There’s a vacuum surrounding the implementation of RKSK in Kerala. Though it might be because Kerala is listed as a “Non-High Focus” State, it must also be understood and acknowledged that these focus classifications have been made on the gender-binarist and ableist quantitative data on literacy, availability and access to quality medical facilities, Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), teen pregnancies, average age of marriage of females, etc. This means that there’s no contextual understanding that lived realities are different from numbers, indicating at the need for qualitative data before concluding the level of focus to be put on each state.
This calls to highlight the lived experiences of family-forced marriages of women/people assigned female at birth, ignorance of mental health of transgender people to alleviate the genderism in the RKSK scheme, generational trauma. This is extremely important in a scenario, like in Kerala, where there’s a perpetual silence around mental health; Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice (SRHRJ); denial of the fact that pregnancies can happen out of marriages even by health professionals; and very few NGOs and activists working on these issues unlike other states. That’s why I think Media Advocacy is a great tool to tackle this qualitative void.
I’m thinking of collaborating with traditional media companies publishing in Kerala like Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhumi, Deshabhimani, and The Hindu & Times of India Kerala Editions by getting them to publish articles on editorials or opinion pieces (Op-ed) by people going through different aspects of these lived experiences with an intersection on how the implementation of RKSK can help them survive those experiences and avoid further propagation of such dire circumstances. The pieces could also include innovative ideas that they think could make RKSK itself better and aid in an easier implementation in Kerala, complemented with a Call to Action (CTA) for high or low interest but high influence stakeholders.
It would also be prudent to approach Public Policy Think Tanks in Kerala, like the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), to organize debates and/or panel discussions on the urgency for RKSK implementation in Kerala on the video coverage of traditional media channels. It would be appropriate to have youth people too to be part of these discussions to hold space for first person perspectives rather than just third person perspectives, research and/or data analyses. In today’s day and age, the online space is just as powerful or sometimes even more powerful than the traditional media space, meaning that advocacy in both spaces need to go hand in hand.
In the online space too, both written pieces and videos can be targeted. Written pieces can be published in collaboration with sites/initiatives like Youth Ki Awaaz, Sangya Project, Agents of Ishq, StoryMirror and many more. These can also be repurposed as swipe posts with graphics drawn/created by Keralian artists or photography by Keralian photographers. It can also extend to more than just a one-time collaboration to a relay of such posts and reels, giving attention to both the individual creator(s) and the publishing NGOs and/or CSOs, which can also progress to online panel discussions, webinars, social media lives on various platforms, and possibly, consistent individual activism. Coming together of those consistent individual activists through the most local NGOs like Vanaja Collective (VC), Sex Education Kerala (SEK), etc., could slowly build the capacity to approach PHCs, ANMs and through them or otherwise local decision-makers like Gram Panchayat or Municipality heads and slowly move up the line, necessarily a bottom-up approach.
As it might have been noticed, all of this would need for people to first start to come forward with their stories and that might be one of the hardest things in this advocacy plan thanks to the silenced state of Kerala, in this context. But fortunately, few voices could be found on platforms like YouTube from individuals/couples like Noora and Adhila, who are fighting for their rights. It could be a starting point to the advocacy journey and, also, for establishing links with the, aforementioned, local NGOs like VC and SEK since they will be able to offer connections to marginalized youth, online influencers, sex educators and more, who are willing to share their personal stories/challenges and ideas. They might also become the pioneer peer educators in educational institutions and in their communities, with some expert guidance. This would also pave the way for bringing more influential and/or interested stakeholders into the advocacy arena/plan.
