When The Music Stops
While India’s musicians take the show online, the unsung heroes of live shows—technicians, backstage coordinators, tentwallahs and more—struggle to make their ends meet since the Lockdown. Some in the events industry have united to give back.
Ramesh Dixit (name changed) from Mumbai’s Naigaon East has been living a life on credit since March. He used to earn ₹15,000-20,000 a month by freelancing as a backstage coordinator in independent Indian music shows, but the income was never enough to set aside savings for a rainy day. So, when the sudden Lockdown was imposed nationwide, with only a few hours warning, the 41-year-old had no choice but to take a loan of ₹50,000 from a non-bank financial institution to feed his family of four. He is a Class-8 dropout, with little educational qualification for the job market. He continues to borrow more from neighbours and friends, knowing little how he would ever be able to repay.
“Me and my wife did a love marriage against our family’s wishes, so we don’t have their support,” said Dixit. “We are on our own. I am trying to look for jobs at construction sites and local shops but there aren’t any, and whatever there is, would earn me ₹200 a day, as opposed to ₹600 that one would have made before the COVID era. The job hunt has been so demotivating that I don’t feel like going out and looking for one. The only relief is that our landlord has forgone our rent until I find a job.”
Dixit is just one among the lakhs of cogs behind the wheels that kept India’s live music and events industry running. The industry was one of the first to shut down when the Lockdown was announced in India in March—and it’s feared that it could be among the last to resume operations. Many musicians have adapted to the ‘new normal’ since: while some are settling on online shows and concerts, others have retreated to their studios to work on albums.
Around the country, there are backstage coordinators, light and sound technicians, small-time engineers, tent-wallahs, equipment loaders, generator-operators, and more, those working behind the scene—for whom there is no alternative, no new normal but an uncertain wait for things to get better.
But the industry is much bigger than the musicians that make up the final product. Around the country, there are backstage coordinators like Dixit, light and sound technicians, small-time engineers, tent-wallahs, equipment loaders, generator-operators, and more, those working behind the scene—for whom there is no alternative, no new normal but an uncertain wait for things to get better.
Before the pandemic, Nikhil Pandey (name changed) used to work as a stage technician for concerts as a freelancer, but now he’s sowing paddy in his village. Since the work is infrequent, available for eight to 10 days a month for a daily income of ₹200-300, he has had to borrow money from relatives and a former employer. The Class-9 dropout even sought a job in the embroidery industry, but was turned away. The 22-year-old is from Nagla Ranjeet, a village 35 km away from the city of Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh. “Both my parents are differently-abled and dependent on me,” he said. “I am trying all that I can to put food on their plate.”.
“I had savings of ₹25,000 but that goes towards paying the rent of my room in Delhi. After September, I won’t have a rupee left on me. What will I do?”
The first thing that Pandey does every morning is google the number of Coronavirus cases in India. “If it goes down by 3,000-4,000, I feel happy. If it goes up, it spoils my mood. I lose hope.”
And seeing the way the numbers are rising in Delhi and around the country, Pandey continues to lose hope that the live performance industry will back on its feet soon.
Being a highly unorganised sector, it is difficult to estimate just exactly how many ‘bottom-rung’ workers have been rendered jobless in the events and entertainment industry in India. But it’s safe to assume that the pandemic has been cruel to such folks, many of whom had to work unnoticed and tirelessly to make anywhere between ₹400-₹5000 per show, who hail from non-affluent backgrounds, and are often the sole earner in their family.
Yes, Unlock 4.0 has now okayed a gathering of up to hundred people, but the prospect of live shows still looks slim. For now, workers like Dixit and Pandey are pinning their hopes on a campaign called ‘Together For Tomorrow’ (or TFT). It’s an initiative to create awareness about the plight of the performance industry wagers and raise funds for two hundred of the most vulnerable, disbursing ₹5,000 to each beneficiary for two months. Dixit and Pandey have sent in their application for the same.
What’s heartening to know is that TFT has been started by members of the events industry itself. The organisers behind the initiative include Naveen Deshpande, founder of the artist, booking and festival management company Mixtape; Supreet Kaur, Kalidas Shenoy and Dharam Saraviya from artist and event management company Only Much Louder; Manish Mavani, founder of the production equipment provider SNL Pro; and sound engineer Fali Damania. TFT is the brainchild of Delhi-based Himanshu Chowdhry, who runs a talent and brand agency called Spectal.
Artists like Benny Dayal, Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Guru Randhawa, and Badshah have also given a shout-out to the initiative on social media. Folk-fusion band Swarathma donated a part of the streaming revenues of their new song “Mushkil Mein Jeena” to the cause, while Hindi rock band The Local Train will soon launch merchandise to support the fundraiser.
It must be mentioned that the performance fraternity has floated several fundraisers to rescue artists during the Lockdown, whether it’s the StayIN aLIVE Artist Emergency Fund or those led by veterans like Shubha Mudgal and TM Krishna. “None to my knowledge focused solely on backstage workers.” Chowdhry points out.
TFT went live in July with a call for applications from non-salaried workers, whose sole means of livelihood was the events and performance industry. The applicants were asked to explain their financial woes and whether or not they had an addition breadwinner in the family. Chowdhry recalls, “Since they weren’t comfortable filling up Google Forms, most called us up on our numbers we had shared on the creative. Between me and two of my colleagues from Spectal, we attended close to 50 calls per day, each lasting 10 minutes to an hour. Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Assam, Orissa, Arunachal Pradesh, we got calls from everywhere. They were mostly freelance workers while some were associated with agencies. There were 22-year-olds and also people in their 50s. Women made a small chunk, 7-10%.”
The response was overwhelming, but also intimidating. Over three days, they received 612 appeals for help. Chowdhry explains, “We were scared because we didn’t know how to help so many people, even if we were arranging just ₹5,000. We didn’t have a corporate backing to bring funds. We launched the crowdfund campaign because it was impossible for us to overlook their misery.”
Some of TFT’s panellists, including Himanshu Chowdhry, Naveen Deshpande, Manish Mavani, and Abhishek Nag
There were aplenty stories of misery and strife, including that of a female equipment operator from the Northeast who sold her warehouse to pay her house rent. Mumbai-based Dixit feared his son would have to drop out from Class 10 in the absence of a smartphone for online lessons. Thankfully, Abhishek Nag, who works as touring manager with Spectal, ordered a phone for his son and now he is all set to appear for a Unit Test. However, the future of his Class 9 daughter now hangs in balance because she doesn’t have a smartphone on her. In one case, a landlord in Delhi seized the luggage of a stage technician-tenant just because he had defaulted on payment. Chowdhry stepped in to broker an arrangement between the two parties.
After receiving the entries, Chowdhry’s team called each applicant one by one to verify their stories. In some cases, they dialed up the event agencies that these applicants would have worked for the past to cross-check the claims. “Whether or not somebody has fabricated their story to get the money, we would not know. We have to give them the benefit of doubt. But I can tell you 108 of these 612 people called us back, asking us to drop their names from the list. Why? Because either they or their family members had found a gainful job in the intervening weeks, and they wanted others to get a fair chance,” the 30-year-old points out.
Chowdhry’s team made it a point to not rush through the calls because even if they couldn’t offer monetary relief, they wanted to leave the applicants with encouragement and ideas. Nag recalls, “A stage technician from Kerala borrowed ₹20,000 from the affluent people in his community to open a vegetable cart. This, because he has a pregnant wife and an old mother to support. The agency he used to work for hasn’t released his dues. On that call, I appreciated his willpower to fight back.”
When a group of youngsters from Guwahati called up “sounding pretty lost and desperate for jobs”, Nag advised them to connect with local events agencies for opportunities in the coming future. Even if the call wasn’t from a performance industry worker, it was taken with empathy. “A boy needed a lakh for his mother’s brain surgery and he was crying as he spoke. I asked him to reach out to local NGOs or create a crowdfund campaign.”
Mavani cast a doubt over the future of the live events industry in India, that he might not be able to [pay the technical crew] any longer in the absence of cash inflow and government intervention. “Yes, the government has allowed the gathering of up to 100 people, but the fear around the COVID infection and a question mark on the vaccine remain.”
According to Chowhdary, the TFT campaign has collected ₹5.2 lakh, and the hope is to get to ₹10 lakh over the coming month. “We want to get to another ₹20 lakhs but it’s looking difficult,” said Chowdhary. “Some fatigue has set in among the donors. They aren’t donating. Maybe because they have already funded other people in these six months. But we’ll keep trying.”
Meanwhile, the panel has shortlisted a little over 100 applicants for the first round of disbursement and Anahad Foundation would start releasing the money in a few days. Nag says the exercise of vetting the most vulnerable beneficiaries was done without any bias. “The list that we shared with the panellists didn’t contain an applicant’s name, place of residence, work profile. We assigned a code against each story.”
The TFT team says it would have helped if the Indian government announced aid packages for the events industry workers, as done by countries like Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. There has been some aid for the zonal offices of the government-backed Sangeet Natak Akademies, which, according to reports, have extended relief to folk and tribal artists registered with them.
Fortunately, there has been some positive movement to raise awareness for this issue. In April, the Events and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) submitted findings of a survey conducted across 170 companies that were affected by COVID-19, urging the government to “cover the cost of salaries/daily wages” of those hit badly by the Lockdown. Mavani, a TFT panelist, made a presentation to union minister Nitin Gadkari to create a separate ‘Technical Service Providers For Entertainment Sector” under the MSME to formalise the industry that employs 8 crore people across ranks.
Mavani cast a doubt over the future of the live events industry in India. He says that while he has been paying his technical crew for the last six months, he might not be able to do it any longer in the absence of cash inflow and government intervention. “Yes, the government has allowed the gathering of up to 100 people, but the fear around the COVID infection and a question mark on the vaccine and its accessibility to common man remain.”
The future is uncertain for the likes of Dixit, Pandey, and many more of those that provide the real background score to our biggest musical events. One wonders when there will be relief again, when they, too, can bounce back up to the professional lives they deserve.
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Barkha Kumari is a freelance journalist and a lucid dream blogger from Bangalore. You can follow her on Twitter: @Barkha2803 and Instagram: @rainsnroses.
