Canvas of Change, A Review

    The ‘Canvas of Change’ virtual exhibition held on 11th July 2024 (4-6 pm), aimed to explore Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) through creative expressions. Organized by a 10-person team called the Youth Advisory Group (YAG) of Dasra and Pravah under the pan-Indian project of Youth Ke Bol, it was the self-selected graduation assignment of the 6-month YAG cohort. The whole project was anchored, over a period of nearly 2 months, by Prachi Tiwari and Nandani, promotional graphics and messaging made by Priyanka Panda, artist and audience mobilization by Usha Kumari and Reena Banjara, form preparation and artist management by Reshma Anil Kumar, powerpoint presentation made by Swastika Mahalaxmikar and scripted by Almas Zareen. Usha played a huge part in the Hindi translations throughout various stages of the project, and Almas & Priyanka came together for the facilitation of the exhibition, with Vishu and Swastika coming together for the documentation. The project was continuously scrutinized and supported by Puja Mahato, Aishee Banerjee and Aakriti P. of Pravah, and Milonee Parekh of Dasra. This two-hour exhibition featured 5 artists from various backgrounds. Like the real event itself, an introduction call with the artists and two dry-runs over zoom was done in the weeks leading up to the event.  

The first artist was Rhea Laskar (Rei), a demi-bisexual nonbinary person from Assam, disabled with cerebral palsy, AuDHD and auditory processing disorder. They exhibited two pieces – one, a writeup called ‘Gender Exploration: Letting Go of Social Expectations’, and two, a digital drawing titled ‘No One is Free Until Everyone is Free’. The 1-page writeup was quite personal and closely reflected how Rei's process of understanding their gender identity, sparked by a casual question from one of their closest friends. It portrays how we all try hard to ignore our discomfort to fit in, especially for very visibly disabled people like Rei who is already ostracized. The piece ends with Rei realizing that their comfort and happiness matter more than what others want or think. Contrastingly, the drawing is quite simple looking with an ‘eye’ as the centre of attention. The eyeball itself has its upper horizontal half coloured by a rainbow and the other half looking like a watermelon, which represents the Palestinian flag. The eyebrow has 5 piercings in the colours of the transgender flag. The eye is overflowing with red tears, expressing both menstrual blood and pain in general. Though all this represents various marginalized communities suffering, it also depicts these communities bravely standing up against their oppressors and fighting for their right to live safely with dignity. 

The exhibition was designed in such a manner that after the initial icebreaker, each artist was introduced by the facilitator who then passes on the mic to the artist to present their art. In Rei’s case, due to their disability-related speech issues, Reshma came forward to present their art. Once presented, the facilitators took over to seek insights from the audience through chat and occasional unmuting. This exercise is then concluded by the facilitators asking the author themselves about what the art really means and their experiences creating it. Adhering to this pattern, the next artist called upon was Ranu Singh. 

Ranu is a Menstrual Educator working on Menstrual Hygiene Awareness and Reproductive Health Rights in the schools and communities of Bihar for the past 3-5 years. He uses art, digital content, and storytelling to conduct workshops, events, and public awareness campaigns. His art included two original photographs – one with red handprints all over a white chart paper, surrounded by people standing around, on a red-carpeted floor. The second one is a photo of well-arranged diverse menstrual products, in the shadow of a window. It featured a sky-blue cloth pad at the centre, two bio-degradable pads in white and pink packaging to the top right corner, two tampons at the down right corner, one blue and one pink menstrual cup at the top left corner and an almost symmetrical solo stick of rose with leaves at the down left corner, with some of the petals plucked and spread on the cloth pad. While talking about Menstrual Hygiene Day 2024, Ranu also spotlighted the startling statistics of ecological damage single-use plastic sanitary pads cause. 

Following was a 17-year-old student dancer and public speaker from Uttar Kannada Kodibag Karwar. Pallavi Pandurang Kamble took up the complex challenge of explaining the life, relationships and emotions of a girl as she becomes a woman through a 1 minute 30 seconds' dance. Adorned by the audience’s remarks, she also expressed her pride in being a girl and becoming a woman and how much she enjoys it, despite all the struggles that come with it. This was in stark contrast with other artists who highlighted the darker sides that comes with being different or shrouded in shame. 

From here, the baton was passed to Krish Raj, a young filmmaker from Patna, Bihar, who is one of the 75 Creative Minds from the International Film Festival of India, a member of Bihar Youth for Child Rights, and an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State's Access Microscholarship Program. He presented his 6-minute film ‘N3’, recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO). This comprehensive film brought together the public, students and medical practitioners, their opinions and knowledge on safe sex practices, family planning, contraception and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs). The misinformation and stigma among the public and youth it presented further cemented opinions regarding the need for compulsory Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in educational institutions amongst the audience. 

The final artist to enrich the exhibition was a prolific artist with diverse talents in paintings, murals, sculpture and installation. Indrani Acharya, based in Kolkata and Georgia, is nationally and internationally renowned through her participation in multimedia residencies, environmental conferences, and cultural exchanges. She presented two pieces, both themed ‘The Hope’, which uses mixed media on handmade paper, portraying the intricacies and challenges people may face in the SRH front of life. The first piece looks like a horizontal vulva with its labia stitched together. These stitches symbolized the physical and emotional scars one may live through while navigating the sensitivities of SRH in a world like ours. It also reminds one of practices like Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) which is still prevalent despite the era we’re living in. The second painting features several bark-like squares resembling a spinal cord. It suggests the interconnectedness of different aspects of SRH. This is then surrounded by black and white bandage-like crepe alternatively, signifying the constraints and limitations we face in terms of our SRH. 

By then, it was nearing the end of the exhibition, and we all thought it indeed is the end. But surprisingly, Priyanka came forward to recite a poem of hers that brought all the art pieces and concepts presented throughout the exhibition together. Though it visibly talked about sexuality exploration and lack of acceptance, its crux was of self-love which was the perfect cherry to top the Exhibition ‘cake’. 

The exhibition was an amalgamation of all that is often considered ‘shouldn’t be’, some more obvious and some others less obviously. But that was what kept the exhibition balanced overall. It, comfortably and realistically, coalesced anomalies and specialities that left much inspiration and food for thought! 

The growth of AI: What it promises? Jobless future or better opportunities?

    Growth of AI, at first glance, might seem like coming with the promise of a jobless future. But more detailed observation and analysis can shine light on the fact that it opens the possibilities for a more colourful and diverse future with the promise of new and better opportunities. AI shifts opportunities and careers from its traditional point of view to a sea of more sustainable alternatives. Like most other developments and inventions in history, as the demand for some skills inevitably decline, the demand for some others would increase. A notable difference in the case of AI with other historical developments is the reality that continuing education and upskilling needs to be accepted as part and parcel of striving forwards in a career and not just in starting out on one or transitioning to one. 

  

    Further, the increased frequency of historical innovations in today's age is evidence to the fact that AI and other forms of technology leads to innovation and, subsequently, productivity. Moreover, since innovation is often something that we cannot control or curb forever, we need to accept and access our inherent skill of adaptability and change with the changing times, while working to carefully and proactively lead that change to positive outputs and outcomes. 

  

    Using the power of AI and related innovations, we can instigate deep learning and structure algorithms to achieve the goals of sustainability that we continue to strive to and are incredibly short on time to accomplish, be it that change is slow or not. It's also to be noted that AI provides the opportunity to achieve sustainability in an inclusive manner by holding space and making facilities accessible for those who have diverse accessibility requirements. It also opens our eyes to the fact that sustainability is, in fact, a no go without inclusion which we often tend to forget, unless we stand facing the brunt of it. 

  

    Such accomplishments come with a requirement of large amounts of human effort to label and prepare necessary training data for supervised learning, like developing a curriculum. This is a challenge to solve to channel the fruits of those efforts effectively to other sectors to symbiotically benefit from. Hence, growth of AI is both a challenge and opportunity, but both can be viewed positively as a chance. So, at the end of the day, the promises of AI depend on how we perceive it. 

Biased media is a threat to the fundamental idea of democracy

    Biased media is an immense threat to democracy. This is evident from the often victim-blaming and/or victim-focused articles produced by most traditional media channels that bring unwarranted and unsolicited attention when the focus and the blame should be shifted to the perpetrators, facilitating free and just communication, a foundational principle of democracy, not to mention the threat from politically influenced/leaning media portals. Moreover, it's also a threat when media companies push down the true and sincere voices of journalists working towards justice or when political/governmental institutions unjustly persecute them. Such instances are also initiated often due to the interference of corporates/private institutions/faith leaders in the information dissemination process. This curbs the free flow of genuine news and stories, thus curbing the development of a healthy democracy. 

    When it comes to online media, though it seems neutral on the surface, the issue is complicated in a different way owing to the discriminatory/biased ways the algorithms of these platforms are designed by the people behind the screen. Moreover, often reporting hate and false information on online/social media is turned a blind eye to, thanks to the biases of people involved in regulating these reports, in result, curbing free flow of full and correct information ingrained with emotional intelligence. This also results in the silencing of so many voices that are already marginalized, effectively taking away the right to equality and right against discrimination of those marginalized voices. 

  

    Both these groups of platforms are also subject to misinformation and/or partial information due to many reasons, few of which involve biases and vested interests of people and/or institutions sharing such information. Though censorship might seem like a good tool to curb such instances from happening, it's a thin line to walk, often turning abusive and/or anarchical, leading to dangerous outcomes like the ones in Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and the religious crimes all over the country. Further, the lack of diversity in the traditional media sector, especially in high-level position is a huge and contradictory factor contributing the bias since there isn't enough representation of the diverse voices of the country in the writers, editors and censors who pen the story of these voices. This ultimately leads to a lack of understanding of context and the information shared being limited in its perspectives, providing little window for growth, another integral pillar to building a successful democracy. 

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

    I believe that human morality is based on love and hate which is formed through social conditioning. So, essentially, morality and justice would mean different things to different people in different parts of the world at different periods of time. This shows that both are evolving concepts influenced by the aforementioned factors. Though, individually, love and hate are learned behaviors, as a society, the derived morality, definitely leans to justice since the root objective of morality is to establish justice, even with occasional setbacks. Therefore, the arc of morality is definitely long since establishing justice requires consistent progressive effort towards unlearning and relearning the social conditionings that form the basis of our love and hate, both individually and in solidarity. 

    As expressed by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words, be it slowly, we're moving towards justice, which is expressed by the efforts, by young changemakers like me, towards fostering awareness and acceptance of differences by challenging age-old social conditionings and pre-conceived notions and, thus, redefining love and hate. For example, research has proved repeatedly that transphobia and homophobia are learned behaviours. This fact sheds light on the possibility of love for and acceptance of these marginalized communities through the mere understanding that we are as human and normal as any other cisgender/heterosexual person, consequently, leading to justice. So, at the root of the issue, the road from morality to justice is really simple, just that it's crowded with too many stakeholders, tears, stories and institutions drenched in love and hate, founded in personal interests. 

  

    Even then, achieving justice is not an impossibility because the tools we can use to do so can be something as small as small as sharing our personal stories in the form lived experiences, feelings and learnings. Small as it might seem, it can also turn into a bigger foundation for more elaborate tools, like Gender and Performance Budgeting, Media and Legal Advocacy, Policy and Programme Analysis, etc., aimed at achieving justice. But all these tools and the journey towards achieving justice is ultimately founded in human morality and the moral desire to present a better and morally justified society to our children and future generations where they can feel the true meaning of freedom by existing while being genuine to who they really are with ease. Ergo, change takes time, but it occurs. So, hope and work towards that hope. 

My SRHR Dream for India

    As a queer individual assigned female at birth (AFAB), SRHR is a topic that’s close to my heart but at the same time, I also understand how broad of an umbrella it is. That’s why I concentrate on areas where my expertise is the largest. This is something I hope others too follow because misinformation and misconceptions is an extremely problematic and widespread issue in India, with dire consequences, some of which are unintended, when it comes to SRHR. 

1. Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) 

    The aforementioned issues, I believe, are exacerbated by the lack of CSE in India, with the extremely limitedly available sex education being skipped or limited to students AFAB, effectively increasing the taboo, stigma, shame and making the shroud of secrecy even darker. Thus, at the root, making CSE, with a shared risk and pleasure-based focus, rather than singularly the former, mandatory in educational institutions from elementary schools is essential. 

    Having a pleasure-based focus is essential, in addition to the risks, because we, as a society, need to acknowledge the fact that people engage in sex and explore their sexuality for their pleasure and happiness, be it sexual or otherwise. Like in any other journey of self-discovery, this exploration comes with its risks. So, addressing only the risks without the pleasure that pioneered it would be like treating the symptoms of a disease without even giving regard to the causative factor of the disease, not that pleasure is a disease though. Bringing pleasure into the sphere of vision is also going to create visibility and validation for people who differ from the conventional understanding of intercourse/coitus, thus effectively addressing a lot of mental health and relationship issues due to initiation of conscious and purposeful communication. From the perspective of a person who engages in kink and with ‘pain’ for a fetish, I can guarantee that basic scientific awareness of pleasure and the knowledge that it can mean different things to different people provides a depth to the concept of ‘Consent’ and understanding of ‘Bodily Autonomy’. 

    I’d also like to propose building a general awareness of Puberty Blockers and Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), addressing both its risks and benefits, to give children and people the assurance and awareness that it’s possible and okay to be different. 

        2. Medical Industry 

We all know that the medical industry is a tight nut to crack. But it being what it is doesn’t invalidate my experiences of bodyshaming and being given partial to no information. And these aren’t singular incidents because, as an SRHR Activist and a friend to numerous marginalized folks, I have heard stories of numerous lived experiences of public bodyshaming, unnecessary surgeries, withholding of information, and disaffirmation, bordering harassment.  

Though a lot of these issues can be tackled by CSE, more complicated issues call for updating the outdated, defective and insufficient medical syllabus. Among these ‘complicated issues’, one in my expertise to address is the SRHR of Intersex people. 

To understand this completely, we need to understand that, unlike popular belief, people can be intersex not just due to ambiguous genitals but also due to hormonal and/or genetic variations, which amounts to more than 45 ways of being intersex. Leaving the unnecessary surgeries done on the first group of healthy infants, other groups wouldn’t even know that they’re intersex until they’re into their puberty or never. This means that a lot of us could be intersex and never even know it. While one of the reasons for this being the lack of research done into the SRHR of intersex people due supposedly few people being born as such, it’s also to be acknowledged that most of us live our lives without doing karyotypic testing. I’m not advocating for it since it’s an expensive procedure. But I’m advocating for the possibility of a person being intersex to be considered, atleast when they encounter failure even after numerous rounds of IVF or when they have other reproductive issues which are unexplained or not explained enough by modern medicine or often ignored by the medical community.  

Ofcourse, I can’t give citations to medical journals to attest to all these arguments since no research have been done into these issues, which brings us back to the problem in question that needs to be addressed. Even after research are done into these matters, I might be wrong about some of these since I’m not a medical professional. But talking to the President Elect, Dr. Jaydeep Tank, of FOGSI, I atleast know that my concerns are valid and would like them addressed.