‍‍‍‍‍Can Poor Equipped Educational Institutions Shield Students From Covid In Telangana?

Fortunately or unfortunately we all have come to a situation where 'caution' and 'precautions' have become the watchwords of 'normal' life. Covid-19 has caused inestimable damage to human life, shattering norms in sphere.

Despite reeling under the impact of the pandemic, the governments in many states, including Telangana, are readying to reopen schools. At this point, nobody knows at what cost. Reopening schools implies a lot. Students will not be airlifted from homes to schools. They will take crowded buses. Apart from enough number of buses, schools need to be equipped with everything that prevents Covid infection so as to shield students completely. That is a tall order.

We are yet to overcome the impact of the second wave and the third way is said to be round the corner. Are we prepared to cope with the impending third wave? What steps have been taken to shield the future citizens of India from the virus? Just reopening schools is not enough. The authorities should have taken all precautionary steps before announcing the reopening of schools. We have had a bad experience of opening schools and closing them immediately after the surge of the second wave.

It is a fact that virtual classes have had a negative psychological impact on students, with everyone glued to smart phones or laptops for hours together during classes. The governments had made arrangements to make online classes trouble-free and tension-free. During the last two years schools have been virtually abandoned, with even basic staff not attending to their duties due to fear of Covid.

As education has become a lucrative business, many educational institutions do not flinch from admitting students into different courses even if they do not have the capacity to accommodate them. Most of the classrooms are overcrowded. For a classroom that can accommodate 20 students, double the number is admitted. It means students will never have proper space among them, let alone social distancing norms of keeping alternate seats vacant.

After the second wave peaked, claiming a lot of human lives, oxygen plants were opened in most of the hospitals. Now everything said to be 'right'. Restrictions on cinema halls have been lifted. Ultimately, students, whether they go to schools or cinema halls, will be exposed to the virus. Are all the schools or classrooms spacious enough to accommodate students as per the prescribed norms? Except for a few private and government schools or colleges, most of the educational institutions are in a bad shape.

They operate in private and congested buildings with no proper ventilation in the classrooms. In this pathetic condition, if schools and colleges are allowed to open, and students attend classes; will there be a shield to protect them from the deadly Covid, particularly the Delta variant that is spreading fast? So, pragmatic steps are required to prevent incalculable damage.
Even nations that have the best of medical facilities are cautious in this regard.

In spite of massive vaccination and spacious schools, they are protective of students' lives. There is strict implementation of Covid norms. Medical experts are warning that the new wave is slow in spread, but will be massive in its impact. The rising Covid cases Kerala is indicative of this.

All told, the vaccination of Indians leaves much to be desired. Against this background, if schools and colleges are opened, where is the guarantee that nothing untoward will not happen? Opening of educational institutions can wait.

The spread of the virus must be contained first. For that to happen, a well-planned strategy is needed. As students are engaged with virtual classes, there is no urgency in driving them to schools or colleges without making the institutes completely safe. #KhabarLive #hydnews

Telangana government mandating physical classes from September 1, is causing serious concern among parents.

The safety of children, who are required to go to school starting September 1 with the government mandating physical classes from that date, is causing serious concern among parents.

It is not that parents do not want to send their children to school, it is just that the absence of assurance of safety against Covid-19 once out of home is what appears to be holding parents back from fully backing the government decision to reopen schools for physical classes.

“I do not have the kind of money to take care of my six-year-old daughter if something happens to her. But, with no online classes, I have to send my daughter to school because I do not want her to miss any class,” says Kavita Konaboina.

For Namish Mehta, sending his two children to school is not a difficult choice to make, provided every safety and sanitation measure is attended to. The school they go to has security cameras and parents should be given access to them so they can check how things are being run, he says.

It is not just the practically enforced sending of children to schools that is bothering parents. Crowding, says Ashwin Kumar, is a serious concern.

“I have two little daughters going to the same school, but should I take the risk when there is no vaccination available for children,” he asks.

On other hand, social media platforms such as Twitter, some parents worried over how easy it was for their kids to catch a cold or a fever, while others were hoping that the state will have a change of mind and allow a mix of online and in person classes, so parents can choose an option that works best for them.

There is utter confusion among school and college managements, and parents, on the reopening for physical classes from September 1 as the state government continues to push educational institutions to reopen their doors to students.

Not every parent wants to send his or her child to school given the fact that there has been no assurance from the government on student safety other than ordering that every school and college should take up a thorough physical cleaning.

A post on Facebook that asked the question “How many of you are ready to send your kids back to schools or colleges from 1st September?”, and the responses to it pretty much summed up the mood with respect to how ready people are to see their children back in classrooms.

“Once the Covid caller tune ends then we will think,” was one witty response, but that summed up the biggest worry over sending children to schools and colleges – the possibility of children catching Covid-19.

On other social media platforms such as Twitter, some parents worried over how easy it was for their kids to catch a cold or a fever, while others were hoping that the state will have a change of mind and allow a mix of online and in person classes, so parents can choose an option that works best for them.

The challenges of safety, and student attendance are particularly acute when it comes to primary classes with children as young as five years being required to attend physical classes.

“The parents are not ready, we are also not ready to have little kids in classes. Some children may be looking forward to going to school because they may be missing out on playing with friends. But if something happens to a kid, can the parents take it? The school managements I am certain, cannot,” said Suman Earth, founder and chairman of Abode Montessori and Multiple Intelligence School. “No chance can be taken with pre-school and primary school students,” he added. #KhabarLive #hydnews 

‍‍‍Why 'Gulf Migration Corridor' At Crossroads In Telangana?

Equipping and empowering our migrants to deal with the complications that arise at various stages of migration is no more an option.

Telangana, the 12th-most populated State in India as per the 2011 census, sends about 1.5 million of a total 8.8 million Indian expatriates to the Gulf. These labourers have played a crucial role in transforming the Gulf States from “camel to Cadillac”. Similarly, the Gulf migration has impacted the upward social and economic mobility of migrant households and strengthened Telangana’s economy through remittances they send home.

Northern Telangana, especially Karimnagar, Rajanna Sircilla, Nizamabad, Adilabad and Warangal districts, has witnessed widespread migration to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Beginning from the second half of the 1980s, people from the Telangana region migrated to the Gulf as a response to the perpetual droughts, lack of irrigable water and the resultant agricultural distress, as well as the heightened naxalism and police encounters. The Gulf oil boom of the 1970s and the tremendous infrastructural development in the region spurred the demand for labour that acted as a pull factor. Since then, the migration of people of all ages, classes and skill levels from the Telangana region to the Gulf is uninterrupted.

Antilogy of Gulf Dreams

Poverty, unemployment, lack of opportunities, local entrepreneurial environment and debt from agriculture force many to seek jobs in Gulf countries. Expatriates from Telangana mostly work in low-paid, semi and low-skilled unorganised sectors of construction, retail, driving, sanitation and domestic work. A few work in the skilled sectors of care services, hospitality and hotel management as well.
Severe hardships they endure in the hostile terrains of Arab lands are yet to be studied and documented by academia and public intellectuals. They are the “precarious proletariat” in the true sense of the term coined by the renowned economist Thomas Piketty, working in 3D contractual jobs (“dirty, dangerous and difficult”) under the much-criticised kafala system in the alienated Gulf societies.

Stagnated wages are an ignored ill-face of blue-collar jobs in the Gulf. They live in overcrowded labour camps or so-called “bachelor” houses, taking up multiple jobs or overtime in arduous work environments with bare minimum facilities for sending some extra money home. They are deprived of social safety nets and labour rights.

Women domestic workers and caregivers who work in the least regulated environments of their sponsors’ houses are often subject to inhuman treatments, gender-based violence and exploitation.
Financial strains and resultant stress, uncertainties related to the temporary contract visa, emotions of loneliness for being away from the family for years together, and concerns about the wellbeing of the family left behind add to the vulnerability of these migrants. Many suffer from serious health problems, and the instances of death due to health complications and suicides are yet to be addressed in our public discourses on migration.

Today, the Gulf dream for many is shattering due to the changes in the tax system, nationalisation and labour quota policies intended to reduce expatriate labourers, such as the Nitaqat in Saudi Arabia. The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated their sufferings, and many are facing the threat of job loss, over-work and reduced salaries or have already lost their jobs.

Return and Re-migration

Unlike the earlier waves of return migration during the Gulf War (1990s), the oil crisis and the economic depression (2000s), or the labour nationalisation (2010s), the pandemic-induced return is unprecedented. The prospect of re-migration is bleak, especially for the low-skilled, with Gulf labour markets moving forward with rigorous migrant labour reduction programmes as a response to the economic fragility, demographic transition and rising unemployment among natives. Parallelly, India is going through an alarming phase of rising unemployment and declining economic growth. It is in this context that these jobless migrants are returning, feeling dejected and disillusioned.

It is estimated that over 75,000 migrant workers in the Gulf from across Telangana are terminated from their jobs and hurriedly returned without procuring salary arrears and end-of-service benefits such as bonus, PF, gratuity, and so on. This serious issue of “wage theft” is not entirely a new pandemic-induced phenomenon, but several employers are taking undue advantage of the current situation. Hence, returning penniless and abashed, they are forced to borrow money or sell assets that they have hard-earned from the Gulf jobs for their sustenance and clearing off previous loans and debts.

Owing to the lack of alternative livelihood opportunities and a supportive reintegration and rehabilitation policy, many returnees, especially between 20 and 45 years age group, are left with no option other than to re-migrate to the Gulf. But, it is more difficult and expensive to re-migrate now due to the long waiting period for Covid-19 vaccines in India, ever-changing entry rules and travel bans in the Gulf, and uncertainty and diffidence around finding new employment or joining back in the earlier Gulf job.

Indian expatriates, including the Telugu people, are taking various transit routes via Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Armenia and Uzbekistan to enter the UAE, Saudi, Oman, and Kuwait as direct entry is barred to these countries. They spend around  Rs 1.5 lakh for these journeys, booking chartered flights, 14-day quarantine in transit countries and PCR tests before entering the final destination. Desperate to get back to the Gulf, these migrants take bank loans or borrow money from private lenders, further falling deep into the debt trap.  

Deceptive Agents, Issue of Trafficking

Even though the bona fide channel of migrating abroad for work is through recruitment agencies licensed by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), many approach or are approached by fraudulent agents to facilitate an easy path to the Gulf. The existence of only fewer than 25 registered agencies in the entire State of Telangana makes running an illicit recruiting and travel agency lucrative. The State government established the Telangana Overseas Manpower Company Ltd (TOMCOM) in 2016 to ensure safe, legal migration.

However, taking advantage of high demand from the unemployed and circumstances of those who wish to migrate, the nexus of fraudulent recruiting agents continue to thrive, bypassing all valid emigration procedures. They often dupe job seekers with visit visas or the notorious “free visas” instead of proper employment visas and “push” them through emigration procedures at the source and destinations.

The recent news reports of Telugu women trafficked by promising “high-paying” domestic worker and caregiving jobs in Arab households encapsulate the issue’s gravity. Widespread irregular practices exclude migrants from the official databases and make them susceptible to exploitation and abuse by recruiters, sponsors and/or employers. Their dubious immigration status and lack of proper documents also make it hard for the destination countries’ labour courts to issue legal directions and the Indian government to assist them if they land in any trouble.

Proactive Approaches

Emigration is not often a joyous affair, even though most people migrate voluntarily to the Gulf land of plenty to materialise their dreams of becoming rich, buying land, building secure houses, and saving money for a better future for their family and children. It is necessary to equip and empower them to deal with the complications that may arise at all stages of migration.

Pre-departure orientation and skill training needs to be vigorously imparted to all aspirant migrants to provide them better bargaining power in the destinations, along with a detailed awareness programme on the available Centre and State-level welfare schemes. Likewise, empowering them digitally will equip them to resort to various government portals, like the MADAD, for grievance redressal and verification of the credibility of their visas.

Existing public mechanisms, including the Telangana State Skill Development Mission (TSSDM), National Academy of Construction (NAC) and Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), need to be roped in effectively for skilling and skill upgradation training for aspiring migrants to meet the latest labour and technology adaptation demands. The Institute of Driving Training and Research Centre (IDTRC) in Sircilla is a laudable initiative, which too can be roped in.

Similarly, those who have returned during the pandemic should be directed to register themselves with the SWADES portal of the government  of India to find job opportunities in Indian and foreign companies. There should be policies to incentivise returnees above the age of 50 to start micro, small and medium (MSME) businesses to better utilise their savings, skills, international exposure and experiences.

Migration related awareness creation should be TOMCOM’s top priority of the, along with skill development, training, and overseas recruitment. Operations of unregistered recruitment agencies need to be curbed to ensure safe, orderly and regular migration from the State. Migrant-specific welfare schemes that include migrant families and returnees to its fold need to be initiated at the Centre and State levels.

The scope of some of the existing schemes can be extended, for instance, the Pravasi Bharatiya Bima Yojana, the emigrants’ insurance scheme launched in 2003, to cover deaths by diseases. There also needs to be a special fast-track arrangement in the State for the Gulf migrants to get Covid-19 vaccines to head back when the travel bans are lifted.

Emigration Bill, 2021

The proposed Draft Emigration Bill, 2021, requires further deliberations before passing to ground it on the realities and diversities of emigration of Indians abroad as well as their return and reintegration. Limited availability of data and the discrepancy of available statistics are major stumbling blocks in formulating evidence-based policies and their effective implementation. Hence, creating a consolidated database on migrants and returnees should be the priority of Central and State governments.

For instance, eMigrate initiative of the MEA records only 15 unregistered recruitment agencies in Telangana, which is a gross underestimation. A comparative understanding of best practices and the emigrant welfare programmes implemented by different States governments can be mutually beneficial, and the Telangana government should take formal initiatives and establish permanent bodies in institutionalising such exchanges between other State governments and their agencies like the NORKA in Kerala.

Indian embassies in the Gulf region need to be strengthened to ensure proactive interventions when our expatriates are in need, like providing legal aid or pro-bono lawyers for “wage theft” cases and filing claims on behalf of returned migrants in the Gulf labour courts. Likewise, considering the migrant numbers, initiatives to set up more consulates of the Gulf countries in different parts of the Telangana region can promptly address the issues faced by the migrants in the destination.

The crucial role of civil society and grassroots level organisations based in Telangana and the Gulf for the welfare of emigrants in normal and emergency situations should not be missed. Their advocacy prompted the MEA to roll back its recent circulars on minimum referral wage (MRW) reduction.

The Sircilla-based Telangana Gulf Joint Action Committee, Hyderabad-based Emigrants Welfare Forum, Gulf Telangana Welfare and Cultural Association, Pravasi Mitra Labour Union, and the Dubai-based Indian People’s Forum are a few to mention. The proactive intervention of KT Rama Rao, Minister of IT & NRI Affairs, and KR Suresh Reddy, MP from Telangana, is worth mentioning in the MRW issue.

Bheem Reddy Mandha, president of the Emigrants Welfare Forum, says, “Telangana migrants in the Gulf are sending about Rs 27,000 crore per annum as remittances, and it is, directly and indirectly, boosting the economy. The government should reciprocate by allocating Rs 500 crore in the annual Budget for the welfare of Gulf migrants and their left-behind families”. We should listen to our migrants and their needs, as it is our responsibility as a progressive society to extend solidarity to them during these testing times. #KhabarLive #hydnews

How Akhila became Hadiya – and why her case has reached the Supreme Court?

A young woman adopted Islam, defying her Hindu family. The case has roiled Kerala.

It is called Devi Krupa – the blessings of the goddess. But inside the modest single-storeyed house in TV Puram village in Kerala’s Kottayam district, a young woman has been confined against her wishes, on the orders of Kerala High Court. Outside the house, six policemen stand guard round-the-clock.

Why Beef Politics Is Far More Dangerous Than The Historic Wrongs Of Ayodhya?

A court recently framed criminal conspiracy charges against BJP leaders L K Advani, M M Joshi, Uma Bharti and nine others in the 1992 Babri masjid demolition case. It's been fifteen years and the CBI has blown hot and cold on the case over the years. 

What a difference a decade or two makes. Once these leaders were described as hardliners and firebrands. Now in the age of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, they have been turned by Modi-Shah skeptics into the conscience of the party.

Song Of The Rain: On The Monsoon Trail In The Western Ghats

The behaviour of plants and animals in Kerala's Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary shows monsoon is going awry.

I love being at home, in Wayanad, when the south-west monsoon arrives. This hilly district of northern Kerala is still full of tall trees and myriad creatures, and drenched in rain for several months in a year. From my window, I see Banasuramala, a beautiful mountain 2,000 metres high, gracing the southern horizon, and canopied hills to the west.

Is PM Modi's Reaction Against Lynch Mobs Sincere Or Empty Noise?

It took hundreds of people gathering in public places in several cities for Narendra Modi to break his vow of silence. A day after the #NotInMyName rallies rang out in spirited protests against the recent spate of lynching of Muslims in India, the prime minister spoke on social media against such crimes.

Gau bhakti, or devotion to the cow, isn't an acceptable reason to resort to violence, Modi said, citing the ever-convenient example of Mahatma Gandhi to uphold the value of ahimsa (non-violence) as a way of life.

No State Is Too Small For The Modi-Shah Grand Plan For The BJP

There's a crucial difference between this BJP and that of yore. A forceful drive to imprint the BJP's presence on unmapped political terrain, displayed by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, was a feature never seen in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-LK Advani era.

Its absence was not for want of ambition because the BJP's principal strategist of those times, Pramod Mahajan, was as obsessed with displacing the Congress as the principal "national pole" of the big guns of today.

Is PM Modi's Reaction Against Lynch Mobs Sincere Or Empty Noise?

It took hundreds of people gathering in public places in several cities for Narendra Modi to break his vow of silence. A day after the #NotInMyName rallies rang out in spirited protests against the recent spate of lynching of Muslims in India, the prime minister spoke on social media against such crimes.

Gau bhakti, or devotion to the cow, isn't an acceptable reason to resort to violence, Modi said, citing the ever-convenient example of Mahatma Gandhi to uphold the value of ahimsa (non-violence) as a way of life. It's the same icon, by the way, who was called a "chatur baniya" a few days ago by the PM's close aide Amit Shah, who is also the president of the party leading the government at the Centre.

Opinion: Lynching The Diversity Out Of India

The new jungle justice system has obviously been given political imprimatur.

Junaid Khan, 15 years young, had gone for Eid shopping with his brothers to Delhi. He was never to return. On his way home to Ballabgarh, a hate-fuelled group of men pounced on him. He was stabbed during the attack and literally bled to death in excruciating pain. His brothers were assaulted too, but escaped with their lives. Beef eaters, yelled the rancorous chorus. No one in the train compartment helped. Junaid is the latest victim of the rising violent culture of cow-related mob lynching in India. It is a Frankenstein's monster on the loose taking giant strides. The ominous predator is out there as you read this.

INNLIVE Explains: The Qatar Crisis And How It Affects India

With four Arab nations cutting their diplomatic ties from Qatar for fostering terrorism, West Asia is headed into a major turmoil in the coming days.

Travel within the region from Doha, the capital of Qatar, is likely to be impossible in the immediate future. Qatari citizens resident in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been given two weeks to return to their home country. Bahrain has also asked Qatari diplomats to leave its territories in 48 hours, though Saudi will continue its services to Qatari pilgrims.

Drought-led migration makes girls prey to trafficking, pushes Andhra Pradesh's Kadiri towards HIV/AIDS

Dr Mano Ranjan has been working at the Institute of Infectious Diseases situated on the Anantapur-Kadiri Road in Andhra Pradesh since 2009. This is the premier institute for the entire Rayalaseema region (southern Andhra Pradesh) for those suffering from HIV/AIDS. Dr Ranjan gets 25 new HIV/AIDS patients every day. "It is a ticking time bomb," he says.

Thirty percent of the cases are from hamlets in and around Kadiri, unarguably the HIV/AIDS capital of Andhra Pradesh. The hospital has 26,000 plus registered cases, 8,000 of whom are widows. It is shocking that most of the victims are in the age group of 25 to 40. Another 3,000 cases are children born most often to an HIV-positive parent.

Cow Politics: Will The New Rules On Animal Markets Result In An Unofficial Ban On Cattle Slaughter?

Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan maintains the sale of cattle for slaughter outside markets is not affected by the rules. But they are ambiguously worded.

There has been confusion ever since new rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act were notified on Thursday, May 25.

These rules disallow the sale of cattle – cows, buffaloes, bullocks, calves and camels – for slaughter in animal markets .

How Three Pakistani Nationals, Living In Bengaluru, Managed To Get Aadhaar Cards?

Employee marks attendance through Aadhaar based System in the Planning Commission.

Recently, three Pakistani nationals who were living in India under false identities were arrested in Bengaluru. Among their identity documents, there were also Aadhaar cards that all of them seemed to possess.

The two men and one woman have been identified as Khasif Shamsuddin, Samira Abdul Rahman, and Kiron Ghulam Ali. An Indian citizen, Muhammed Shihab, a native of Kerala, reportedly helped them.

So how did these Pakistani nationals manage to get Aadhaar cards?

This Mosque In Kerala Will Be The First In The Country To Offer Friday Sermons In Sign Language

The mosque also has ramps, arm rests in toilets, and wheel chairs for the differently abled.

A mosque in Malappuram in Kerala will render the sermons and speeches offered during the Friday namaaz in sign language for the benefit of the hearing-impaired believers.

According to INNLIVE, the new Masjid Al-Rahma that is offering this service is located in a 5-acre campus and can accommodate up to 500 people.

Rare 'cobra lily' plant spotted in the wild after 85 years in Nilgiris

There are only a few hundred plants of the genus found in a small area in these hills.

Two species of genus Arisaema, or cobra lily, have been spotted in the wild after 85 years, The Hindu reported on Monday. While one species was found in Thia Shola, the other was spotted in the Pennant Valley forest area. Barely a few hundred plants of the genus can be found within a small area in the Nilgiris.

The plants were found by nature enthusiasts KM Prabhu Kumar and Tarun Chhabra. The find was published in the May 2017 issue of Phytotaxa, a journal on botanical taxonomy. “The first species is attractive by means of its translucent spathe and the latter by its long caudate limb with a filiform thread,” Kumar and Chhabra wrote. Specimens of the plant were last collected by E Barnes in 1932.

Bras with metal hooks, dark pants banned? CBSE dress code for medical test aspirants is ambiguous

It bans metallic objects. But does that justify making an exam-taker take off her bra because it has a metal hook?

“Is it possible for me to hide an electronic device on the tiny metal hook of my underwear. Should women invigilators be aware of this?” This was the question raised by a girl who was forced to take off her bra before appearing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test – a highly competitive examination for admission to medical and dental colleges for the undergraduate MBBS and BDS courses – in Kerala’s Kannur district, recently.

An Indian politician gifts brides laundry bats to tackle abusive husbands

This minister’s message to Indian women is simple: “If your alcoholic husband is physically abusive, thrash him.”

When one suffering woman asked Madhya Pradesh minister Gopal Bhargava if it was all right to beat up her abusive spouse with a mogri, the wooden bat traditionally used to wash clothes, he took the idea seriously. After all, Bhargava had been receiving numerous such complaints.

Earthy, Caustic, Funny And Declining: Dakhani Gets Due In Documentary ‘A Tongue Untied’

The language of the Deccan, famous for its humour and literature, has been relegated to dialect status, as filmmaker Gautam Pemmaraju finds out.

Subah ki dhoop mein agar saaya lamba nazar aya, tum apney kad ke baarey mein ghalatfehmi mey mat rehna (If in the morning sun you see that your shadow is long, don’t get deluded about your height): Ghouse ‘Khamakha’ or ‘Khamakha’ Hyderabadi.

When people hear of Dakhani, they tend to associate it with the unique dialect spoken in Hyderabad, often understood by outsiders and locals as a form of hybridised Urdu. There are other associations with Dakhani too – ribald humour and wry social commentary; an idiom so earthy and direct that it might border on insult to more sensitive ears; philosophical reflections on human nature, as in the verse above.

Gautam Pemmaraju’s ambitious documentary A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani explores the cultural history of the language. The production began as a grant from the Indian Foundation for the Arts in 2012 to document the tradition of humour and modern satire in performance poetry. The filmmaker soon found that mere documentation would be inadequate.

“This began as a very conventional art history project, but it has expanded slightly,” Pemmaraju said. “Very soon, the mandate expanded into not just looking at humour and satire through poetry, but at the elephant in the room, which was, ‘What is Dakhani?’ That became something I needed to tackle in order to explain everything else.”

Dakhani is far more than a dialect, he said. It is a language that developed in northern India alongside Urdu. When it moved to the Deccan plateau, it gradually developed a literary culture that lasted 350 years, from the 14th century when the language first seems to have appeared, to the early 18th, when Aurangzeb finally gained control of the Deccan.

People across the Deccan speak forms of Dakhani with regional infusions even today, from its northern reaches in Aurangabad, to Marathwada and Telangana, down southwards to the northern parts of Karnataka. There are a few Dakhani speakers in Tamil Nadu and north Kerala and in Hyderabad, there is even an entire news channel in Dakhani.

Pemmaraju is now looking to raise funds to complete the editing of A Tongue Untied.

The film will be a culmination of conversations that began nearly seven years ago. Pemmaraju began his research by meeting poets and organisers of mushairas, or forums where poets congregate to perform their art.

Everyone Pemmaraju met had different ideas of and associations with the language, many of which were stereotypes. Pemmaraju decided to bring some academic rigour to his study. He also met scholars and experts such as historians and philologists who worked with language and history to pin down what Dakhani really was and what were its origins.

“The film in that sense is an aggregation of poets and artistry on one side, and an aggregation of scholarly opinions on the other side,” he said. “What I have been attempting to do is to put these into a narrative that makes sense and gives viewers a broad picture of the language and the colour of the language.”

With 60 interviews, 70 hours of filmed footage and 40 hours of archival footage, Pemmaraju has had a difficult task cutting the film down to a viewer-friendly length. The final film will be driven by around five experts in the language as well as by poets and artists. Parts of the film are devoted simply to hearing how people in different regions speak the language today.

“What is striking immediately is the diversity of Dakhani,” Pemmaraju said. “It’s a large region, and there are many forms of the language.” There were also many interlocutors, who had a lot to say because of their deep sense of ownership and pride in the language, he added.

While Dakhani is broadly thought of as a language of Muslims, its presence across the plateau also means that there is a rich body of material available in the Devanagari script, for instance, which has not been studied well. Dakhani is also heavily influenced by Marathi, and many Persian words that appear in Dakhani seem to have travelled there via Marathi.

One of Maharashtra’s famous poet saints, Amrutray of Paithan, even wrote a Sudamacharitra, or the story of Sudama, friend of Hindu god Krishna, in Dakhani at some point during the 18th century.

Mushairas have been a crucial part of the culture of Hyderabad and areas around it for decades now. From the 1970s and ’80s, the Hyderabadi diaspora began to organise mushairas where they stayed as well, leading to such gatherings in places as disparate as Chicago and countries in the Middle East.

Zinda Dilan-e-Hyderabad, an organisation formed in the mid-1960s to promote literary activities, particularly those pertaining to humour and satire, organised the first modern mushaira at that time. The organisation’s last mushaira was in 2010, but there are other groups who still conduct them.

Senior poets and scholars all agree that the quality of poetry is declining, Pemmaraju said. The texture of poetry has also changed greatly in recent times, he added. Early poetry tended to have pithy statements about poverty and the immediate circumstances of people. There was also a fair amount of sharp satire directed at religious figures, political leaders and even at poets themselves. Now, poetry is far more political.

Take one, by Sardar Asar, a couplet in a ghazal that says:

Bam key nazdeek jaako dekha mai,
Zafrani hai, hara thodeech hai
I went near a bomb to look at it
It was hardly green – it was saffron.

“Of course there is a milieu of social conservatism [in Islam] which informs all this, but you can very clearly see the poetry has shifted from pithy folk wisdom to this direct commentary on politics,” Pemmaraju pointed out.

That said, Dakhani is ultimately a cultural history of southern India, particularly of the “Islamic encounter” south of the Narmada that is pre-Mughal. “I don’t think it’s a counterpoint between the north and the south,” the filmmaker said. “It’s not a battle. It’s looking at a vernacular region’s oral traditions which reveal to us a richer history.”

Health Crisis: India's Wealthier States Are Showing An Alarming Decline In Immunisation Process

By NEWSCOP | INNLIVE

The warning signs from the latest National Family Health Survey data have gone unnoticed so far.

A fair amount of media attention has been given to the resurgence of diphtheria in Kerala, which has been attributed to some Muslims rejecting immunisation efforts due to misinformation. However, a much more dangerous and widespread trend of declining immunisation rates as evidenced by the recent National Family Health Survey 4 data, seems to have gone entirely unnoticed.

Odisha's Night Terror: 'How The Forces Shoot At Defenceless Villagers?'

By VIR DASH | INNLIVE

Five people, including a child, were allegedly killed in firing by security forces in July. An inquiry is underway but villagers have no hope for justice.

On the overcast morning of July 26, Rahula Nayak, a subsistence farmer in his 20s, joined a few hundred villagers, mostly Kond Adivasis, making their way to Gumudumaha, a village in mourning, nestled in the Eastern Ghats in south-central Odisha’s Kandhamal district.