Mizoram Makes a Mark in Mumbai

Chengrang Lanu and MNF: Mizo Uprising to be screened at prestigious fest

ZODIN SANGA

A still from Chengrang Lanu Aizawl, Feb 6 : Mizo filmmaker Malsawmkima Chhangte did not expect his first short film, made without proper equipment, to travel this far. “My first film being selected is unbelievable,” was Chhangte’s reaction to his debut film, Chengrang Lanu, being selected for the prestigious Mumbai International Film Festival, 2014. Chengrang Lanu (Musket Lady), directed and produced by Chhangte, has been selected in the short film competition (national) category, while another Mizo film about the two-decade Mizoram insurgency has been selected in the prism (non-competitive) documentary film under 40 minutes category. MNF: Mizo Uprising is a documentary directed and produced by Napoleon R.Z. Thanga. Chengrang Lanu will be screened on Saturday between 4pm and 5pm at Godrej Theatre. Though Chhangte has a number of documentaries to his credit, Chengrang Lanu is his first short film. “We made this film without proper props and my actors also work as crew members when they are off-screen. It is a group effort and it paid off pretty well, much more than we expected. It encourages me to make more films. I’m planning to make a full feature film in the near future,” Chhangte told The Telegraph before leaving for the film festival. Chengrang Lanu depicts an unusual event in the life of a young Mizo girl. It attempts to illustrate a different aspect of the role of women in early Mizo life where a stereotypical girl would stay at home, work in the fields or just be unable to fend for herself. It starts with a brief narration of the old way of life of the Mizos with visual imagery (sketches) depicting the narration. Emphasis is laid on the dangers of the life of people who are always at war with each other. The scene then dissolves into one where the protagonist is being stalked by two warriors from a neighbouring tribe, is abducted and carried back to the enemy village. The ambush party stops for rest at a thlam (jhum hut) where the girl somehow manages to escape and take revenge on her captors. Filmmaking in a state like Mizoram, where the silver screen is past its golden era and the markets are swamped with dubbed Korean movies, requires a lot of zeal and even risk. “In Mizoram where there is not a single cinema hall to screen your film and the audiences are glued to dubbed Korean movies, you cannot expect any monetary profits from making films,” Chhangte added. Chengrang Lanu had bagged the second prize in the first Mizo Short Film Competition, 2013, jointly organised by the Mizoram Films Development Society (MFDS) and the state government’s information and public relations department. The state government, in collaboration with MFDS, has been actively trying to promote Mizo films in an attempt to counter the invasion of foreign movies, mostly Korean, whose dubbed versions are beamed 24x7 on the local cable television across the state. In an official statement, the director of information and public relations, Jim K. Chozah, congratulated the two Mizo filmmakers on their films being selected in the international film festival. He hoped that the achievement would encourage other Mizo filmmakers to look for a global audience. His department and the MFDS provide basic training to aspiring filmmakers of the state. Two campuses now function as a film city, with traditional Mizo villages serving as permanent exhibits. “The goal is to encourage Mizo filmmakers to create films based on the state’s history and Mizo folk tales,” Chozah said. In last year’s budget, Rs 20 lakh was earmarked for the promotion of visual arts and the film industry by the Mizoram government.

Cigarettes To Cost More in Mizoram

Aizawl, Feb 6 : Cigarettes would cost more in Mizoram after a few months as the tax department would propose a hike in value added tax from 13.5 per cent to 20-25 per cent on it.

Principal Secretary for Taxation R L Rinawma said today that a recent meeting of Mizoram Smoke Free Group, chaired by Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla proposed to hike the VAT on cigarette and authorised the state taxation department to make a formal proposal.

Rinawma said the department was likely to increase the VAT levied on cigarettes to 20 to 25 per cent as it was around 30 to 50 per cent in other states.

Jane R Ralte of the Mizoram State Tobacco Control Society said the initial proposal placed before the Mizoram Smoke Free Group was for 65 per cent as was being done in Rajasthan.

The taxation department also intended to make proposals on increased taxes of imported cigarettes.

India After Nido

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

 

The self-proclaimed image of a tolerant society has often sidelined questions about racism in India.

Summary

His death reminds us of the transitions the Indian project still needs to make.

Nido Taniam’s death was deep tragedy. But there is some consolation that political attention to this incident is ensuring that it does not become a mere statistic. Yet in India, a single violent incident bears the weight of complex histories and tangled sociologies. It has highlighted the casual but consequential racism prevalent in our cities.

It has reopened the delicate question of the place of the Northeast in India’s imagination. It has also reminded us of the subtle transitions the idea of India still needs to make for the Indian project to be complete.

The first transition it needs to make is the move from territoriality to people. The idea of India is tied to an emphasis on territoriality. While this is inevitable in any modern nation state, the monumental privileging of territoriality has often led to making concrete peoples invisible.

The Northeast has often been imagined in Delhi in largely territorial terms; even the name suggests that. Defending territory trumps almost everything else: human rights, economic freedom. But in a strange way, discourse in the Northeast also has been besotted with territoriality. The claim that ethnicity and territoriality be aligned has also wreaked havoc in the region. It is a formula that has also produced more violence, displacement and antagonism in the region.

The principle fight of the Indian state with the Northeast, on one hand, and among the peoples of the Northeast, on the other, has been about who controls what territory, not about how to define proper ethical relationships with others. In a way, the Indian state and the Northeast have shared each other’s pathologies. It is time to move from the question of territory to what it will take for us to treat each other as free and equal human beings.

The second transition is the move from diversity to respecting freedom. Indian toleration was often based on segmentation and hierarchy. Each community could have its place, so long as it remained in its place. But the mobility produced by economic changes, the desire to expand the boundaries of freedom, the jostling in same spaces, sometimes even competition for the same jobs, needs a different kind of toleration.

This toleration is not about respecting each other’s identities at some distance. In a way, it is not even about knowing the histories and identities of others, though that might help. It is about quite the opposite. It is about making identity more of an irrelevant fact in the background, not an axis on which we organise what rights people have and what places they can inhabit. It is about recognising the limits to which we can, as individuals, exercise sovereignty over others; how one wears one’s hair is nobody’s business. This is a challenge for migrants in India everywhere.

The third transition is from self-proclaimed innocence to an overt confronting of racism. The self-proclaimed image of a tolerant society has often sidelined deep questions about racism in India. Racism is a complex subject. But it haunts our conception of nationalism, where we often cannot decide whether the Northeast is radically different or the same, based on race. It haunts our relations with the outside world, as we see with Africans. The moral education required is not more facts about this or that culture. It is about the idea that racism of any kind is not acceptable.

It is about not letting common decency be immobilised by abstractions of identity. This is a much harder thing to achieve. In fact, much of the diversity discourse in India is quite compatible with racism, because it is premised on essentialism: each culture is like this or that. Even positive assessments of different groups partake of the same fallacy: the individual is always a sign of the group, nothing more nothing less. We need to inculcate toleration based on freedom rather than identity, individual equality rather than group difference. Even well-meaning calls for overcoming racism obscure this fact.

The fourth transition is from states of exceptionalism to normalisation. The fact of the matter is that much of the Northeast is still under siege. So long as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act remains in place in its current form, so long as security-based arguments close off developmental possibilities, the Northeast will remain a troubled zone. It could be legitimately asked: what is the connection between the political problem of the area known as the Northeast, and the racial problem of attacks on Northeasterners? The short answer is that both are a form of distancing from the language of Indian citizenship. It is true that horrendous violence goes unpunished in large parts of India.

That we are still debating 1984 testifies to that. But how can the language of citizenship gain primacy, both in Delhi and in the Northeast, when the normative values of citizenship have no purchase in the way the state behaves in the region? In fact, every intervention of the Indian state, including the creation of separate ministries and development councils based on ill-conceived ideas of a territorial identity, is a reminder of just how exceptionally the area is treated. Except that this exceptionalism is a form of marginalisation.

It is taking a Supreme Court intervention to investigate the disappearance of hundreds of young people in the region. The AFSPA may give legal protection to the army to operate. But it is also a daily reminder that people of the region are not allowed to lay claim to the legal protections of citizenship. The AFSPA morally denudes citizenship because it presumes people are guilty rather than innocent. And racism towards the Northeast partakes of the same assumption: guilt just by being. Internal politics in the area will also have to change.

The final transition is from a regime governed by the contingent waves of sympathy to governance by institutions. It should not take a propitious political conjuncture every time to achieve justice. The good thing is that in this case there are few of the “ifs and buts” that normally disable the quest for justice. In India, there is often a danger that history and sociology will be used to immobilise normal institutional roles. Delhi Police is, rightly, under a scanner.

But it is also currently a political football, being kicked around in the politics of blame. How to reform institutions in ways where the politics of assigning blame is not mistaken for the politics of genuine reform will be a challenge. Our hearts are full, our heads need to be clear as well.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, and a contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’

Mizo NGOs Threaten Deprivation of Bru Refugees Voting Rights

Aizawl, Feb 5 : Major NGOs of Mizoram on Tuesday sent a memorandum to the Chief Election Commissioner of India, informing him of the NGOs' intention to take steps to delete the names of the Bru refugees living in Tripura relief camps from the Mizoram electoral roll.

The memorandum informed the CEC of the resolution of the joint meeting of the central Young Mizo Association (CYMA); the Mizo Elders' Association (MUP); the Mizo Women's Association (MHIP) and the Mizo Students' Association (MZP) on January 28.

The resolution had urged the state government to make efforts to repatriate all the Bru families, "who have on their own accord fled from Mizoram" in 1997 and who continue to chose to live in transit camps in Tripura under "various pretexts", by February 2014.

The meeting resolved the joint NGOs shall take all the necessary steps for deletion from the Mizoram electoral rolls the names of those electors who are unwilling to return to Mizoram by end of February, 2014.

"That the joint meeting of all the NGOs fervently requests the Election Commission of India to seriously take into consideration the opinion of the people of Mizoram in all its future dealings with the Bru refugees on matters of Electoral Rolls revision, omission and commission," the memorandum stated. The Mizo NGOs' hostility towards the Bru refugees was fueled by the kidnapping of three persons - a telecom professional from West Bengal and two Mizo drivers - from Mizoram on November 23, 2013 by National Liberation Front of Tripura, with the help of Bru militants. The NGOs felt that the Bru camps not only served bases for Bru militants who occasionally committed crimes in western Mizoram. While the two Mizo drivers were freed on January 21, the telecom professional Deep Mandal is still being held hostage in Bangladesh jungle as the militants demanded huge amount of money from his employer for his release.

YMA search for Mondal

Young Mizo Association (YMA) today decided to visit the border village of Tuipuibari tomorrow to secure the release of Deep Mondal, who was abducted by suspected militants two months ago.

Volunteers of the association have threatened to enter Bangladesh to search for Mondal, a telecom professional, , who has been in captivity in Bangladesh since November 23, a senior official said.

The “search party” to secure the release of Mondal, comprising YMA leaders and members, today met at Damparengpui village on the international border in Mizoram’s Mamit district.

The district superintendent of police Rodingliana Chawngthu said around 100 “search party” members were planning to go to Tuipuibari tomorrow.

Chawngthu said no law and order problem has arisen so far and there has been no report of Bru people leaving the state for fear of communal backlash. While two Mizos abducted by armed Bru goons and kept hostage for ransom were released on January 21, Mondal continues to be in captivity.

'Most People Haven't Studied Geography'

By Nina C George

The death of Nido Tania, a young boy from Arunachal Pradesh, has triggered a sense of fear among the North-East community living in the City which is riled by being constantly mocked at, harassed and even ridiculed.

They often are pejoratively referred to as Chinese, Japanese and ‘foreigners’ in their own country. They get asked as to which ‘country’ they are from. And this appals the two-and-a-half lakh odd North-East people in the City to no end.

The community as a whole, especially the women, confesses that it doesn’t feel safe in the City. The general notion that the north of the country was notorious for incidents of harassment and violence and south was a safer place is fast disappearing.

Sharing her experience, Elvina Haokip, a student confesses that she had some terrible moments dealing with autorickshaw drivers. “It was a little after dusk and I was returning from college. I boarded an auto and agreed to pay a little extra to get home quickly. After a little distance, the auto driver began staring at me with an irritating smile. He kept mumbling something to himself. I was terrified but sat still,” she recollects. Haopu Mate, another student, says that he often gets referred to as a ‘foreigner’.

“I boarded a bus last week. I didn’t have change and gave the conductor Rs 100. He had the change but he refused to part with it and began abusing me in the local language. He asked me to get off the bus. I refused and questioned him why should I do so, since I was not travelling free. He didn’t say anything, instead he pushed me out,” says Haopu Mate.

James, a banker, always gets asked where he is from and when he says Manipur, people immediately ask him ‘which country is that?’ “Looks like most people haven’t studied geography in school. How can they miss the North-Eastern part of India? Worse still, they don’t know the difference between Chinese, Japanese and people from the North East.

Don’t we have the right to live, walk free and pursue any profession and education of our choice in our own country?” James wonders. He further states that he has been stopped and shouted at by a few strangers at night while returning from work. “There is rowdyism back in our hometown but not to this extent,” he adds.    

Goulen has completed his education and is preparing for competitive exams. Goulen says, “We are educated and come from good families. Why should we be stopped in the middle of the road, mocked at and abused for no fault of ours? I don’t speak the local language. Hence, I stay away from getting into an argument.”

Hencha Kipgen is a hotelier, who lives in Ulsoor. He confesses that he was stopped on his way home recently and asked where he’s from by a gang of men on two bikes. “I told them that I am an Indian but they kept asking me which country I am from. I am helpless because I can’t speak the local language.

They hurled a couple of abuses at me and left. I returned the abuse in my local tongue. Why shouldn’t I react?”he asks. 

Rocky Kipgen, who works in a salon, concludes, “We are harmless and we shouldn’t be judged based on our features or where we are from. I think people should live and let live.”

Government to set up committee on north-eastern youth

NEW DELHI: Condemning death of Arunachal Pradesh student Nido Taniam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said violence preceding his death was "tragic and shameful"

The Union Home Ministry, meanwhile, was ready to set up a committee of retired bureaucrats to address the larger issue of isolation and discrimination of youth from the North-East.

"While the actual cause of Nido Taniam's death will be known only after the autopsy report is received, the violence which preceded his demise is tragic and shameful. Our government will make every possible effort to punish the guilty and to provide effective protection to students and citizens from different parts of the country, especially the northeast, who visit or reside in Delhi," the PM said in a statement.

A home ministry official said a committee of four-five retired bureaucrats, including one from Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland and others with a "strong connection" with northeast, would be set up soon and given two-three months to come up with a comprehensive report on how to integrate north-east youth and steps required to stop racial abuse against them.

"A magisterial inquiry, which is being conducted by a District Magistrate, will meanwhile concentrate on Tania's death, the circumstances surrounding it and specifically the grave lapses of the Delhi police. The police had no business trying to strike a compromise between Tania and the accused shopkeepers who assaulted him. They should have immediately lodged an FIR on charges of assault and also promptly booked the shopkeepers for violating section 3 of the SC/ST Act as they had racially abuse/teased Tania. But an FIR was lodged only after Tania's death," the ministry official said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who visited Jantar Mantar on Tuesday where north-east youth are sitting on a candle-light protest, said the magisterial probe will be over in 3-4 weeks and action will follow.

The twin down South

By Ashwini Gangal

Vim recently released a campaign featuring a Mizoram-based family with 160 members. The campaign comprises two identical films featuring different brand ambassadors - one famous in the North and the other in the South. A look at the geography-sensitive, dual-celeb route, something other brands have also taken of late.

Vim, dishwashing brand from HUL, recently launched two 30 seconders. The Hindi ad features Sakshi Tanwar, TV actress of Hindi GEC fame and the Tamil ad features Devayani, film actress down South. What caught our attention is that both ads are identical, except for the celebrity and of course, the language.
Few weeks back, Santoor, soap brand from Wipro, did the same with Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan and Telugu actor Mahesh Babu. Not long before that Mondelēz International's Cadbury India, launched a couple of ad films for its cookie brand Oreo; Ranbir Kapoor featured in the national campaign and Tamil actor Karthik Sivakumar (aka Karthi) featured in the TVC that was aired across Tamil Nadu and Kerala-specific media. Just like in the case of Vim, in these cases too, both ads were identical on all fronts - script, overall treatment, creative execution, costumes and actors' expressions.

Pan-India Ideas?

R Sridhar, founder, brand-comm, a brand consultancy, says that while brands have historically been launching separate campaigns for the South market, the point to be noted here is that today, the national and South campaigns are identical. This, he notes, is possible only if the core theme is very broad. "While Coca-Cola has been endorsed by Aamir Khan nationally and by superstar Vijay in the South, the scripts of the ads featuring each were completely different. The trend we see today is that the themes brands are selecting for their campaigns are very generic and inherently pan-India." Oreo's brother-sister play or Vim's utensil cleaning challenge are not ideas that are intrinsically rooted in a particular geography. "Brands seem to be coming up with 'general' ideas such as these," Sridhar says.
This also solves the problem of translating the script at a later date. Often in translation, the essence of the original script gets lost. But as is seen in this trend, the two scripts are thought of right at the inception stage itself and are then executed simultaneously; not as an after-thought that goes, 'Now let's translate and dub this Hindi ad into Tamil.' "In the future, I do see more ads with such general themes, that is, themes good enough to hold nationally," predicts Sridhar.

The "cultural contexts" in the North and South, as Mahuya Chaturvedi, managing partner, Cogito Consulting (independent consulting division of the Draftfcb Ulka Group) points out, are believed to be opposite. The flamboyance and high decibel entertainment of the North is in direct contrast to the disciplinarian and information-hungry stance of the South. "Likewise, in advertising," she says, "while the South would like to know 'what benefit?', 'why?', and details about ingredients, the North enjoys the narrative, the humour and the music."

"Which is why, when marketers hit upon an emotional hotspot, like women's quest for eternal youth (read: Santoor), the transferability across borders is more effortless," she says, about the trend.
Chaturvedi shares an example of a brand that, in the past, has created entirely different campaigns for the North and South markets: Tetra Pak conveyed its 'protection proposition' to its Northern audience by using the black tika (dot) on a new born baby, while in the South the same end was achieved by demonstrating the actual stamina and energy of a kid. While the current trend of creating identical ads with different celebrities is a sustained admission that the two markets are indeed different, it is also a time-effective way out, from an effort-and-execution perspective.

She points out yet another trend: The use of 'South characters' and 'South lingo' in pan-India campaigns. For instance, Idea Cellular showed a South Indian dad playing Holi with kids in an ad film not too long back and Mahindra's ad for the Duro featured Kareena Kapoor - a star with far less appeal in the South than the North - liberally using 'Romba Nalla' as the catch phrase all through the Tamil commercial. "These ads caught a chuckle because of the surprise value," Chaturvedi says. Some experts attribute this ancillary trend to "media overlap" between the South and other markets.
According to experts, the 'dual-celeb, identical ad' trend is here to stay. Chaturvedi alerts us to a study by Millward Brown, a research agency, which suggests that only one in seven ads travels well across the country and has similar likeability/enjoyment scores; in all, 1,000 ads were studied. Maybe the dual-celeb route was born out of such findings. Come to think of it, the only endorsers left with national appeal are perhaps cricketers. So would a Dhoni have appeal in Chennai? Yes. But whether it is because cricket surpasses state boundaries or because he is captain of Chennai Super Kings is anyone's guess.

Vim Story
The Vim commercials feature the world's largest family (160 members) that resides in Mizoram. The ads are shot in and around their home.

Joshua Thomas, creative director at Lowe Lintas & Partners India, stumbled upon information about this family, while working on a Vim brief. The agency then went ahead and presented a campaign idea, centered on this family, to the brand team. "Vim communication is always set in a 'challenge' context. This family seemed like a perfect fit for a 'torture test' brief. The brief came first and the idea of using the family came later," informs the HUL company spokesperson.

In a sense, the campaign takes the brand out of the kitchen and onto a larger canvas. Will going back to the previous 'kitchen imagery' be a challenge for the brand in the days ahead? "When you view the advertisements, you will notice that the brand is still shown in and around the kitchen. It is just the context and story that take place in a larger setting. Dirty utensils exist everywhere and this was just one way of conveying the brand's message. So in that sense, we don't really see any problem for subsequent campaigns," says the spokesperson.

The shoot took around four days to complete, although a dialogue with the family was initiated a few months back. A lot of the shots in the films are candid shots of the family members going about their daily routine. Understandably, both logistics and language were challenges the agency was faced with. The family speaks Mizo and the services of an interpreter were availed for this campaign.

Interestingly, the extreme North and North Eastern parts of India don't get featured much mainstream ad campaigns, unless of course, the effort is to show that the product/service is available in every nook and corner of India - like in the case of the recent Tata Sky commercial, shot in Leh Ladakh, in the Northern most state of J&K; "India ke kisi bhi koney se..." went the voice-over artist.

While integration was not an agenda - ("This advertisement was made with the sole aim of communicating the brand's message and hence should be viewed through that lens only," goes the HUL spokesperson) - it may well be a welcome byproduct of the Vim campaign.

The media agency is Mindshare and the production house is All in the Family. The ads have been directed by Vishal Gehani.

source: afaqs.com

"You bloody chinky" - We Hear This Everyday

By Binalakshmi Nepram

Binalakshmi Nepram is a writer and activist.

Binalakshmi Nepram is a writer and activist. She is the founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network (MWGSN). 

She met with Rahul Gandhi yesterday and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today to demand justice for Nido Taniam, the 20-year-old who died after he was beaten up by a group of men at a South Delhi market. 

This is Binalakshmi's blog (as told to ndtv.com).

Nido was a victim of racial profiling. A lot of young boys and girls are victims - everyday. I'm a victim myself. Just now, I was waiting for an auto-rickshaw and 6-7 empty autos went by without stopping for me. There are many, many cases but they are not reported. We are called 'Nepali dhanda karne wale, you bloody chinki'. Has a person from Kashmir or Chennai ever been beaten to death in Delhi? Delhi, unfortunately is the worst. So many kids come here from the North East for higher education and this is the kind of discrimination they have to face every day.

We met yesterday (Monday) with Mr Rahul Gandhi.  He was very upset and assured us that there would be a committee like the Justice Verma Committee that was constituted after the Delhi gang-rape to look into Nido's case. He also admitted that this was a case of racial discrimination. Mr Kejriwal joined us in our protests at Jantar Mantar today.

When we met Mr Kejriwal yesterday, we advised him to form a special committee - on the lines of the Justice Mehra committee - only for Delhi and the National Capital Region. He liked the idea.  The Delhi government has to ensure this happens and look at different cases of racial discrimination.

60% of the North Eastern kids who leave their hometowns are in Delhi. The Delhi Education Minister should ensure that the culture, tradition of the North East is a part of the curriculum of Delhi schools so that there is no prejudice...so we are not looked at as aliens.

A helpline which was launched some years ago to receive calls for help from North Eastern students doesn't work at all. It is manned by the Delhi Police and the Delhi police itself is biased. Most of the policemen are from Haryana - they are extremely racist. It would help if the Delhi Police recruited some people from the North East.

The government must focus on the formation of an anti-racial, anti-discrimination law. We don't have anything of the sort at the moment.  And we need a special fast-track court to try these hate crimes.

In Delhi, we face violence, sexual assault.  There is verbal abuse and taunting.  It is rampant, it happens at every moment.

There is a fear psychosis in the minds of many young people who study or work in Delhi. We tell them only cowards indulge in this kind of racial discrimination. Delhi doesn't belong to a single community. We have requested the Ministry of Home Affairs to tighten security.

This is my message to youngsters from North Eastern states living in Delhi. This city is as much as yours as it is of other citizens. Only cowards do these kind of racial attacks. Please do not be scared or intimidated. Cases are being solved. Delhi belongs to everyone.