TIME CODE TEXT
00:00:10 Mukesh: Why is that school locked?
Just a minute, just a minute, just a minute...
00:00:23 Mukesh: Whenever I go to any village,
the villagers have hope on me.
00:00:27 Mukesh: And whenever I am not able
to do something for them
I feel a lot of worry.
I also feel shame.
00:00:40 Lower Third: Jharkhand, Northern India
00:01:01 Mukesh: So many things I saw in my childhood...
just so many injustices.
00:01:07 Mukesh: I saw the people facing so many
types of problems in their daily lives.
But they were not speaking out.
00:01:20 Lower Third: Mukesh Rajak is a social activist and citizen journalist from the village of Jagdishpur
00:01:24 Mukesh: We will go to the village
and ask this question about this school.
Why this one is closed today,
right now.
00:01:33 Mukesh:Education is the barrier to changing anyone's life.
00:01:39 Mukesh: Children from my community are
not getting good educations
because they are from poor families.
00:01:44 Mukesh: Their parents can't afford the private schools
and the situation of government schools is too bad.
00:01:53 Mukesh: The teachers of those schools are just like culprits, as they are not giving interest to the children.
00:01:59 Mukesh: They are not thinking,"These people are from my own community. If I will do something for them,
it will be helpful for them." They are thinking just about earning.
00:02:11 Mukesh: I was also from a marginalized community.
My background was also not good.
00:02:16 Mukesh: I am thinking that today I am achieving
so many things due to my education
00:02:20 Mukesh: so I want that the people like me
who are facing this type of problem,
these types of cruelties in their daily lives,
they will also be able to break that barrier
and come to a new way,a new path.
00:02:34 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): What's going on in the school?
00:02:36 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): The teachers just sit in the corner. Sometimes they sit on the roof
while the children are roaming on the ground.
00:02:42 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): There are no classes.
We are poor people. How can we afford education?
00:02:48 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): We are daily laborers. We cannot afford private education doing this work.
00:02:54 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): What to do?
When government officials come to us,
They demand 15,000 to 20,000 rupees for bribes.
00:03:03 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): You have to raise your voice.
You have to unite. If you unite and speak out,
people will listen to you.
00:03:11 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): Look, there are many corrupt people here. Due to the middle-men,
no work gets done here.
00:03:19 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): If the government gives us 100 rupees, 40% of the money is eaten by the middle-men.
00:03:25 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): The students got scholarships in 2009. After that, they didn't receive any money.
They say "you will get the money
today or tomorrow," but tomorrow never comes.
00:03:35 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): Did you get your
scholarship money last year?
Child(Hindi-subtitled): Only once.
Villager(Hindi-subtitled): When did you get the money?
Child(Hindi-subtitled): Who is going to remember this?
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): Ok, we will research that one
and then we will do something.
00:03:47 Mukesh: The government is trying to do
so many things for the community,
for the children of my community.
00:03:53 Mukesh: But the thing is that
the person who is involved
in monitoring all these things,
they are not monitoring properly.
00:04:04 Mukesh: In the entirety of this 20 km area,
there is not any electronic media.
I am the only one in the locality of Jagdishpur.
00:04:15 Mukesh: A lot of mainstream media
and electronic media is in the city
but they don't come to the village.
00:04:22 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): Okay, let's go...
What is your name?
Student(Hindi-subtitled): Priyanka.
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): What is the problem you are facing?
Student(Hindi-subtitled): My problem is that the headmaster took our signatures but didn't give us our stipend.
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled):Have you taken any steps against this?
Student(Hindi-subtitled): No.
00:04:36 Mukesh: It's a good story!
A lot of corruption in that school!
00:04:42 Mukesh: The teachers know that
"Nobody will come here to monitor us."
"Nobody will be able to watch us."
They don't have any fear of anyone.
00:04:50 Lower Third: Meeting with faculty of village school
Mukesh: They are thinking that
"If we will teach we will get our payment.
If we will not teach, then also
we will get our payment."
00:04:59
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): According to this,
there are 624 students, ok?
The welfare department sends the amount
according to the list they receive
from the teachers or headmaster, ok?
00:05:11 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): In the beginning when I came here, I found only twenty students.
Headmaster(Hindi-subtitled): Twenty-five.
00:05:19 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): I want the list of students.
I want to know when you sent the list
to the welfare department.
and how many children from class one
did not get their money last year.
00:05:30 Teacher(Hindi-subtitled): Do you have the list?
Headmaster(Hindi-subtitled): I have this year's list.
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): I don't want the list from this year. I want the list from last year because I want to know if anybody is doing anything wrong.
00:05:45 Teacher(Hindi-subtitled): We will get the list from the previous headmaster and we will give it to you.
Take his number and when you get the list, you call him.
00:05:58 Mukesh: In government schools, if they do any mistake
they will be suspended for a few months.
they will not be removed from the post.
00:06:05 Mukesh: But in private schools, the teachers have fear,
If they will not teach the kids
or the students properly,
then they will be removed from their post,
they will not be paid their payments.
00:06:19 Lower Third: Anandalaya, Co-Educational English Private School
00:06:26 Mukesh: I was lucky to go to Anandalaya school
because an NGO working in this locality in Jagdishpur,
they set up a school in this area and my uncle joined there as a teacher
00:06:38 Mukesh: so I just started coming with him and
after that I got a chance to study in this school.
00:07:00 Indira: Mukesh was quite a shy child actually.
You could not really communicate much with him,
which is quite different from what Mukesh is today.
00:07:05 Lower Third: Indira Dasgupta, Director of Anandalaya
00:07:10 Indira: He looked quite tender I would say.
But he was also a target of a lot
of ridicule from his classmates.
Mukesh came from a dalit family,
which is a small minority in the area.
00:07:38 Mukesh: In my childhood I had some knowledge about untouchability. From the beginning, just like 3 or 4 years old.
00:07:46 Mukesh: "Untouchable" means the people who are dalit.
Dalits are untouchables. Untouchable means, suppose if you will touch them, then you will be polluted.
00:07:58 Indira: The Indian society really is structured along caste lines. and these caste lines run very deep.
And "dalit" means the one who is under,
literally "come under."
00:08:16 Mukesh: When I was a child,
when I used to go to
take water from a hand pump
or used to go to take
a bath from a hand pump,
00:08:24 Mukesh: I noticed a lady,
whenever she went there,
she washed the whole hand pump,
poured water on the whole hand pump.
00:08:32 Mukesh: then one day I asked with my family members
why she used to do like that.
Then they told me,
we already used that hand pump
so they think this hand pump is polluted,
so they used to wash that one.
00:08:49 Mukesh: Washing clothes, stitching boots,
cleaning toilets or gutters,
all are most degradable jobs in India.
they made a type of custom that the people
who do this work are mostly dalits.
00:09:07 Mukesh: In rural India, if they will ask your name,
it means they are not asking your name.
They are in hope to know your caste
00:09:14 Mukesh: because when anyone will just reply their first name, just, "Mukesh" they will again ask you,
"What's your last name?" It means they are expecting to know your title, from which caste you belong
so that they can behave with you in that way.
00:09:30 Indira: I have actually been to a village where
the dalit people wanted to build housing
and the government was giving them the housing.
00:09:42 Indira: But the upper caste people wouldn't allow
the housing to be placed in a particular location
because the breeze from that housing
would blow into their house, so they didn't want the breeze to blow into their house.
00:09:56 Indira: So you can understand the extent of
segregation or untouchability
that is really existing within the country.
00:10:11 Mukesh: Right now, after joining this work,
I am not getting exploited nowadays so much.
the people who know about my work,
they used to behave that way with me.
but they don't behave bad with me
in the manner they were behaving earlier.
00:10:24 Indira: It's very difficult for someone who is dalit
to really voice themselves, to really
have any kind of expression, self-expression
and not be subjected to ridicule.
00:10:37 Indira: And in fact, in the olden days
if a dalit tried to listen to the sacred literature,
the Vedas, which are so famous in the Hindu scriptures
then molten iron would be poured into the ears of the
person who would even dare to listen to those scriptures.
00:11:05 Indira: So education was kept very far away
from the dalit community.
So I think for Mukesh to really fight for education
is really working through layers of history.
00:11:24 Mukesh: Some villagers came here to support us
because I also shared this problem, this issue with the villagers that the headmaster told me he will give us the list tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. And we are facing this type of problem, so the villagers came here [to say]
"We will support you to get the list."
00:11:45 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled):Did the headmaster leave any message for us?
Teacher(Hindi-subtitled): The headmaster said that he has spoken to the Block Welfare Officer. He told the headmaster that we can't give it to you.
00:11:57 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): Listen, for two days these people
have been saying they will give the list of students.
Now the Block Welfare Officer is saying
there is no need to provide the list.
Okay?
00:12:06 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled):Now we will interview the villagers and the children who didn't receive their payments last year. The first class children
didn't receive their payments at all.
00:12:13 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled):And we will go and face them and ask, "How can you not provide the list? This means you are also involved in this corruption! You are also involved and you eat up all the children's money for yourself!"
00:12:25 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): When the money arrives in the
students' names, signatures are taken and the money is
distributed among the children. So this means that fake signatures have been taken, and the money has been eaten up by them.
00:12:38 Mukesh: Now we will go to the village
and we will collect the evidence
because right now they are
not agreeing to give us the list
and we will interview that Block Welfare Officer too,
"Why are you telling that there is
no need to give the list to them?"
00:12:51 Mukesh: Because in my opinion there may be corruption.
There might be duplicate signatures there
and they have withdrawn the money
instead of giving it to the students.
I think this one is the situation and
that's why they are not agreeing to give us the list.
00:13:07 Mukesh: Not to me, to all the villagers.
They also came to see the list,
but they are not giving the list to the villagers.
We will go to the Block Welfare Officer too
and I will interview him too,
"Why have you told this to them?"
00:13:23 Mukesh: Due to Indira-ji, today I have this platform
of doing some work for my community.
In her NGO, I was volunteering in so many projects
And she noticed that, "Mukesh, he wants
to do something for the community."
00:13:38 Mukesh: "He wants to spend some time in the village.
He has that interest to work in the grassroots level."
00:13:44 Title: IndiaUnheard Promotional Video
00:13:52 IndiaUnheard Correspondent 1: My name is Zafar and I want to make people aware of corruption.
IndiaUnheard Correspondent 2: Art and culture.
IndiaUnheard Correspondent 3: Conflict
IndiaUnheard Correspondent 4: Infrastructure
00:14:01 Mukesh: Through Indira-ji, I heard about IndiaUnheard.
Indira-ji gave me a phone call, "Mukesh, you can apply for this. If you will get a chance in this program then you will be able to learn so many things so that it will be helpful for you.”
00:14:17 Lower Third: Mukesh Rajak Correspondent, Jharkhand
Mukesh: Being part of a dalit community, I have seen many injustices in our community. Example: in our community,
dalits are tortured by upper castes.
00:14:24 Lower Third: Roshan Saroliya Correspondent, Gujarat
Roshan(Hindi-subtitled): I belong to a tribal community in Dang. Migration is a major issue here. People are being evicted from the jungle.
00:14:32 Indira: Moving out of his community and moving into a world where there was a different medium of expression through the camera and a community which was different,
which was multicultural, where young people came from various backgrounds, that really changed Mukesh.
00:14:52 Lower Third: Mukesh was accepted as a correspondent for IndiaUnheard, a community news service operated by nonprofit organization Video Volunteers
00:15:03 Mukesh: That time when I went to the Video Volunteers training, That time I was the youngest among
all the C.C.'s [Community Correspondents] so when I went there, that time I had too much fear.
00:15:15 Mukesh: How I will work when I go back to my community
because the people who came here, all are associated with so many things and this is my first time I am going
to work as a professional. "How I will work for them?"
That time I had so much fear.
00:15:30 Title: IndiaUnheard - Pay Bribe, Take Education
Lower Third: Mukesh Rajak IndiaUnheard/Jharkhand
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): For the past one decade, due to political instability, there has been corruption in every area in Jharkhand. Corruption is at its high in Jharkhand. Corruption is not only confined to the government authorities but now the rural authorities are also part of it.
00:15:43 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): Due to this, rural people are unable to get the benefits of the government schemes. Let us have a look into this situation at this government school in Jagdishpur.
00:15:55 Lower Third: Aashmin Khatoon Student
Aashmin(Hindi-subtitled): There are many problems in our school. To begin with, we have to pay fees for answering our exams
00:16:01 Parent(Hindi-subtitled): We have to bribe the teachers for everything. Secondly, Mr. Mantu Marandi (teacher) is always drunk when he comes in the classroom.
00:16:11 Indira: When he came back and he shot his first video,
he wanted to show everybody what he had done.
He was going around to everyone
with his little camera, video camera
"Please see, please look at what I've done.
Look what a difference I've been able to make."
00:16:31 Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): I showed the video to the Block Education Officer on my mobile phone and gave her a CD and print out of the article from the IndiaUnheard website. I insisted that action be taken against the principal.
00:16:45 Lower Third: Amanda Kumari Block Education Officer
Amanda: The District Education Office sent orders for the principal to be transferred and his annual increments for three years be terminated
00:16:57 Lower Third: Abdul Bariq Local Villager
Abdul: Since Mukesh made this video they have stopped taking bribes.
00:17:01 Lower Third: Kajal Kumari Student at Jagdishpur School
Kajal: I didn’t have to pay for my exams this time. Not just me, but 500-700 children didn’t pay. We are very happy.
00:17:12 Mukesh: I felt too much happy that time
because I thought, due to my work
today I did something for my community
00:17:20 Indira: He was so thrilled with his work and
I think that gave him a lot of self-confidence.
and that was then clearly a very different Mukesh.
I think his highlight was when he got an award
from the Chief Minister of the state.
That made him absolutely ecstatic.
00:17:41 Mukesh: That time nobody was knowing me, but after this news so many people started knowing me.
Villager: 9..1..6...2..7..8…
Mukesh: Right now they are asking for my number. They also have these types of cases and these type of issues, so they will call me and I will go there to investigate
and I will try to create impact for them.
00:18:07 Mukesh: Nowadays I am seeing this:
people from communities started coming to me
to share their problems, to share their issues
and they hope that I will do something for them.
00:18:17 Mukesh: They started hoping so many things on me
that "Mukesh will be able to do."
But I can't. I know my situation, I told them...
But they say "try, try, you will be able to do."
This way they keep the issues in front of me.
00:18:32 Villager(Hindi-subtitled): Mukesh-ji, on which channel will we see your footage?
Mukesh(Hindi-subtitled): There is a website named "IndiaUnheard." First, I collect the evidence and show it
to the concerned authority. After that, I will spread this story to the world.
00:18:45 Mukesh: People want evidence. Without evidence nothing is going to happen. So I try to get evidence and I show it to the concerned authority to take action. If the authority will not solve this issue, I spread and expose this:
"This is what is happening here." So the corrupt people feel insulted. Everyone is not corrupt. A few are honest.
00:19:09 Mukesh: The public from the community don'tmeet with any government officials. The government departments made this type of reputation that if the community will go to them,
they will not listen to them.
00:19:20 Mukesh: I am suggesting to you all to come and go to meet with a government official and observe how they behave with a community member. Just as a citizen of India go and
try to meet with any government official and you will feel how a government official behaves with the common people in India. They behave too rudely with them.
00:19:36 Mukesh: That time, the government official knows that "He will expose us” and they know, "This is our duty
to monitor all these things. This is our duty to solve the problem."
00:19:48 Mukesh:So they know, "If this video will reach to the person who is honest, who is an honest person then they will take action against us, so it's better to solve the problem."
00:19:58 Mukesh: One thing I want to know, Sir... If the list shows that students signed and did not receive their money, and money was distributed according to the paper, what actions will you take?
Gov’t Official: If money was released and someone took signatures and the money was not distributed [to the students], according to the law, they will be charged under Article 420. It is a fraud case. If there is any scam in this, we will file a police report.
00:20:33 Mukesh: What the government department expects from the reporter, they want that the media will expose their goodwill. They don't expect that we will expose their badwill. They love the people who report their goodwill,
who report their events, who report their programs only.
00:20:49 Mukesh: But I don't do that type of work. I don't report any program or event. I expose the work of corruption,
of their mistakes, so they don't like me.
00:20:58 Title Card: Local authorities in India must drop the criminal charges filed against video journalist Mukesh Rajak, an apparent attempt to prevent him from reporting on local government expenditures, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
-Committee to Protect Journalists
“Charges Against Indian Video Journalists Must be Dropped”
00:21:10 Mukesh: I am telling you some stories of India,
that so many people face so many problems
while exposing so many things.
If you act against the system,
either you are killed or a fabricated
FIR [police report] is filed against you.
But this is really true.
I observed it in my life.
00:21:25 Title Card: The journalist was investigating expenditures from the implementation of a job-creation act in the city of Madhupur, in the state of Jharkhand...On May 8, he filed a Right to Information request, asking about funds allocated by Vandana Kumari, an assistant hired by the state to implement the act in the district...Four days later, Kumari accused Rajak of bribery and threatening her in her home, charges that the journalist and other witnesses denied.
-Committee to Protect Journalists
“Charges Against Indian Video Journalists Must be Dropped”
Mukesh: Once I tried to seek out some realities about the MNREGA [public welfare] scheme and I filed an RTI [Right to Information Request].
00:21:49 Mukesh: They planned, "Mukesh has started interrupting in the MNREGA scheme. Once he was interfering in the education system, right now he has started interfering in the MNREGA scheme. So what should be done that Mukesh will leave all this type of work?"
00:22:02 Title Card: “We are very concerned that Mukesh Rajak is facing retaliation for his reporting,’ said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “We urge authorities in Madhupur to drop the charges against Rajak, to allow him unfettered access to public documents, and to refrain from interfering in his work.”
-Committee to Protect Journalists
“Charges Against Indian Video Journalist Must Be Dropped”
00:22:14 Mukesh: If you try to act against the system, act against the government department, then they will frame you. They will try to frame you. And right now they already framed me. But right now I am in process to prove myself not guilty. I have not done any crime and they filed
a fabricated case against me of bribery/robbery.
These types of things.
00:22:51 Mukesh:I think the FIR [police report]
filed against me is really good for me.
Really good for me because earlier, before the FIR,
I was not thinking about what will be the next thing.
I was just working just like a child.
00:23:03 Mukesh: I am just alone, so I am not able to do so many things nowadays, but I think if in the future, if I will be able to create so many networks in the community and I will be able to do so many things for the community
then it will help my community to get a good quality of education.
00:23:23 The reason behind the screening of videos in my community,
I want to show them, "This was the situation with her, this was the situation with him, so as he spoke, you too
can speak out your injustice to me and I will try to create impact for you also."
00:23:42 Indira: The community has been empowered because it has seen that if it wants to change, it can change. because
It is very new for anyone in the area to work for the community. Most people are quite self-serving. And it's quite fascinating for everyone that this young boy
has been able to make so much of a difference.
00:24:07 Indira: Getting news out which will make a difference
to the community has become his core identity with which he has found his real source of being. And now I think it's yet another very different Mukesh, where he's got his motorcycle and he's got his little bag and he is just ready to go anywhere and I think conquer any part of the world.
00:24:41 Mukesh: Knowledge is the power to do anything. Today I am talking with you, today I am in front of you I am thinking because I got some little bit of good education.
Otherwise, I was not supposed to come in front of you.
00:24:53 Mukesh: I think education is the key
to eradicate the caste system,
to eradicate untouchability,
to eradicate exploiting by the government officials,
to eradicate exploiting by the middle-men,
all these things.
I think education is the key...
is the main key.
00:25:13 Title Card: After nearly four years, the case against Mukesh was settled by the court on February 16, 2016
In its judgement the court wrote, “the accused person deserves to be acquitted right now from this case on the point of compromise and benefit of doubts. He is further held not guilty and directed to be released from judicial custody.
00:25:32 Credits:
Directed, Produced and Edited by
Gregory Walsh
Cameras
Gregory Walsh
Laurel Gwizdak
Music by
Michel Tyabji
Bharathwaj Gopalakrishnan
Translation
Meenakshi Pandeya-Amish
Suman Gupta
Prerana Thakurdesai
Nikita Rudrappa
Joel DSouza
IndiaUnheard Footage Courtesy of Video Volunteers
Special Thanks
Video Volunteers
People’s Institute for Development and Training
©2016
Gregory Walsh