After speaking at the TEDxGateway event, Mallika Dutt talks about her human rights organization and inspiring people to action through the power of media
What motivated you to start Breakthrough?
After fifteen years as a lawyer who engaged in public policy as well as service delivery around a range of rights issues, I was frustrated that we seemed to talk to the same people over and over again. Breakthrough began as an experiment to see if media, arts and popular culture could be effective tools in reaching a larger number of people.
So I embarked on the greatest adventure of my life — the making of Mann Ke Manjeere: An Album of Women’s Dreams. Despite the challenges, it became a hit and we created an extraordinary dialogue about violence against women in India. In addition, it was probably the first time that men such as Prasoon Joshi, Shantanu Moitra, Soojit Sircar joined the public dialogue in support of women’s rights. This is how Breakthrough was born.
It’s going to be 12 years since you launched Breakthrough. How has the journey been?
The Breakthrough journey has been spectacular. I am deeply blessed to be able to put passion into action and live my life by realising my dreams. Breakthrough currently works through offices in India and the United States and I have the most incredible group of people who now make up the team.
We’ve also been fortunate to get varied partnerships that have enabled us to reach an extraordinary scale and impact that we could not accomplish alone. In the United States, we address issues of immigration and racial justice through video games and social media tools to reach people. For instance, our latest Facebook game, America2049 has generated a lot of discussion about democracy and diversity and changing demographics.
According to you, how easy or difficult is it to inspire people in India to take action?
I’ve found that people in India have an enormous appetite for change and want to find pathways to transform their surroundings. Our most recent campaign, Bell Bajao, which calls on men and boys to take a stand against domestic violence has generated great enthusiasm and action.
We’ve been heartened by the hundreds of stories coming in from around the country about how people have creatively challenged violence against women — from a government worker in Lucknow to a young artist in Mangalore.
That being said, we yet have a really long way to go to protect and promote human rights but I have a lot of hope, especially with the new leadership that’s emerging within young people.
What are some of the problems or difficulties you come across in your line of work?
When you’re engaged in something as fundamental as changing the culture to transform violence and discrimination against women, for example, there are all kinds of issues that come up amongst which resources are the biggest challenge. Resources for Breakthrough to be able to reach a large scale and have an impact and resources for women or other groups who are abused to have access to legal and other services.
When you do human rights work, there isn’t always a tangible outcome in numbers to show the results of your efforts such as a certain number of kids became literate or so and so number of women got access to livelihoods or a specific number of people got vaccines. But at Breakthrough, we don’t look at the numbers.
We deeply believe that underlying attitudes of discrimination and violence need to be challenged for real sustainable change to take place.
Is this something you have always wished to do?
I never imagined that I would be doing what I do today. I’ve always been committed to social justice work so I did assume I would be in that space but producing music videos and video games for human rights — that was never part of the picture.
Does your work ever get so overwhelming that you wish you had a mainstream career?
Absolutely! But fortunately, that wish doesn’t last long enough for me to take any action on it.
What would you say is the best thing about what you do?
The best thing about what I do is that we reach people where they are. The moment an idea is implanted in someone’s mind because of something that Breakthrough created, it is a wonderful moment for me.
And what is the worst?
The worst part of the work is being embedded in the darkest parts of our human nature and trying to figure out what we can do to change things. The day before Thanksgiving, I was still in New York and I got a call from a man in Alabama whose wife was being raped and beaten by prison guards.
The constant reminder of the universal nature of violence and discrimination can sometimes be devastating.
Can you recount an experience that you think you wouldn’t have experienced if it weren’t doing what you are doing?
My most extraordinary and precious experience will always be shooting for Mann Ke Manjeere in Pushkar. There were 80 of us and Mita Vashisht insisted on driving a truck. The lawyer part of me was terrified about issues of legal liability if anything happened and the woman part of me was soaring as I watched her coming down the hill.
What do you think about events such as TEDxGateway coming to India?
It is absolutely fabulous. We’re becoming a part of a global community of ideas and Indians have a great deal to contribute. Technology today allows us to be engaged in addressing global problems in extraordinary ways and TEDx is a wonderful way for us to participate in this global forum.
[Originally published by Afternoon D&C in December 2011]
