Thanks to the buzz on the social media and a few concerned friends who wrote in to me and Population First, the agency behind the Laadli media awards, my Laadli award
travails reached their ears and I got a response. I thank each one of you who
wrote in to me and for your support. The following mails are 1. What Sharada of
Population First mailed in response and 2. My reply.
On Jan 9, 2014 at
2:14 PM, sharada al wrote:
1. Dear Chitra
I have read your blog forwarded by one of our friends and I
fully empathize with you. If I were in your position, I would have been equally
upset. I extend my unconditional apology to you. As I was on leave since I was
shifting house, the mail sent to my official address was not seen by me.
Instead my team responded to your mail. That is the reason for not receiving a
response from me. I agree that my
team member’s response was inadequate due to her inexperience. I take full responsibility;
I should have been more hands on in my supervision.
Chitra, let me assure you that I believe that I am insulting
myself if I insult another person, particularly someone whose work I admire and
honor. And it causes me great anguish that our actions have distressed you so much.
We feel miserable when we have to say ‘no’ to air travel and
some of our awardees cannot attend the event. The fact that we did not get a
travel partner this time made it very difficult for us to give any special
concessions to anybody. May be we should make an exception for awardees from
North-east. I would definitely be considering your suggestion for the next
year’s awards.
I would also like to clarify that we could organize the
event at Taj Deccan because they joined us as Hospitality Partners. Otherwise,
we really do not have the resources to host it at such a high end hotel. We
always take care to do our best, obviously it is not good enough and we fail
miserably at times.
Chitra, whatever has happened should not have happened, be
it the typos or the broken citation or inadequate response from my team and I
am extremely sorry about it.
Warm regards
Sharada.A.L.
-----------------
2. Dear Sharada,
I appreciate
your response and hope that Population First will not only take adequate but
thoughtful steps to pro actively help awardees who are not from the rest of the
country who are well connected in terms of connectivity and communication.
It is regretful
that it was only after I wrote my blog and a lot of media people got active
that I got your response. I did not get any auto 'out of office' mail from you
or Bobby and I had only the two phone calls as my sole communication link.
Again, the calls were not helpful to my cause.
I would like to put this email reply up on my blog because I
need to inform people who have been following this over what has turned out.
I would appreciate it if the correct citation is sent to me
with adequate care so nothing gets broken this time.
regards
Chitra Ahanthem
-----
And thus rests the issue. I have no idea if they will resend
me my citation (with the correct wording). When I shared my blog with a e mail
group of the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) a very well respected
journalist who has also been a former awardee had this to say:
Shocking account, Chitra. My own experience with the Laadli
award ceremony in Chennai in 2007 was also not particularly inspiring. Apart
from not taking care of transport expenses, they didn't even serve tea to the
assembled awardees. We had to sit through a ceremony during which we first had
to listen to a number of male speakers (no women at all) who had nothing to do
with the media or, really, gender/the girl child. None of the awardees were
asked/allowed to utter a single word! And, of course, there was hardly any
audience in the enormous Music Academy auditorium. :)
For the last few days I am confronted by social media. I agree there was lax handling and a few unprofessional acts which hurt deeply Chitra Ahanthem, our Laadli Media award winner. I have been unequivocal in my apology to her. Though it is made out to be an act of discrimination or exclusion of our friends from North-Eastern states, I assure you it was not at all that. We had given 88 awards from all the States and Union territories and in 12 languages. I am sure all those who are involved in similar kind of activities appreciate how difficult it is to organize something of that scale with a secretariat of three people. We have to have similar rules for all unless otherwise specified. At least till this year we had not made any special provisions for awardees from NE and we may do so next year if budgets permit. It has always been our endeavor to see that all our winners come and attend the event.
ReplyDeleteIt hurts deeply when people talk of us as being insensitive. People who have been associated with us for so many years! There are certain contractual obligations with our collaborating agencies and coordinators. If those are not met, sometimes we have the unpleasant task of engaging in plain speak which may not be very palatable to the receiver but that does not mean that we are “gender insensitive”.
I prefer the good old days when people had no pressure to respond instantly and had time to cross check facts and figures.
People comment about our organizing the event at Taj Deccan. We could do so because we had them as our hospitality partners and we spent the same amount of money we would have spent if we had organized the event in any decent auditorium and put up the awardees at 3 star hotels.
I agree we do take care to see our communication material looks good but we really do not splurge money on it. We have lot of concessions from various service providers because of their commitment to the issue. Taj hotels, Oberoi group, Air India, Jet Airways and media houses joined us as partners earlier which enabled us to take care of hospitality, travel, publicity etc. But our ability to do quality work with limited resources should not be held against us to say that we splurge money on collaterals and insult our award winners. I hope as many voices from the award winners are raised who have had a positive experience of our hospitality, concern and sensitivity.
I am not sure whether I should broach this subject here are not, but I am doing it. We are accused of benefiting from Vedanta, which is news to me. We have not received a paisa from them. Yes, I was there on the NDTV Our Girls our Pride program. Population First is an organization committed to working with media to ensure that the right messages and perspectives are projected and I consider this an opportunity to dialogue and also present our point of view. Come to think of it, can we take money from any business house, when almost all of them are involved in some scandal or the other? More importantly, can we take funding from the government and BMC who are directly responsible for the loss of thousands of girl children due to their bad implementation of PCPNDT Act, hobnobbing and shielding the doctors indulging in malpractice and harassing honest officers doing their job well?
We believe that we should open up and keep open the communication channels with all the influencers and stakeholder groups if we really want to have all of us sharing a common vision for women of India.
I do not see Chitra’s experience as an exception, because our aim is to make each one of our winners feel special and if we have failed one we have failed all.
I really wish my good friends had called me up or sent me an email to clarify our position. I would not be responding to the social media comments, but would be more than happy to engage with each one of you on one-on-one basis.
Sharada.A.L.