A two- day national conference on ‘Voices of Unheard- Putting the last first’ is being organised by the Rural Management (RM) programme at the Xavier’s Institute of Social Service (XISS) Ranchi. The seminar is being held in collaboration with Save the Children and Plan India on November 8 and November 9.
The chief guest for the occasion was Aruna Roy, Founder, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.
The other dignitaries present were Acting Director XISS Dr Amar E. Tigga, Prof and HOD RM Programme Dr Himadri Sinha, Associate Prof RM XISS, Dr Anant Kumar, Director Programms and Policy, Save the Children Anindit Roy Chowdhary and Senior Technical Advisor (National) Child Protection, Plan India Tushar Anchal.
Addressing the gathering Tigga welcomed the distinguished personalities and said that focusing on balancing life is very important. “Balanced voices of the unheard are important for the development of the nation and XISS is extremely proud to be a part of it,” said Tigga. Roy spoke on how communication and ambitions are important for an individual. “My life has been spent training myself to hear those usually unheard. English is a language of the privileged in this country. It’s very difficult for people born in privilege to understand a different idiom. Today the biggest barrier of the unheard voices is the very ordinary common playschool called the barrier of language. When language itself is different and each word has four different meanings, it is extremely difficult to put forward the message,” said Roy. The social activist further added that language is very important. “Language is politics, privilege and hierarchy. The first big hurdle for me was to learn not only the language of the people but to understand the idiom and the nuances. One needs to understand the unsaid as well espically women who do not speak about a lot of things in front of others.”
The conference aims to tap on the unheard voices to bring changes in the lives of the marginalized, poor, vulnerable and unheard population groups. The conference is broadly divided into three major themes. Gender equality and inclusion issues with focus on men, women and people with different sexual orientations, gender identities and expression.
The second theme on child rights will highlight on prevention of child marriage espically in the Santhal Pargana region of Jharkhand and ending violence against boys and girls. The third theme will talk about the vulnerable population groups like homeless, displaced migrants, differently abled, beggars, rag pickers and the population in the conflict situations.
In the first session Prof Ravi Verma, from International Centre for Research on Women Schedule spoke about narrowing down the norms for gender and how in the present scenario women have been coming up in various educational and professionals fields.
Aarshi Jalan addressed the questioning of exclusion of Dhuku women in OBC communities through the voices of women in Gumla.
Dr Sangita Laha questioned whether corporate India is LGBT inclusive. She also raised questions whether the corporates came out to support the LGBT members when they were facing abuse, ridicule and even sexual exploitation only for being who they are.
A parallel workshop was also organised on community led approach to child protection coordinated by Rajeev Sinha, Plan India.
