the workshop has found popularity in the development sector, which has led to the same method now being followed by several NGO’s and other individuals in countries like Pakistan,Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, UK and Tanzania to name a few. The Indian network has also collaborated with World Comics Finland to introduce grassroots comics in many areas, along with setting up a separate network for Pakistan as well as Nepal.

Left: Comic from Nepal – On girl child and the importance of a daughter.
Right: Comic from Africa - On Female Genital Mutilation.

You can also look at these comics on their website, as well as purchase some compiled publications.

Thoughtshop Foundation is a Social Communication Organisation. It is dedicated to creating new and effective ways of dealing with social issues, with the aim to educate, motivate and initiate change. Thoughtshop Foundation is headed by Himalini Varma and Satayan Sengupta.

Children discuss cards from a Thoughtshop Toolkit.

How does one ‘teach’ a nine year old who has already survived some of life’s harshest lessons?
How does one take sessions on sex education in a village community with young girls who have never been to school?
How does one train non-literate women in business management skills, or talk about ending domestic violence with groups of men and women who believe it’s a normal way of life?

These are just some of the questions we have had to ask ourselves, and our journey to find answers have spanned two decades of work with grass-root communities, across different corners of India and several other developing countries. The discoveries along the way have helped us build a philosophy and understand the nature of communications in a context where the written word is not recognised, and the issues to be raised are often considered taboo.

At its simplest, Communication Design for the social sector can be intended to provide information, or raise awareness. Sometimes, it aims to create behavioural change. But the real magic happens when communication design sparks off a dialogue that leads to a process of self reflection, empowerment and transformation, for an individual and a society.

Communicating rice cultivation, from seed to crop, in Jharkhand.

Lessons from Street Kids
One of our first experiences with working children on the streets of Delhi taught us that the communication process had to be learner centred – a ‘partnership’ – we had as much to learn from the children as we had to offer them. For these children (shoe shine boys, coolies and rag pickers), the street was their classroom, and life on the street was their living school; teaching them harsh, new lessons everyday. At the age of nine and ten years, they led independent adult lives and had already seen a great deal. They would not attend a mainstream school and they were not interested in alphabet books talking of apples and balls. Sessions would take place on the pavements, and children would rush off the moment they saw a potential customer who needed his shoes polished.

Life on the street had made them hide away their vulnerabilities and we needed ways to build trust and get beneath the hardened exterior, find the little child inside. We needed to find a way to excite and connect with the children; help them share their personal stories, learn from them and move ahead. The idea was to appear like a magician before the kids with a bag full of tricks to capture their hearts and minds. After spending many weeks with the children, we developed a kit of games for them. One of the tools, for example, was a set of 36 brightly coloured picture cards; a series of images that captured different moments, emotions, choices and milestones in the children’s’ life.

When asked direct questions about their life, children would withdraw. Yet when playing with the picture cards they would open up. They would pick out cards with situations that they had experienced, and the stories they wove around them were real experiences. This would form an important foundation for further interactions with them. The cards would also serve as a tool to help the children express their feelings, and aspirations. Many cards were open – ended and could be interpreted in different ways.

One card for example had a picture of a boy sitting, looking thoughtful, and a little sad. ‘This boy is sad because he has just lost his shoeshine box and he is wondering what to do now. Since someone stole his box, should he steal someone else’s?’ Asked one. Another kid pulled out a card of a policeman hauling up a child: ‘If he steals a shoe box, then this is what will happen, and he will still be unhappy’. Another child pitched in: ‘I think the boy is sad because he is new and has no friends’, to which the other children agreed and shared how vulnerable a child feels when he is new and alone in the big city. And so, cards helped us learn about what was going on in the children’s minds. Actions and their consequences, social problems relevant to the children’s lives could now be addressed.

During the weeks we spent with the children we discovered that many of them were crazy about Bollywood films. They collected and traded pictures of famous stars. Inspired by this we developed a set of playing cards teaching the alphabet using film stars and famous personalities. So instead of learning A for Apple the children would learn A is for Amitabh (Bachhan)…

Family Spacing Board Game. Part of the Shankar Kit which addresses adolescent boys and young men.

Taboo!
It was 1996. We were travelling to a village group in South 24 Paragnas, West Bengal accompanied by Banidi, an elderly health worker with 21 years experience of working with communities. She complained to us about her latest predicament. She had been instructed to take sessions on reproductive health with girls – adolescents – young enough to be her granddaughters. She fished out a crumpled sheet of paper from a tin trunk, on which was typed a list of topics that she was expected to educate the girls on: Puberty, Menstruation, Conception, Sex Determination, Family Planning. She admitted to us that she had somehow never got around to discussing these issues with girls; it never felt like the right time she said. When we nodded in empathy, she confided how she felt this new requirement was quite unnecessary. She had always gone beyond the call of duty, but said she also had her self respect to consider. ‘What would the village elders think? Talking about sex to teenaged girls in a village’!!

Soon the young girls poured into the room, some looked as young as 12 years old, others may have been as old as 16. Most of these girls cannot read. They have never been to school or have dropped out so long ago that they remembered nothing. ‘How will they ever understand all this technical reproductive health stuff’! Banidi muttered to us under her breath. Later, when we asked the girls if they knew about how their body worked – about body systems – they looked completely blank. One of the girls mentioned that periodically a doctor visited their village and would give a lecture on such things. But they never really understood what she said and were too scared to ask. Marriage, children and motherhood, however, were round the corner; a reality that most of these girls would face most likely before their 18th birthday.

The Champa kit, a teaching aid for health workers disseminating information on reproductive health to rural adolescent girls.

The year long interactive development process resulted in the creation of a graded 5 module educational package of stories, games and models to discuss reproductive health with adolescent girls. Through the story of 12 year old Champa and her friends, different issues around reproductive health were raised. These stories were illustrated using lucid water colour paintings that were widely understood, and allowed the girls to let their imaginations flow. To break the ice and bridge the facilitator-learner divide, a card game showing social situations was introduced where the girls played as teams and challenged, argued and convinced each other on how different social situations influenced their lives. Games and models were developed to reduce the inhibitions around biological concepts of menstruation, conception, sex determination and the use of contraceptives. Games and activities were also devised to build life skills like assertiveness and negotiation.

Illustration from Champa’s discovery, Why does menstruation happen?, a flipchart from the Champa Kit.

Over the last 19 years the kit has been adapted in various languages and used by peer educators across the country to discuss reproductive health in a way that was non-threatening and fun! The interactive process enabled barefoot facilitators or peer educators (marginalised girls from the community) to replace resource persons as they started conducting free and open sessions to discuss sensitive issues. Young girls could freely share their questions with these didis who were most often just like them.

Now multiply that by a Million!
In 2006 we were lucky to be involved in a South Asia wide campaign to end violence against women. It was an ambitious campaign reaching out to 5 million individuals over 6 years and across 6 countries inspiring them to become change makers. Our role involved creating campaign communication, and youth change-makers in West Bengal.

The audience was diverse in every way. In India alone there were 13 states using over 8 languages. The campaign communication was driven by a set of guiding principles: Communication would be positive and inspiring, encourage personal change, be non- judgmental and challenge stereotypes, enable dialogue and be rights- based. And of course they would have to be pictorial and interactive. Through an intense process that covered several years, many participatory workshops and lots of help from partner organisations, we worked to develop a common pictorial language around the issue of gender and violence against women. This new language would have to cut across region, class, age and language barriers, not only within India, but across the campaign countries.

Character illustrations from the Understanding Gender and Violence against Women Toolkit.

One of the thumb rules of creating an image was this – the viewer must be able to imagine himself or herself as being the character in the image. This simple but very effective technique helped us maintain the dignity of characters, and therefore connect with men and women. It was interesting to hear people point out to images and say ‘I feel I am that man. I used to abuse my wife. I never thought it hurt her. I feel it now, I need to make a change’. The focus was on change – encouraging every individual to commit to even a small change; to believe that small efforts lead to big changes. There was also a continuous effort to find techniques that would challenge people’s beliefs, make them rethink attitudes that had been accepted without question for generations.

Here’s an example of an activity that elicited an interesting and familiar pattern of responses:
We would first show an image, of a woman doing the cooking and managing kids and her husband relaxing in the background, smoking a cigarette. People would respond casually saying that this is normal, this is how it is, how it has always been. Then we would show the same picture with the man doing the cooking and managing kids, while the wife is shown relaxing in the background smoking. At this, people would get startled. They would laugh nervously. “There must be some mistake. This is absurd…What a selfish woman!” And thus a raging discussion would begin.

New images and new scenarios were created to help people envision new realities where men shared housework, where women participated in decision- making. Many years later when an intensive impact assessment process was conducted and people were asked what they recalled, they would share powerful personal changes they have made in their life. They would often refer to the workshops as a series of images, which brought home to us the power of images to infuse into people’s consciousness.

One woman recalled the images of a woman eating less, being married early – ‘Those felt like pictures from my life…I wondered how the facilitators knew…Till then it never occurred to me this could change’!
At another interview, a father regretted that he had made a terrible mistake by forcing his under-age daughter to marry against her will. He would not repeat the same mistake with his younger girl. She would have the same freedom as Meenu, one of the characters in the communications.

The We Can Campaign to End Violence Against Women, with its focus on personal change and positive approach has now spread to 15 countries across the world, though the guiding principles remain the same. We have been privileged to work with teams from these other regions, to help them adapt the campaign strategy to their contexts.

Take-home picture and activity booklet for the participants of the My Childhood My Rights workshops.

Communication is Community Building
In our journey over these last two decades, our work has expanded to cover a wide range of issues: from self-exploration, exploring multiple identities, to child rights, water and sanitation, to poor women’s economic leadership and strategies for emergency relief. The solutions range from games and models to films, audio tools and multimedia. Training of trainers, especially grass-root facilitators or peer educators are integral processes. More recently our work could be better described as programme design: Creating sustainable, replicable models for development. Over the last few years, on our own initiative we have been creating community based youth leaders who do a journey from self to society, build youth groups and initiate positive social change within their communities.

It has been an amazing ride, as we have discovered the synergy between development communications and community building. Effective communication improves the quality of life and relationships between people. It increases empathy, reduces judgment and the barriers of misunderstanding that separate us from each other.

More information and materials for use are available at Thoughtshop Foundation’s website, facebook page and on twitter.

All images courtesy Thoughtshop Foundation

Lakshmi Murthy, founder of Vikalp Design, has been working with the rural population in Rajasthan & Gujarat for over 20 years as a communication designer, to develop an effective framework for communication. And in doing so, she has uncovered a way of seeing, and consequently a new way of conversing with her audiences. Below is a short excerpt from an interview with her in Dekho—Conversations on Design in India.

“In distinguishing between the urban and the rural audience, the latter is wrongfully regarded as visually illiterate. The rural audience has a sharper perception of their environment and are keener to infer from indexical traces that the urban individual would neglect. In fact it is the city-bred individual who may be ‘illiterate’ in the rural environment, lacking their visual knowledge. While an urban designer will draw in proportion and orientation of what they see as ‘known’, a villager would rely on vernacular knowledge to draw, displaying a keen unlettered intelligence.

Urban designers need to re-examine their role in communication when working with non-literate and rural groups. They need to assume the role of a facilitator and act as a catalyst in encouraging people’s own visual expression, finding a common visual language and producing visuals that are responsive to the needs of the audience.

A participatory process of self-expression holds one answer. Encouraging people to draw has been looked upon as an empowering process that leads to inclusion of notions otherwise difficult to express.”

Image from Vikalp’s Rural Pictorial Gallery. Drawn by people in rural areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, and collected by Vikalp since 1992.

In the above excerpt, Lakshmi puts forth a new role of the communication designer when working in a new social and cultural environment. She proposes a shift, from creator to a facilitator—wherein the process of design seeks to leverage existing knowledge and language—gently questioning and guiding and eventually co-creating a solution. The process brings one of the key principles of design—empathy into action, and goes beyond merely sensitising a designer to enabling him/her with the building blocks of a design intervention. The other key benefit of this process can be the emergence of a natural ownership. World-over, well meaning design interventions often break down with users/communities not being able to sustain a connection with it (design intervention). But this new way of building together, breaks down barriers and roots the foundation of an idea in the user community.

Image from Vikalp’s Rural Pictorial Gallery.

Learn more about Vikalp and their work, here.

Dekho image, courtesy Codesign.  Illustrations courtesy Vikalp.

As an audio-visual ‘job-aid’ for community health workers in rural India, Mobile Kunji supports interpersonal communication and helps provide standardised, credible information.

Mobile Kunji is an audio-visual job aid for community health workers working in maternal care in rural India. Created by Anaya and BBC Media Action so far the project has been launched in Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. A deck of 40 cards go, quite literally, hand-in-hand with pre-recorded audio clips accessible from a basic mobile phone. The cards contain information on the crucial early stages of pre and post-natal health care, breaking down a vast subject into eight important behaviours and over 100 points which encourage attitude change.

Each point is visualised as an illustration on the front of the card above a mobile shortcode. Dialing this code takes the health worker through to an audio recording of Dr Anita or her assistant, the authority figures created to to convey short messages of important information to the families. These authority figures were created to build trust in the families who often lack access to larger professional health care institutions. In Bihar, for example, the ratio of doctors to patients is 1:3,500 (the national average in 2013 was 1:1,700). On the back of the card the key content is summarised along with a lightly written couplet also repeated in the accompanying recording.

People, earlier, might even say to me – we don’t believe you; you are doing this just to earn money… but, now when I visit families along with my Mobile Kunji, they pull out chairs, invite me to sit, and gather around me.
—Anganwadi Worker, Manju Mehta

The cards act as both a ‘job aid’, supporting health workers to provide standardised, credible information and increasing their confidence, whilst also helping to build the trust of the families they visit.

The project addresses both practical and more systematic problems the health workers face. The need for something that could be carried easily on home visits, for example, alongside the need for a substantial amount of accurate and standardised information, and the the need for a tool which values and empowers the health worker role rather than replaces it.

The strength of the visual material is how it subtly facilities both the verbal communication of the healthcare worker and communicates the content of the card. The single steel ring binding means that each card can be read by both the families and health worker simultaneously.

The cards are colour-coded so that the 40 sheets are easily navigable for health workers who typically spend on average 10–15 minutes on a visit. Since the whole deck is compact – no bigger than a large smartphone – it fits easily in a handbag, making it more likely that it will be used on home visits.

Like the voice of Dr Anita, the aesthetic of the cards is open and unintimidating, helped by the bold spectrum of colours which are not trend-based or too somber, nor the typical go-to colours of the healthcare industry.

But why have a visual element at all? The cards help clarify what is being said and heard, helping the audience to visualise the message as tangible scenarios. Coupled with the recordings, the aid is flexible for the health worker and acknowledges that communication styles should and will differ depending on the person delivering the message, and of course the recipient.

Mobile Kunji demonstrates a well-executed process of understanding a need and addressing it with considered form and function, a strong example of how a piece of visual communication can support and enhance interpersonal communication, not replace it.

Images courtesy of Codesign and BBC Media Action.

One of the critical areas of reform in the legal system, is the awareness of rights and laws by the general populace. While there are laws and systems in place, the average citizen is often unaware of their presence, their relevance and when/how to access them. Recognising this as a key failing, lawyers Kanan and Kelly Dhru from Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI), embarked on their idea of creating a graphic story format to educate children about laws in India. Lawtoons is a comic book series on laws in India, and following a successful crowd-funding campaign the first book in the series is now out.

“The useful information about citizenship, democracy, laws and rights that children learn in their schools through the civics curriculum is often passed off as ‘dull and boring’. Even upon growing up, an individual is likely to be intimidated by the bulky law books full of legal jargons. This unfortunately, results in a society where most people find it difficult to relate to the idea of laws and legal systems, and feel disconnected.”
—From the Lawtoons website

The first Lawtoons prototype book was designed and tested with children in two public and three private schools in Ahmedabad. Apart from Kanan and Kelly Dhru, creative inputs on the project have been so far provided by designer & illustrator Anish Daolagupu and mentors like Margie Sastry (writer and former associate editor at Amar Chitra Katha) and Sekhar Mukherjee (head of animation film design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad). With their recent funding, Lawtoons hopes to engage more designers and create subsequent books under the series.

You can buy the first Lawtoons book, called ‘A Song for Everyone’ on Right to Equality & Freedom of Speech, here.

Images courtesy, Lawtoons.

Left: The poster, made by Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Manch, West Bengal, speaks out against acid attacks on women. It focuses on a read incident of an attack on a 14-year old.
Right: A general poster on violence against women. Drawn by Golak and designed by Bindia Thapar, the poster was created by the Lawyers Collective, Delhi with support from UNIFEM.

Recognising the value of a poster as a tool for communication and mobilisation, and challenged with a lack of documentation of ephemera and grey literature created by these activist groups, Zubaan sought to research, locate and publicly archive as many of these posters, brochures, leaflets as possible. According to them, “the idea was to look at how the women’s movement and its concerns could be mapped visually, to ask what the history of the movement would look like through its posters and visual images.”

Left: An anti-dowry poster by the National Commission for Women, Government of India.
Right: A collage of posters against violence, created by Natya Chetana, Orissa. Each of the posters is a separate poster, covering issues from rape, police brutality, sati etc.

The initial phase of the project culminated in a travelling exhibition and a catalogue, with the original posters housed by Sound and Picture Archives for Women (SPARROW) in Mumbai, and their digital scans accessible online. Our Pictures, Our Words—a book pictorially charting the diverse and complex course of the women’s movement was produced. The posters in the book are organised according to pertinent categories such as violence and health-related issues, and as much information as available about the poster is provided, pieced together with short essays, introductions and historical backdrops.

Images from Zubaan’s Poster Women project.

Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit is an illustrated account of a young woman’s thoughts and feelings as she comes into contact with the larger world. A semi-auto-biographical tale with art by Mithila artist Amrita Das, and text by Gita Wolf & Susheela Varadarajan (from the Hindi original by Amrita Das), the book was published by Tara Books in April 2014. While a deeply personal account from Amrita’s own life, the book encourages reflections on what it means to make choices, in the face of societal norms.

As a publishing effort, Tara Books has been recognised for its sensitive dealing of social and cultural themes through many of its titles, and also successful collaborations between designers and folk artists creating a uniquely Indian style of illustration and visualisation. Their recent publication “Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit” is a particular poignant narration, where the choice of the Mithila folk art style adds significant meaning to the story.

Mithila painting (also known as Madhubani painting) originates from the Mithila region of Bihar, India and adjoining areas in Nepal. Traditionally practiced by the women within a small community, and initially restricted to religious, mythological themes, the paintings became a canvas for the women to express their feelings and reactions, over time. It is this fact, that makes the choice of art-style an apt vehicle for a story that is about a young girl’s fears, dreams and questions as she ventures out.

In her art for the book, Amrita uses her training at the Mithila Art Institute, to employ different devices of the style to amplify her narrative. The characteristic detail of Mithila art is used to incorporate elements which establish the contemporary physical situation of the story. Repetitive borders, patterns are used to illustrate situations of limitation and societal norms. Graphic compositions in each page bring multiple events and spaces into a unified moment in time, reflecting the contradictions, questions in the author’s mind.

That a traditional or folk art style can be used to establish the ethnic or cultural origin of a story, is but obvious. But the ability to find a resonance with the content of the narrative, and the skill-fullness to reshape established, traditional visual devices, makes work like ‘Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit’ exceptionally rich and relevant for a wider audience.

These are some of the places you can buy the book: Tara Books, Amazon. You can also read a detailed report on the book’s art at Look/Book.

Images, courtesy Tara Books.

When she returned to India from Muscat at the age of 16, Ketki Jadhav couldn’t muster the courage to navigate a scooter through the uncontrollable traffic jams of Pune like the rest of her college friends. Six years later, as an animation student at the National Institute of Design, the concern lingered on at the back of her head. This prompted her to make a short animation film, as part of her graduation project, that not only throws light upon the real problem but also promotes an impactful solution.

In India, the general image of public transport is not particularly encouraging. Based on frustrating past experiences, citizens are hesitant to give new public transport systems a chance which in turn discourages the government from investing in further improvements, triggering a vicious cycle of apathy. This situation fuels the ever-increasing demand for private vehicle ownership which further immobilises the role of the public and government in bringing about a change in perception.

“I wrote to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a New York-based NGO that has been working to bring about a change in the field of public transportation in India for many years now. They liked the idea and together we decided to make a film.” says Ketki, who was happy to secure the organisation’s sponsorship and research muscle.

In addressing a situation like this with many interlinked issues having a rather serious impact, the medium of animation puts across the story in an enjoyable, crisp and refreshing manner. Messages like these run the risk of sounding boring or preachy but the film does well to steer clear of these associations. The thoughtful portrayal of characters and their perspectives reflect the existing situation with a hint of humour, thus making the message memorable. By highlighting the success story of the BRTS service in Ahmedabad, the film points to good public transport systems as an effective solution to a chain of problems beginning from traffic jams to air and noise pollution to road expansion to even unemployment.

It is being screened at a number of international conferences that ITDP conducts with local government officials, city planners, architects and concerned citizens. In addition, the organisation’s YouTube channel offers a great platform to freely reach out to people of all age groups online, with the video garnering over 2,500 views to date. A detailed documentation of the project can be viewed below.

Drawing from strong editorial content, factual statistics and using tongue-in-cheek narratives, Hemant’s work reveals fine connections behind complex issues through gripping graphic stories.

Talking about Great Indian Clearance Sale (GCIS), Hemant says, “The way I create work for GICS is actually a simple, instinctive process. It’s a combination of anger, information and art. When it comes to environmental issues, there is a lot to be angry about. Genetically Modified Crops for instance. Not good. They are going to destroy our biodiversity. And it makes me angry. So I look for all the information I can find. Anger becomes a powerful force of change when it’s backed with information. Because you aren’t just angry about things anymore. You have the desire to go out and inform other people about what’s wrong and why it’s making you angry. And that’s the challenge to make your art compelling and make people care about it enough to do something. I call my process ‘an adventure in information.’” Below is Hemant’s visualisation of this process.

Images from The Great Indian Clearance Sale.

Menstrupedia has been in the news for taking the taboo head-on and creating a friendly online resource for information on menstruation.

A crowd-funded comic book is in the making, with its progress updated on the website. From what is offered as a preview of the first chapter, the comic book promises to offer a contextualised and culturally sensitive narrative for the adolescent and parental audiences in India. It also brings together multiple facets of adolescent life, from physical changes to mood swings, providing a relevant context in which information on menstruation is shared.

While the book will be available for purchase by those who can afford it, there are also plans to enable free access to those who cannot. Equally impressive and inspirational is co-founder Aditi Gupta’s journey from a student project, to an online resource and now to a successful crowd-funded campaign that will help realise the project and make it accessible to more people.

Menstrupedia cleverly uses medium and context to bring vital, medical information to girls across India, where surprisingly, there is a lack of easy-to-understand, friendly and open information. While the project is still at a nascent stage, there are plans to develop Menstrupedia for an audience wider than India.

Read about the journey at Forbes India.

Images from Menstrupedia.