Workshop on climate change and uncertainty from below and above, Delhi. http://steps-centre.org/2016/blog/climate-change-and-uncertainty-from-above-and-below/

1. Voices from Below: A Photo
Voice Exploration In Indian
Sundarbans

2. Why Photo Voice?
2
To empower Voices of those most
vulnerable
To empower Voices of the
‘second sex’

3. 80 women respondents across three blocks in Sundarbans have
participated in the photo voice process braving the monsoon and the
floods. The photos presented here have been selected by the group
themselves through a series of discussions.

4. 4
Whose voices from Below?
Mothers with children 0-6 years of age, who also are
 Crab and fish collectors
 Living on embankment
 Schedule Tribe
 Religiously minority community
 Women headed households
 Community with large agricultural land

5. Shifting the research to the community….
1. Establishing rapport with
community through group meetings
and informal interactions
2. Selected group leaders through
community consensus
3. Selecting participants with the help
of the leaders
4. Training on use of camera and
consent forms
5. Piloting, learning and modification
6. Data collection and supportive visits
7. Fortnightly group meetings
5

6. A minority
community
woman, who
rarely ventures
out, learn to use
a camera during
a Photo Voice
fortnightly group
meet

7. Expressing and raising Voices….
1. Brainstorming with
participants to select
pictures and narratives
2. Meets with local
panchayat, civil society
representatives and grass
root health workers

8. The pictures and narratives from Below
Livelihood
Water and Sanitation
Food insecurity and malnutrition
Existing Health Care Services
Accessibility
Shelter

9. Water and Sanitation

10. During every
high tide I
have to face
hardships to
get drinking
water for my
children

11. It is better to
defecate in the open
than polluting our
ponds

12. This pond is our only
source of water but is
too saline after
Cyclone Aila

13. We cant
even get
fish from
the saline
water for
our
children

14. Livelihood

15. Crab catching is very
strenuous and we are
forced to risk tiger
attacks

16. ‘Meen dhara’ (prawn seed
collection) allows the dirty
water to get inside the
women, causing uterus cancer.
There are lot of examples in
our village

17. The government has
robbed us of our
livelihood for saving the
trees and the tigers

18. Our men has migrated to
other states in search of
work after Cyclone Aila

19. FOOD INSECURITY AND
MALNUTRITION

20. Our lands have become barren
after continuous flooding of
saline water

21. Fish in our ponds cannot
survive in saline conditions

22. Our children are
growing up to be
malnourished

23. This young mother is
herself malnourished;
What would happen to
the baby?

24. Health Care Services

25. This health facility
remains closed most of
the time. The doctor
hardly comes here.

26. Without any doctor, we
depend on quacks. They
always give us costly
antibiotics to our
children

27. For snake bites we
mostly go to the
traditional healers

28. Accessibility

29. Seven years after Cyclone the
jetties have not been
reconstructed. Women and
children are most at risk

30. For at least six months in
a year the roads remains
muddy and slippery. How
does one travel in the
night?

31. This is the road to health
centre to access the
school and the
immunization facility. We
have stopped sending our
children during high tides
since Cyclone Aila.

32. Our only
of transp
take preg
women a
elderly to
nearest p
hospital

33. Shelter

34. The river has encroached
upon lands. We are forced to
live here with our children.
We pray that floods does not
engulf us during night

35. We have nowhere to go.
We would face whatever
Gods have in store for us

36. We can’t simply
leave our elderly
and flee the islands.
We still live in
makeshift shelters.
Government seems

37. o
Thank You