Usha Dewani

Information:

Name:

Usha Dewani

Age:

23 years (2009)

Nationality:

Indian

Profession:

Student, Comics Activist

Country:

India

State:

Assam

City:

Guwahati

I am a student of Gauhati University, Assam, India, pursuing my masters in Mass Communication. With Home Science as my college major, I developed an interest in extension activities from then on, but didn’t quite get an opportunity to do much on those lines except for what was in the curriculum. Later when I took up Mass Communication, I began to better understand the things and issues of the community and how different media work in different situations.

World Comics India had their Annual ToT workshop in September 2008 in Don Bosco Institute, Kharghuli in Guwahati and some students of the Department were asked to attend it. I was one of them. I went ahead to participate without any information about what exactly would be done. I was a Test Group participant there and the newly trained Comics tutors guided the test group to draw their own comics. The orientation about grassroots Comics given there and the videos screened brought me to believe in the power of the medium and I wanted to work with it. Later in December 2008, Mr. Sharad Sharma (Secretary General, World Comics India) came to our Department and organised a workshop especially for the Mass Communication students and thereby motivated us to form a group among ourselves to take it further from there. So seven of us teamed together, calling ourselves “New Ways” and started exhibiting our comics and conducting workshops to bring out local issues and introducing the people to a new and simple tool to express themselves.

After we organised our first grassroots Comics Workshop with Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, we received overwhelming support from NGOS, the Department and the people here and from then on there has been no looking back. We have now conducted several workshops with different organisations in Assam. Workshops have also been done on specific themes like Tobacco Control, Disaster Risk Reduction and Anti Ragging. We have used the medium for communicating different subjects, from sexual harassment in educational institutions to simplifying science for the common man! We are all excited and geared up to explore and experiment more with the medium.

As a student of Mass Communication, I think grassroots Comics has the potential to address the unaddressed, since it does not squarely state things and information but can provide a deeper and bigger picture of the issue in concern. Owing to the fact that comics serve as a tool for common people to express themselves and bring out their own perspective about the issue, it presents different angles of the same subject. Therefore, the problem/issue is not seen as “black” or “white” but rather in its own different shades. For instance, during our recent Anti Ragging workshop with students, we came across a multitude of standpoints regarding the issue. It helped in bringing about the broader picture of Ragging- the victim’s feelings, repercussions of ragging in his career or personal life, effect for the family, what goes on in the victimiser’s mind that brings him to rag a junior, the litigation related to ragging so on and so forth. So, it would not just motivate a reader to think in terms of behavioural change from outside but might be able to trigger the consciousness in that direction as he is now not only being delivered information but the story has set the pitch for him to think about it!

Comic