Laadli media award story: an epic failure at honouring awardees

Chitra Ahanthem

On December 13, 2013 I was supposed to be making an appearance at Hyderabad for the fifth edition of the Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2012-13 that ‘honors media and advertising professionals’. Instituted in 2007 as part of the media advocacy efforts under the Laadli girl-child campaign, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)-Laadli Media Awards were launched by Population First, an NGO. In 2010 the awards were branded as the Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity (LMAGS) and according to its publicity material, ‘the award felicitates, acknowledges, recognises and encourages media, journalists and advertising professionals to keep working on gender issues and to draw the attention of the public to their positive efforts in the media with regard to gender sensitive reportage’. Now, the said awards are given according to four separate regions: Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western with Manipur and other states in the NE being included in the Eastern region. After sending in my submissions under the print category for a few select editorials for Imphal Free Press (IFP) I got an e-mail sometime on November 22, informing that I was one of the awardees.

The award citation when it did reach me.

Whatever amount of happiness I felt at being selected for the award was punctured by the careless intimation that said: “Your entry titled ‘The Annual Spectacle of Irom Sharmila’ has been selected as one of the winning entry for “The Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2012-13” in the Television Category. Its people like you from the media who have helped bring about a very perceptible change in the life of women by bringing about mindset changes.” The e mail citation said my selection was under the Television category when my work with IFP is purely in the print format! That e mail was only the curtain raiser for a few other disappointing developments starting from the response from the folks who are behind the awards. When I wrote back a ‘Thank you’ e mail, I also pointed out that my entry was under the print category and that was met with a off hand explanation after an apology that went on the lines of ‘your entry has been classified as print only but since the mail was being sent to a number of people there was a slight mistake in typing you could call it errors of cut and paste era’. The worst part of it all was that for the travel to the awards venue only the train fare costs would be taken care of by the agency because it ‘did not have enough funds’, an explanation that was for me both smacking of a total ignorance of the distance and time factor involved in the travel and ironically showed that the said awards do not necessarily include honouring the awardee(s).

Another journalist from Manipur who had been conferred the award in an earlier edition told me that she did not attend the award ceremony because of the train and flight cost issues which meant that the agency had the choice of either looking for funding support from their network of agencies or shifting the venue to somewhere closer. Going to Hyderabad even by the flight option would have meant changing flights and lay over time in between while the train option from Imphal was out of the question with the state yet to be connected to the country’s railway network. And so, attending the award ceremony went out of my hands leaving a distasteful experience behind and wondering how in the world the award is meant to encourage media practitioners. But this issue of connectivity on one hand and the lack of room for concessions to this lack comes in the way of being a part of the larger picture.

I have absolutely nothing against road or train travel. Rather, they are interesting experiences but when agencies send forth invitations with set riders on how to travel without factoring the time and distance in question, it gets a tad difficult to take in silently. The jarring note for me is that Population First, the agency behind the Laadli media awards can associate with a luxury hotel like the Taj Deccan as a venue but not give any effort to find travel support for me or any other of the awardees from the North Eastern states. Efforts to engage Population First in a discussion on the issue was kept strictly one sided with my e-mails remaining unanswered (still). The e mail exchanges below are self explanatory: they were written after the award ceremony and addressed to the two senior most people at Population First- SV Sista and A.L. Sharada : (sent on December 16, 2013 and unanswered till date)

Dear Bobby and Sharada,

 I was informed on November 22 that I was being conferred the Laadli media award for my entry 'The annual spectacle of Irom Sharmila'. My submissions were under the print category and for the Eastern region. The e mail informing me about the media honor said I was selected under the 'TV' category: this, when my entry was for print. when I pointed this out, a careless explanation of 'e mail in a hurry' 'cut and paste' issues were handed to me. When I requested that my travel costs be allowed to cover flight fare, I was given a generic 'we are an NGO and do not have funds, we can cover only 2AC train tickets'.

I am writing in this mail to point out a few problems with the train travel bit when it comes to the NE and its connectivity with the rest of the country:

1. I am from Manipur: we do not have a rail head at all. There's construction going on but it will take another 20 years. Given this backdrop, I could not have got into a train at all.

2. Even if I took a bus to Guwahati (in Assam): it would have taken me a day. From Guwahati if I had to take a train till Hyderabad, I would have to stay an extra day at Guwahati because of timing issues. It would have taken me 3 nights. In between, there are no daily train services linking the cities.

 Given the above circumstances, I would have taken 6 days for one leg of the journey. I am a journalist working on deadlines and spending a total of 12 days for two train journeys for an evening (for the awards) would have been a tad too much. Unlike other parts of the country where people can get into an evening train and reach another metro the next afternoon, we grapple with long distance and irregular connections. I also found that an earlier Laadli media awardee from Manipur, Thingnam Anjulika Samom missed out on the awards because of the travel vis a vis cost/distance. I would have been honoured in the real sense of the term if your agency had tried to liason with other agencies to cover flight costs for awardees from the NE region. Another area is that I was told that I could not publicize about my award before the ceremony but I am still clueless about the award/honor given to me. I was waiting for a citation e mail or a press statement that my paper could have carried.

 I hope that when your agency can look at including media practitioners from the NE for the awards, a little bit of understanding of the constraints that we face here will also be given due consideration in the future.

 Regards

Chitra Ahanthem

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A courteous e mail reply could have settled my ruffled feathers but I was in for more rude shocks. In the last week of December, I got a call from Population First asking me my postal address so they could courier me the award citation and trophy. The conversation went like this:

Staff: We have bubble wrapped the glass framed citation and if it breaks by the time it reaches you, I would like to apologize in advance.

Me: Could you pack the bubble wrapped pack properly and send me through Bluedart or Overnite Express, marking it as ‘fragile’?

A flimsy cloth covered a layer of 3 sheets of brown paper that held the glass framed citation

Staff: We will ask our courier guy since I have no idea which services deliver there.

Me: Overnite and Bluedart delivers. I have got all my stuff through them.

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January 8, 2014:

I got a thin packet that was covered with a flimsy cloth through Express Speed Post. There was no ‘fragile’ marking and I could hear the contents of the package moving inside. I immediately called up the office number mentioned on the pack. The conversation went on these lines:

Me: I am a Laadli media awardee but I have this feeling that it is less of an honour and more of a token thing. My earlier mails are unanswered. I had specifically asked that the citation be packed carefully and marked ‘fragile’. I had even suggested that Bluedart or Overnite Express be used.

Staff: We sent it by Express Parcel Post.

Me: It is not about which service you used but the manner in which it was marked and how no ‘fragile’ markings were made out. Can I talk to the person who is in charge?

Staff: Her name is Revathi. She is out of office and will be back next Monday.

 Following the conversation I decided that I would at least open the package though my immediate reaction was to ask the postman delivering it whether he could send it back. 

After removing the cloth, I found 3 sheets of brown paper taped all over the frame. When I opened this lot, I found the bubble wrap cover and when I started opening it, glass pieces and shards were spilling over me. A few newspaper pages was all that lay between the bubble wrap and the remains of the glass frame. The citation jarred yet again. After my name and the name of my publication (IFP), it was written: "Best Editorial: Chitra Ahanthem: Imphal Free Press-For her editorial on marginalization and trivialization of Irom Sharmila's struggle for repeal of AFSA (yes, they forgot to put a 'P") for 'AFSPA'. Again, I wrote another e mail.

After the brown paper layer was the bubble wrap

This time, I addressed it to Revathi Asokan (the point person for the awards) and appended the e mail that I had sent in earlier:

Dear Revathi,

Greetings.

Sometime back, I got a call from Population First informing me that my Laadli award citation and trophy would be couriered to me. I did not get the name of the caller but I had told her then that just bubble wrapping a glass framed object would not suffice. I had told her to pack it properly and use either Bluedart or Overnite Express. The caller said: "I have bubble wrapped the glass framed citation and if it breaks by the time it reaches you, I apologize."

Today I got a cloth wrapped brown packet, which contained the bubble wrapped remains of what was earlier a glass framed citation. There was no covering letter with regard to the award trophy either.

I regret to say it but have to tell you that in my long years of being a journalist and having won various media fellowships (from CRY, PANOS, the National Foundation of India, UNICEF), my experience with Population First is the worst. I am not too sure if the award you have conferred on me is an honour or a mere token.

The citation is technically wrong: it says "For her editorial on marginalization and trivialization of Irom Sharmila's struggle for repeal of AFSA". The last should read as 'AFSPA' for Armed Forces Special Powers Act and not as mentioned in the citation.

Presenting the Laadli award in its shattered glory

regards
Chitra Ahanthem
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I am not too sure whether this mail will be answered or if the award trophy will reach me. I find that I don’t really care much if they send it across and would feel the same way in the event that they don't send to to me but I strongly feel that such callous indifference needs to be brought on record. I have won other media fellowships and have been well looked after. I still remember how the CRY people took note of my long flight hours and gave me two books from their library 'to read in between flights' when I was chosen as a media fellow to write on children in armed conflict areas. My first media related honour was the North East Media Exchange Program undertaken by the National Foundation of India under which I was attached to The Hindu office in Chennai. The paper took care of my one month stay for the fellowship period so I would not finish up my fellowship amount. The Laadli media award experience is one that l hope, never happens to any other media person.