Talk-Demo
Exploring the critical zones of climate and culture through PARI Stories

in the framework of the exhibition "Critical Zones"

Sun, 11.12.2022
11:00 AM - 12:00 IST Auditorium - Zapurza Museum of Arts & Culture

As city dwellers, we would have noticed how the summers have gotten hotter than what they were ten years ago and how it sometimes rains much more than it used to in the past. But do we know how  climate change impacts the lives of people in India's villages? What is the impact of the climate crisis on farming and the farmers of India?
The People's Archive of Rural India (PARI), has published a series of stories on climate change from multiple climate and agro-ecological zones across the country – through the voices and lived experiences of ordinary Indians - nomadic pastoralists, farmers, fisher folk and others. 

For about 25 years since 1987, two social scientists from Pune and their team collected over 110,000 grindmill songs that rural women sang as they worked every day at the stone mill. This huge jatyavarchi ovi collection is being published on PARI alongwith the stories of women who sing them under the Grindmill Songs Project (GSP). The collection speaks of the diversity and depth of this form, through which the women sing of everyday life, patriarchy, caste, poet-saints, historical events, Babasaheb Ambedkar and more.

© Namita Waikar

Namita Waikar from PARI will talk about these two topics and present the multimedia stories along with the photographs, videos and songs in this session. She is a novelist, entrepreneur and journalist from Pune, India. Waikar is the managing editor and co-founder of the People's Archive of Rural India.
In her debut novel, "The Long March", Waikar tells the story of an urban elite being forced to pay heed to the plight of the Indian farmers by a large march of rural farmers into the cities of the country. Written in 2012, this novel foresaw the long marches of farmers that captured the country's headlines in 2018.
Her debut novel was launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival where Namita has been a speaker since 2018.
She leads and writes for the Grindmill Songs Project and oversees the translations program at People's Archive of Rural India.