#debashree mukherjee

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[apacmedia]

Energy can be generated, but water cannot be produced: Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Minister of Jal Shakti, GoI, at the All India Secretaries’ Conference on Water Vision

Mahabalipuram: The All India Secretaries’ Conference on Water Vision 2047 – Way Ahead in Mahabalipuram was held on January 23-24. Minister of Jal Shakti, Government of India, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, addressed the event. “Energy can be generated, but water cannot be produced,” he said.

Shekhawat encouraged the exchange of best practices on water management and learning from failures. He further reported that at least 10% of the blocks (geographical units) have successfully reversed the trend of groundwater depletion in the last year.

Secretary of the Ministry of Jal Shakti Debashree Mukherjee, emphasised the core themes of water use efficiency and water governance, among other actions, as crucial factors for ensuring Jan Bhagidari (public participation).

Read More Here : https://apacnewsnetwork.com/2024/01/energy-can-be-generated-but-water-cannot-be-produced-gajendra-singh-shekhawat-minister-of-jal-shakti-goi-at-the-all-india-secretaries-conference-on-water-vision/

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Is it really possible that the case of the Bombay film studio should differ so widely from the experience of studios in North America, Britain, or Italy? Giuliana Bruno has described how early studios in Italy employed large numbers of women in laboratories and editing rooms as daily wage workers (Bruno,1993). Sitting row after row in sweat-shop conditions, these women spliced and joined film negatives, and hand-colored black and white film. Bruno explains the high concentration of women in this kind of film work by suggesting that “the assembling of film must have seemed appropriate for women as it resembles other tasks considered specifically ‘feminine.’ An underpaid job, it required patience, attention, and care and was repetitive – all characteristics of housework” (Bruno, 1993, p. 105). Indeed, Kamlabai Gokhale’s description of women getting together to wash film in Dadasaheb Phalke’s home indicates that women were involved with forms of film production and post-production that were not yet acknowledged as such (Barnouw and Krishnaswamy, 1980, p. 18). Other clues are available in contemporary sources if we approach them obliquely. In a highly offensive editorial from April 1938, Baburao Patel discusses reasons for the deteriorating quality and success rate of Indian pictures:

"For instance, we shall quote only one aspect which of late has become a craze with several producers in Bombay. We refer to the Anglo-Indian girls who work in our pictures as ‘Extras’…For a tenner a day which they get, they come with rouge and lipstick, shake their hips and legs, pocket the money and go away.…Driven to live by their wits, modern life has made some of these girls the most detestable scums of society. (Patel, 1938, p. 4)"

The same morality discourse, seen in the case of Naseem Banu and Khorshed Homji, resurfaces in a new and communal avatar. Where does immorality lie? Is it intrinsic to the Anglo-Indian girl or does it lie in the fact that a young female workforce is compelled to participate in an underpaid, unorganized, sector and also suffer slander? Women’s labor, be it in the film industry or otherwise, has often been denied the status of work. A woman “helping out” with washing the negative or designing a costume hardly qualifies as a film professional by official standards. Within a visual economy of desire and commodity, the filmic image is heavily dependent on elements such as costumes, jewelry, hair styles, and make-up. An actress who does her own hair and make-up, or decides the diegetic appropriateness of a collared blouse versus a choli, adds to the affect and meaning of the filmic text. When editors such as Patel launch moral attacks against certain gendered work practices, their tone is “scandalized” but this extreme reaction also reveals the popular appeal and circulation of images of pale-skinned chorus girls and extra dancers.

Across multiple narratives of multiple female film professionals we can see clear affinities. Theirs was a form of work that was an intensely “gendered” experience, and they each negotiated urban modernity using the skills of their community while also resisting community conventions. The huge differences in cultural status and class notwithstanding, we see that similar claims were being made on the bodies and lifestyles of these women. The modern urban woman used a variety of strategies to negotiate spaces within and alongside frameworks of capitalism, patriarchy, and nationalism. What backgrounds were film employees coming from, what were the circuits via which this new work pool was accessed, what was their perceived position in contemporary society and in what specific ways did the movies enable them to forge a new life in the city?

>> [ from Notes on a Scandal: Writing Women’s Film History Against an Absent Archive by Debashree Mukherjee ]