JOIN USIn an attempt to empower and give voice to the bystanders of gender-based violence, five students of the Shiv Nadar University (SNU) have come up with a campaign called ‘Taali Bajao Campaign’.
The online, campus-wide campaign is started by the collective effort of Akash Idnani, Ekta Kapoor, Ayush Bhattacharya, Hoshank Ailani and Mugdha Jain. It is targeted at people in the age group of 18-25 years and is pivoted around the non-violent act of slow clapping that is used to shame the perpetrator.
Protests through a clothesline project with individual stories on workplace-harassment written on t-shirts, a control wheel of psychological abuse where they will put up post-it notes on what they have experienced, street plays and strong messages written on cardboards, are some of the measures that have been adopted as a part of the campaign.
“Eve teasing is something that we as college students have experienced as bystanders as well as victims. Mostly, bystanders do not speak up as they feel intimidated by the harassers. To change that, we thought of a non-violent action, taali as a means to shame the perpetrator into backing off. The Taali Bajaao campaign was born out of our inability and helplessness when confronted by such a situation,” says Mugdha Jain, a fourth year student of Computer Science Engineering at SNU.
The university offers a course that focuses specifically on how social marketing can bring about a change in mindsets of people regarding gender violence. Titled ‘Gender Violence and Social Marketing for Social Change’ the course was developed to be a part of the Core Common Curriculum (CCC) offering of the University.
Paromita Goswami, associate professor of marketing, School of Management and Entrepreneurship, tells Metrolife, “To the best of my knowledge, no University offers a course which focuses on social marketing’s role on changing the mindsets of people. Domestic violence, child sexual violence, eve-teasing in public places, sexual harassment at workplaces, are all uncomfortable realities that we shove under the carpet. It makes sense to step in when young adults are about to enter the corporate world, and form romantic relationships, so that they are more sensitive and aware, and do not end up as perpetrators or victims of such abuse.”
Along with their offline initiatives of street plays and clothesline projects, the students have been trying to reach people primarily through social media and ensuring that bystanders speak up.
“The role of social media in our campaign is huge considering that our target audience is college-going students. We post relevant content online, in order to get people’s attention. We have tried to employ current trends like Dubsmash videos and Terribly Tiny Tales in order to carry our campaign forward. We are able to reach people faster and more effectively through social media,” explains Jain.
Given the response that Taali Bajao Campaign has been able to garner on social media, both the faculty and students of SNU are now planning to carry it forward.
As Prof Goswami says, “I’ve advised students to write to UN Women if they take it up, and who knows if a corporate entity may want to promote the campaign as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity. With all the media attention it is getting. That’s the hope at least…”