Grassroot comics give valuable lessons

For us city dwellers, the small strips of cartoon in the daily newspapers might be meaningless or mundane entertainment but in Indian villages, cartoons are serious business. Cartoons have become the best tool to convey topical local issues, right from genetically modified cotton, radiation exposure to alcoholism.

A workshop – World Comics India promotes ‘grassroot comics’ as a development communication tool and a medium of self expression for villagers. It teaches villagers to use the medium of cartoons to not just disseminate information but also promote literacy and an effective learning-teaching tool. It organise workshops where people learn to draw and depict topical issues. It has conducts around 150 workshops every year in regions such as India’s remote northeast or Maoist-hit states of Jharkhand and Odisha. Workshop participants draw comic strips on paper and then it is Xeroxed and posted on walls, lamp posts, trees, or sometimes is distributed as a leaflet.

In Rajasthan’s Barmer town, a series of workshops on issues such as female foeticide led to the launch of a 2005 campaign called “Aapri Dikri Ro Hak” (Rights for our Daughters). This NGO does not seek funds from the government or corporate firms. Volunteers have day jobs and when they come to the workshop, all they need is paper, stationery and a story to tell. We dwelling in the city are unaware of these small revolutions taking place in rural India and it is sad to know that the our won desi newspapers do not make these comics any national coverage, instead preferring comic strips from abroad. If these ‘grassroot comics’ are given a national platform, things could change for the cartoonists and more importantly, we all could become more aware of topical issues plaguing villagers rather than be fed with idiosyncrasies of politicians.