Many Voices Many Worlds

Community media has the potential for deepening democracy by creating spaces for people to raise and discuss their concerns. However, its practice in India tends to be based on top-down decision-making, which is the legacy of the Development Communication paradigms, thus ignoring the creative and transformative possibilities of marginalized community voices. The perspectives in this book, rooted in years of fieldwork experience, by scholars and practitioners of community media, both question and offer alternatives to the dominant paradigms. Many Voices, Many Worlds: Critical Perspectives on Community Media in India is a critical reflection on governance and policymaking, development, disability, knowledge and other social markers in the context of community media. Bringing together different modes of community media—such as video, radio, theatre, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and new media—into a productive conversation with each other, the book focuses on how communities through their communicative practices, negotiate the politics of caste, class, gender, and access to funding and technology.

Faiz Ullah is an assistant professor at the School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS, Mumbai, where he teaches courses in media studies, community media and journalism. He has published research-based articles on the political economy of media, work and labour, documentary film and participatory cultures in various journals and edited volumes. In 2016, he co-directed a short documentary, Under the Open Sky, featuring a young women’s sports initiative in Mumbai, focusing on women’s access to public spaces. In 2017, he co-translated noted Urdu writer Intizar Hussain’s cultural history of Delhi as Once There was a City Named Dilli. His feature pieces and book reviews have appeared in the Book Review India, Biblio, Scroll, the Wire, Mint, the Tribune, Kafila, Raiot and Art India, among others.

Anjali Monteiro is a retired professor from the School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS, Mumbai. She is involved in documentary production, media teaching and research. She played a key role in the setting up of the MA programme in Media and Cultural Studies at TISS, the first of its kind in India, and has done pioneering and innovative work in critical media education in India. Along with Professor K. P. Jayasankar, she has co-directed several award-winning documentaries that have been screened in festivals across the world. Professor Monteiro writes in the broad areas of censorship, documentary film and media and cultural studies and has contributed to scholarly journals and edited volumes. Her most recent publications are A Fly in the Curry: Independent Documentary Film in India, SAGE Publications, 2016, written jointly with Professor K. P. Jayasankar, which won a special mention for the best book on cinema in the National Film Awards, 2016, and DigiNaka: Subaltern Politics and Digital Media in Post-Capitalist India, co-edited with Anjali Monteiro, K. P. Jayasankar, Amit S. Rai (Eds.), Orient BlackSwan, 2020. Professor Monteiro is a recipient of many fellowships. She has been a Howard Thomas Memorial Fellow in Media Studies, a Fulbright visiting lecturer, an Erasmus Mundus scholar and an Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Visiting Professor, all at various international universities. She is active in campaigns for freedom of expression.

K. P. Jayasankar is a retired professor, School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS, Mumbai. He is involved in media production, teaching and research and has played a key role in setting up the School of Media and Cultural Studies at TISS. Jointly with Professor Anjali Monteiro, he has made over 35 documentaries and won 33 national and international awards at documentary film festivals. Their most recent awards for their Kachchh trilogy are the Basil Wright Prize 2013 for So Heddan So Hoddan (Like Here Like There) and Commendation of the Jury, Intangible Culture Category, 2019, for A Delicate Weave at the Royal Anthropological Institute Festival, United Kingdom. Along with Professor Monteiro, he was an invited artist at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018, where Saacha (The Loom) was showcased as an installation. Professor Jayasankar has served as jury and as festival consultant and director at several film festivals in India. He has mentored many student and fellowship documentary film projects as commissioning editor. His most recent publications co-authored with Professor Monteiro are A Fly in the Curry: Independent Documentary Film in India, SAGE Publications, 2016, for which he received a special mention for the best book on cinema in the President’s National Film Awards, 2016, and DigiNaka: Subaltern Politics and Digital Media in Post-Capitalist India, co-edited with Anjali Monteiro, K. P. Jayasankar, Amit S. Rai (Eds.), 2020. He is a recipient of several scholarships and awards, including the DAAD scholarship at Heidelberg University, the Howard Thomas Memorial Commonwealth fellowship at Goldsmith’s College, London, the Erasmus Mundus scholarship at Lund University and the Key Technology Partner scholarship at University of Technology, Sydney.