02 April,2014 12:10 PM IST | | Dhara Vora
Footnotes, the magazine produced by students of the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences has now been released as a webzine for the first time and aptly, the theme is Mumbai resistance
Sriram Mohan writes about the citizens of Khotachiwadi fighting back to save their locality
Students of the School of Media and Cultural Studies (SMCS) at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences have been producing Footnotes, a magazine chronicling different facets of the city, since the last two years. With its current edition, the students have now taken the online route and just released the exemplary magazine as a webzine.
Sriram Mohan writes about the citizens of Khotachiwadi fighting back to save their locality
Anjali Monteiro, Head of SMCS, cites convenience as the deciding factor in making the magazine online, "The dissemination of the magazine becomes easier as compared to the print edition. Also, through the online edition we can reach a wider group of people, and it also adds to the web presence of the school." The previous edition of the magazines was noted for reflecting the heartbeat of the city as it spoke about different occupations pursued by people in Mumbai and brought several unnoticed sections of the society to the fore (both are available online in a PDF format).
Rajashree Gandhi explores Dalit representation in the city by speaking with people associated with the Ambedkar Memorial project
The current theme is of resistance, "In our module on journalism with journalist Sameera Khan, each one of us had worked on long reports of various areas of the city, by speaking with the people residing and working there. Through our work we found out that in each area, there is a voice of concern among the ordinary people who question about being taken for granted. That is when we decided to work on this particular theme," says Sriram Mohan, co-editor of Footnotes.
The students have covered various facets of the resistance in Mumbai such as music, sexual identities, trade union movement and even ACP Vasant Dhoble running havoc among the hawkers of the city. And the web edition of the magazine has rather liberated from the restrictions of the print, "People might think that writing for web needs to be short for shorter attention spans, but all the work which we had come up was as long as 1,000 to 1,500 words. Also, for certain stories, such as one where we have explored the Indie music scene as a sign for resistance (by Anisa Bhutia) we can even upload the songs related to the piece," explains Sriram.
