Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The recent victory of the Aam Admi Party in New Delhi has been received with much jubilation among the middle class in India. The newspapers are inundated with celebratory stories of the everyman who has stepped into politics. Celebratory Facebook posts and twitter feeds speak about the arrival of the every man. The victory is celebrated as a historical victory, as a harbinger for the appearance of the aam admi, the everyday man on the political stage. This narrative strikes me as appealing to the middle class in India precisely because of the apolitical politics of the Aam Admi party. There is no specific ideology to root the politics in. There are no macro stories for the party other than the story that the party represents a fight against corruption in the political structures in the country. That the political structures need to be fought is indeed a relevant and much-needed political conversation. And yet, the aam admi's political participation stops at looking at c...

One of the threads that runs through elite discourse on social welfare is an anxiety about the laziness of the poor. Much of the focus of such discourse is on equating social welfare policies with laziness, with the implicit suggestion that somehow policies of social welfare that provide for the very basic capacities of life such as access to health care and a minimal standard of living would prompt the poor to become lazy, to become dependent on the limited taxpayer resources and on the state. Also, carrying an almost moral thread, this line of thinking suggests that social welfare programs should not breed immoral behaviour among the poor, manifest in laziness, lack of work ethic, alcoholism, unsafe sex etc. The cautionary tale therefore regales us with a moral warning about the potential moral hazards of social welfare. Yet, most of our research on the culture-centered approach to health communication with communities living at the very margins suggests that such elite discou...

The phone rings: "Professor Dutta, you are Bengali, so did you grow up in Bengal?" I am told by my secretary it is Prof. De on the other end of the line, an Indian academic who wants a job in my Center here in Singapore. He assumes a sense of familiarity with me. A point of connection that he presumes is shared in our Bengali roots, given away by my last name. He asks me if I am familiar with such and such name, and the other name (Chatterjee, Mukherjee, Sen, Basu, Dutta). I learn about his networks of Bengali intellectuals in Delhi and Kolkata that he is connected with. In his assumed sense of connection with me, there is an implicit sense of solidarity and a presumed desirability of networking me in with other Bengali intellectuals. (Note the assumption that I am an "intellectual," let alone the assumption that I belong to the highly elite breed of "Bengali intellectuals") He tells me that he is part of the "Center for Critical Develo...

You see her sitting in the front row of every chic art fest. She is right there, networking and giving ideas to the artists and film makers, the first one to network them in to other filmmakers and artists and PR firms and publicists and funding sources. Her hair chopped short, thick glasses in bright-colored equally thick frames, clothes that look chic too, a jhobba on top and tight jeans, and the quintessential jhola on her shoulder. There she is. The connoisseur of radicalism. The celebrator of resistance. The marketer of alternative ideas. She connects up with the radical film makers who make a living out of alternative films. That too is a market, she tells you. The lit fests, art fests, and poetry fests, she knows all about them. She worked as a journalist and then as a PR person you know. So she knows the media. She educates you about the alternative art scene. Her banker husband, she tells you has great links to a network of bankers that are supportive of alter...

Yes I am a foreigner Here and there Then and now. You will tell me I don't belong Here and there Here or there. Yes I am a foreigner. My race marked on my skin, my accent marked in my speech, my mannerisms marked in my movement. Yes I am a foreigner. Yes I am a foreigner, where I was born, I don't belong You tell me I have a different passport. I am a foreigner, the mark on my passport tells me I am an outsider born elsewhere. I am a foreigner where I live You tell me I have arrived from elsewhere. Yes I am a foreigner I will not speak. I will not utter. I will pretend I don''t see. I will sit quietly as you make those foreigner jokes and dish out your anti-foreigner rants. I will pretend that you are not talking about me. As you tell me "It's not really about you," It's about all those "other" foreigners. Yes, I am a foreigner. Here and there. Then and Now. ...

When Mahatma Gandhi wrote “The worst form of violence is poverty,” he sowed the seeds for imagining an India that would one day be free from poverty, where the large numbers of the poor in the country would have access to the basic capabilities of life. More than seven decades after Indian independence, Gandhi’s dream continues to be a far-fetched illusion. The bottom-half of the country continues to struggle with lack of access to basic infrastructures of food, health, and shelter. This is the picture of poverty that is uncomfortable to the likes of Narendra Modi, whose image of “Shining India” is disrupted by the accounts of poverty in India. When Mr. Modi recently remarked that “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is marketing India’s poverty,” what he actually demonstrates is his own adeptness at marketing. Framing talk about poverty as the marketing of poverty is itself a powerful marketing move. It’s a strategy that on one hand, seeks to market India as a brand, and o...

Holding his hands Strong and gentle You learned to walk the road ahead. Hearing his voice Calm and soothing You learned to dream the world in front of you. Hearing his stories Of heroes and wanderers You learned to imagine the beginnings that are new. Listening to his lullabies Of justice and peace You learned to sing The songs of justice and equality. In his stories And in your stories For your father And for my father… We imagine These little boy dreams These new imaginations And these new stories to be told.