Resistance Radio

While running around frantically to reach the oxygen at the end of the maze, we all realized the importance of mutual aid—of common people coming together to help each other out with no ‘incentive’ or ‘profit’. Someone like Abdul Karim Sheikh came into our lives and enabled someone we loved to live yet another day. In this episode of Resistance Radio, Saurabh talks to one of the people who worked indefatigably to provide oxygen to us when the governance system and public health sector failed us during the worst days of the pandemic. People like him, showed us that during an anarchic time when the government practically doesn’t exist, things don’t just go to rot; people are smarter than that and can take care of themselves when push comes to shove. Abdul Karim Sheikh is the president of the All Kurla Committee that has already made oxygen available to thousands in the months of April and May.

Jai Savitri! Welcome to the first episode in the series of 'Resistance Radio' by Cinema of Resistance. The idea of Resistance Radio is to interpret our struggles and lives in the mainstream media through conversations with filmmakers, activists that can be circulated widely, and become a testimony of our current politics. It is also an established discourse that challenges status apparatus and projects different questions around intersectionality, caste, identity and gender.

In this episode Saurab and Vibhuti tell us about the Savitribai Library set up by Mamta Singh in Agrasar village, who runs on a self-sustaining model and inspires thousands of children and adults to think and read. Much like, Savitribai Phule's mission, Mamta is responsible for opening another set of libraries around her village and which started a library movement in Uttar Pradesh.