'Every villager is a great story-teller'

A woman with a remarkably sharp nose from Jharkhand’s Dungargidi village accosts a jhola-totting man and asks, "Mere bete ko kya hua hai, Saheb?" The mustachioed man points at her emaciated child, tells her he’s suffering from radiation being emitted from the nearby uranium mine and advises her to address the issue at the gram panchayat. The next day, the woman asks the panchayat for help and hundreds of villagers stage a demonstration, forcing a shutdown of the Uranium Corporation of India.
This storyboard is part of Aakhir Kab Tak, a grass-roots comic campaign created by local resident Madhu Soren which was slapped on panchayat office walls, hung on trees, and pasted in local groceries and barber shops to raise awareness about the harmful effects of radiation which many affected semi-literate residents didn’t even know about.The campaign, along with others like Jadugoda village’s Sunder Mohan Mumru, helped in building up pressure to stop toxic uranium dust from being dumped in open fields.
Aakhir Kab Tak is no aberration. Across the country, villagers, farmers, women, students and labourers are being trained to raise an army of comic activists to address those local issues that don’t make it to the mainstream press. In Rajasthan, a young girl called Kala Ashar pleaded with parents to allow their daughters to pursue studies through her comic Lakdi Padhegi while another artist in her state cartooned to change the attitude towards the female child and the trauma of those girls who are still named ‘Maafi’. In Maharashtra, students of the Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped drew to express the hardships faced by people with disabilities, while in Mizoram, a young activist called Tawna addressed the importance of voting.
The comics are all part of the Delhi-based Sharad Sharma’s World Comics India (WCI), which has helped convert over 15,000 people into comic journalists with 600 workshops. Sharma’s comic strip, Developmentoon, in the late 1990s, aimed at highlighting India’s lopsided growth story was the seed which spurred the movement. "I made this strip but there were no takers. The British legacy has not left any room for other kinds of cartooning. There is no space for social issues," he says. The realisation prompted him to quit his job, and with just Rs 100 in his pocket he took off to the North-East and began working with local residents to help them tell their stories. He calls his labor of love ‘Devcoms’ (development comics), a non-threatening, entertaining tool to address issues at the micro level.
"We work with common people, most of whom have never heard of comics," says Sharma. "We ask them if they have anything to share. One thing we know now is that everyone, even in the most remote village, is a good story-teller. I tell them that if they know how to hold a pencil, I can teach them how to draw. But drawing is secondary to grass-roots comics —their issue and message are primary."
While WCI is present in every Indian state, Sharma tries to focus his efforts on conflict areas, where people have few means of self-expression. For instance, workshops are held at the India-Pakistan border, the Naxal-sensitive regions of Chhatisgarh and troubled areas of Kashmir. "Interestingly, in workshops held in conflict regions, most people want to share stories which are connected to day-to-day life: corruption, livelihood, health, education, environment and lack of infrastructure," he says. "Only five per cent of the stories are on conflict. They don’t perceive their homes as ‘conflict areas’."
Each state Sharma and his team visit is left with his legacy in the form of a local comics club. So while the Marathwada Comics Club dwells on corruption, in Uttar Pradesh the focus is on corporal punishment. "Only if local people have ownership will the movement will be strengthened," says Sharma, adding that over 300 comic trainers in South Asia have been produced, many of whom have taken up comic activism as a means of alternative income. "They work as comic trainers and some send their work to local newspapers," he says, referring to a Rajasthani sarpanch’s single strip on water scarcity that appeared in 50 newspapers in three states. Sharma himself supplies comic strips to over 100 regional newspapers, holds exhibitions in metros and has published 11 books with the compiled work of grass-roots artists. "The idea, eventually, is to mainstream," he says.
The activist has even ventured outside, holding workshops in places like Brazil and the Arctic Circle with indigenous people. "In other developing countries, people cartoon about the same issues as we do," he says. "Health corruption and one-sided development have the same calling half away across the globe."
The movement has now spread to every continent except Antarctica. "But," smiles Sharma, "I am hopeful that one day some penguin will send us an email."