April 15 will mark the launch of a new multi-media exhibition on the Harvard campus, titled HUM SAB EK (We Are One). The project leader is Dr. Satchit Balsari, Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and LMSAI Steering Committee member. In this Q+A, Satchit Balsari talks about the ideation of the exhibition, what difficulties the curatorial team came across, and the lessons that public health can learn from poor working women in India.
Prof. Satchit Balsari (right) with Hiteshree Das (GSD), who led the graduate student contributors. Photos by Bettina Wyler, LMSAI
Mittal Institute: Can you walk us through the ideation of this multi-media exhibition? How and why did you come up with the concept of this immersive show?
Satchit Balsari: In 2022, my team and I researched the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2.9 million-strong Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India, and its members’ response to it. For this, we collected 30 hours of oral histories and surveyed 1,000 households. When we were finished with the data collection, we asked the SEWA members what they would like us to do with the analysis. Their answers were very clear: They said “Go to the cities and help city dwellers and the middle class recognize what we go through. Tell the world about us. Share these stories with folks so that they learn about SEWA and how we organize ourselves to prepare for these large challenges that don’t spare anyone in society.” The mandate seemed very clear – but I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. I discussed it with colleagues, building on earlier conversations I had on how to create linkages between the sciences and the humanities and how to narrate stories across disciplines. I also discussed it with graduate students and students I’ve taught in my classes, and together, we came up with the idea of a traveling exhibition.
Mittal Institute: So CGIS South will only be the first stop of a longer journey?
Satchit Balsari: Yes, the Harvard Campus will be the first stop, the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington DC is the next, and then we hope to be invited elsewhere, including in India. Also, the Harvard Library has offered to include the oral histories in their permanent collection in the History of Medicine archives at Countway, which is another way of making the research widely available. Of course, we will also publish the findings in scientific papers, and we plan to host a series of policy roundtables with key stakeholders to share these findings. But the exhibition allows us to reach a different and equally important audience. I would like to invite other artists to work with this material and reinterpret it.
Mittal Institute: Can you tell us more about the research this exhibition is based on?
Satchit Balsari: SEWA members had been through a lot during the pandemic, and in conversations, we felt there may be important lessons for SEWA and for society to learn from. With Professor Jennifer Leaning, I have had the opportunity to conduct such evaluations in a range of disasters and wars around the world. I was not anticipating this exercise to be very different. But once we started administering the surveys, it became quite clear that the women had a lot to say, and that their stories should perhaps be best told in their own words. I literally went to the nearest tech store in Ahmedabad and bought a tripod and some audio recording equipment – initially to just help me document better and more accurately. But when I began listening to and watching the recordings, I realized that there needed to be more ways to recount what I was observing.
Mittal Institute: Were there overarching themes you discovered from these testimonies?
Satchit Balsari: Yes, there were many of them, and I invite everyone to come visit the exhibit and discover the themes themselves. The SEWA members we interviewed represent disadvantaged but extremely empowered women, who – in the early decades of the 21st century – negotiate the greatest public health emergency of our times despite significant economic, political, and social constraints. They survived the pandemic because of the long investments that they had made in their community through the principles of mutual cooperation and solidarity that underpins SEWA.
Mittal Institute: Did the testimonies help shed light on how to manage future public health emergencies?
Satchit Balsari: Absolutely. In public health, we have recognized for over a century that social determinants influence health outcomes almost more than anything else. But I don’t think we fully recognize how hard it is to strengthen them. There aren’t quick fixes for generations of deprivation. Organizations like SEWA show what it takes to make resilient communities. Therefore, as we stand here with climate change weighing so heavily on everyone’s minds, and as we wonder how to reimagine a more sustainable society, I think SEWA’s response to the pandemic presents answers that are generalizable, and important for communities around the world.
Mittal Institute: Can you talk about the process of putting the exhibition together? Considering that you are a physician and not a curator…
Satchit Balsari: It’s true; none of us on our team had done anything like this before. But I tapped into the best resource this university has – its fantastic students. We are quite the motley crew; our team has present and past graduates of the schools of education, design, government, engineering, and public health. It has been fascinating to learn from each other. Each discipline has its unique approach to problem-solving – even to understanding and exploring the problem. Being used to emergency medicine residents who are taught to make split-second decisions, I enjoyed watching the iterative deliberations of the design school students or the can-do magic of the engineering school. Bobby McCarthy’s (SEAS) response to most questions was: “I’ll print you a prototype today.” William Boles (GSD) has worked on theater sets for a decade, Deepak Ramola (HGSE ’23) makes films, Karthik Girish (GSD) and Shariq Shah (GSD) make all the stories come alive with their stunning graphics and design sensibilities. Ravi Sadhu led the 1000 household survey, spending several weeks in Gujarat, and Kartikeya Bhatotia and Abhi Bhatia provided a robust analytic framework for us to build all this on. And there’s of course our indefatigable ringleader Hiteshree Das (GSD), who gave form to what was merely a vague aspiration. All I had to do was get out the way (though I didn’t always!). Many others pitched in, such as Selmon Rafey from the Mittal Institute, who relentlessly supported the whole team, and Amra Khan, one of our Visiting Artist Fellows, who stepped in to help complete our large art installation. I must also say that for years, Krzysztof Gajos, Tarun Khanna, Rahul Mehrotra, Doris Sommer, and I have a taught a university-wide course together. Much of what I have learned about working across disciplines or exploring new ways of thinking, I have learned from them.
It’s true; none of us on our team had done anything like this before. But I tapped into the best resource this university has – its fantastic students.
Mittal Institute: What are you most proud of with this exhibition?
Satchit Balsari: The students – they did justice to the themes we are exploring and the sensitive stories we are trying to tell. They’ve worked with the kind of dedication and earnestness that few teams can dream of. And of course, SEWA’s members – their openness to allow us to do this. They have been incredibly patient with us; first, some doctor came around asking them all kinds of questions, and the next thing they knew there was a whole team making all kinds of demands on their time. A few thousand emails and WhatsApp messages later, here we are. As the installation “Woven Together” – made by SEWA’s weavers and home-based artisans from across the country – shows: Our journeys are richer together, stronger together. A good lesson for all of us on this campus.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of LMSAI, its staff, or its steering committee.