53 minutes, Documentary film directed by Avinash Deshpande
At the Mahatma Gandhi Centennial Sindhu High School in Nagpur, 185 close-circuit television cameras track the movements of students, teachers and other staff through over a hundred classrooms, labs, staff rooms, and even empty corridors with motionless ceiling fans. All the cameras feed into a wall of television screens arranged in the school Principal’s office. From here, the Principal Deepak Bajaj monitors the classes, watches the staff, interrupts classes with all kinds of instructions, and generally keeps a watchful eye on his realm.
With the television screen as the interface between Principal and students, the school assembly becomes a virtual affair. The corridors remain empty while the classrooms are full of self-conscious students and silent teachers. Disembodied voices conduct the prayers, read the daily news bulletin and make announcements. Even during the day, whenever the Principal’s voice crackles through on the PA system, there is a small ritual: the students shuffle to their feet, he urges them to “sit down, sit down”, before addressing some innocuous queries to the class teacher, to which the teacher replies awkwardly. And as we listen to Bajaj’s plans for the future – to go up to 250 cameras, to have them connected to his house for 24-hour surveillance, to record and replay on will, and to be able to continue his surveillance from his laptop even while travelling – there’s something very creepy about the entire project.
With no voice-over, no narration, no background music, Deshpande’s direct, plain-vanilla approach nevertheless makes a searing comment on this philosophy of control. The camera moves silently across the school campus - watching the daily routines, the strange monotony of news bulletins, the complex emotions of a farewell ceremony, the unvoiced discomfort of the staff, and a pitifully sycophantic birthday song for a visiting School Board member.
Close to ten lakh rupees have been spent on the CCTV technology while the basic school infrastructure remains shabby, with peeling walls and cracked blackboards. Unsettlingly, the camera shows us a row of chained dogs, a human brain and heart stored in glass jars; and life-size plaster models of uniformed boys and girls inside glass cases. The camera lingers on the children at play, reminding us with a shock that these little tots are just like any children anywhere. Except that they are caught within this bizarre situation and being turned into one man’s vision of what “good citizens” should be. And that vision is straight out of George Orwell, complete with Big Brother watching everyone all the time.
Deshpande also filmed conversations with Vijay Tendulkar and psychiatrist Udayan Patel, but later decided not to include these. The film works powerfully without them, and without giving us the director’s views in so many words - letting us ask our own uncomfortable questions instead. What is behind this freaky urge to control? What are the implications of this kind of surveillance on the minds of young children? What kind of effect does it have on the morale of the teachers? What kind of parent wants surveillance cameras to make sure nothing “happens” because there are male students in the school? What kind of people will these children become in the future?
(In MM this week. Above image from Pink Floyd’s The Wall)
