Focus on digital media on 4th day at Samvaad

Digital Solutions take Centre Stage on Day 4 of Samvaad 2020

Jamshedpur, November 18, 2020: Changemakers from the hinterlands of the country gave insights into the scope for digitalization within tribal communities. Experts and youth leaders joined online and discussed digital mediums that bring tribal communities together.

Bikram Biruli, hailing from the Ho tribe who has started a website, http://www.hosamaj.com, spoke intensively about how he used the online medium to create awareness during the coronavirus pandemic.

With a lot of youngsters running their YouTube channels, they shared about how they have been garnering the online medium to reach out to the communities.

Vinod Kumar, hailing from the Bhil tribe of Rajasthan, runs his YouTube channel called “Kotda Times” and has been spreading awareness among tribal communities through his channel.

“I have collected information pertaining to government schemes from the block and district offices and have translated them in the regional language and have put it up in my channel. They have received huge response especially the recent videos that I put up during the lockdown period garnered a lot of reviews,” says Vinod.

Vikram Murmu, another tribal youth, runs another YouTube channel, Sarna Today, that he setup to bring dialogues around tribalism into mainstream media. The initiative was started to cover the history, way of life, cultural richness of the tribal communities of Jharkhand. They have successfully covered numerous stories of tribal communities and heritage till date.

As a part of the artisans’ masterclass, Sumanti Oraon from Oraon tribe, Madhya Pradesh and Sunaram Soren from Ho tribe, Jharkhand, imparted training on the basics depicting Sohrai painting on a canvas using natural ingredients such as clay and charcoal, and Oraon art through finger painting.
At the Samvaad Action Research Collective, experts discussed about the importance of oral literature and how it can be a very important tool during the process of action research. Padma Shri Daitari Naik, who carved a 3-km-long canal from a mountain stream in Odisha, joined the session and stressed on how action involves evaluative, investigative, and analytical research methods designed to diagnose problems.

Dr. Anjana Singh, Head, PG department of History, Nirmala College, Ranchi University, Dr. Kachyo Lepcha, a teacher in Lepcha language and have 15 publications to his name, and Mr. Manoj Nigadkar, PhD scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai joined the discussions.

As a part of the film screenings, Samuday ke Saath, Johar was screened. Directed by Abhijit Patro, it is a twenty-minute ethnographic documentary film about the daily activities and customary practices of the Adivasi group – the Santhals – dwelling in and around Jharkhand, India.

Samvaad also celebrated traditional cuisines of 16 tribes across 10 states with the dishes that were exclusively available for the people of Jamshedpur on online food aggregator platform Zomato since yesterday. As many as 25 items are available on the menu with Madwa Momo (dumpling made using raagi flour) garnering a lot of attention.

The online sessions have received a lot of enthusiasm from tribal communities across the country and beyond. The inaugural ceremony that was screened live received more than 5000 views.

The Samvaad ecosystem has brought together more than 30,000 people from 117 tribes across 27 states of India and 18 countries in the last 6 years. The concept of regional Samvaad was initiated in 2016 with the objective of reaching out to more tribal communities in the hinterland and factor unheard voices therein.