(From top) A photograph (courtesy Citizens’ Initiative) on display at the exhibition Under Development: Singur; artist Shuvaprasanna receives the lifetime achievement award on behalf of Paritosh Sen from Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Picture by Pabitra Das; a painting by Kamal Mitra at Gallery K2

The children of Singur are unaware of the sea change their village is undergoing in the name of development. This comes across in the photographic exhibition being held at the Seagull Arts and Media Resources titled Under Development: Singur, which opened on Friday with a panel discussion. It continues till July 2. But the men and women of the village look dejected, having lost their farmland which was their only means of livelihood. The women have taken up embroidery to supplement their meagre income. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has failed to give them jobs, despite the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s, pledge to the contrary.

The site of the factory has been walled off and this has separated it from the village. “The lush green we encountered everywhere” — said one caption, with the accompanying photograph showing the crops that have been grown there. The photographers, Amrita Dhar, Insiya Poonawala, Joyraj Bhattacharya and Kenneth Bo Nielsen, visited Singur between February and June. The Citizen’s Initiative, which along with Seagull, organised this exhibition, is trying to organise “a continuing open discussion on the paradigms of development and the relationship, in this context, between politics and ethics.” The Citizen’s Initiative is a group of students, researchers and teachers that started out in February 2007.

At the panel discussion on displacement and development, Kavita Panjabi of Jadavpur University spoke on civil society movements and efforts at representation. Film and theatre critic Samik Bandopadhyay spoke on media and representation and Rajarshi Dasgupta on the aesthetics of photography as an agent of representation.

Gallery K2 is celebrating its first anniversary and is exhibiting the works created at a recent art camp at Jamshedpur. The participants are from Bihar, Orissa, Bengal and Jharkhand. But artists irrespective of their origin paint like city slickers today and that can be quite offputting. Sculpture made of scrap material by well known sculptors like Niranjan Pradhan are also on display. Many of the works looked amateurish but Kamal Mitra’s drawing-like paintings have quite strong lines. Partha Pratim Deb has painted an enigmatic sunrise in grays and blue. Bratin Khan has painted Jesus and Buddha in the manner of a well-known senior artist from Bengal. Subrata Gangopadhyay did not paint at the art camp but sent two paintings of women. Krishna Sharan Mahato has painted a labourer’s wife at home, Chunaram Hembrom represented two Santhal women wearing helmets and carrying tiffin boxes ready to face the day.

Legends of India has been felicitating artistes from various fields with corporate sponsorship. Some of the dancers and musicians it has given Lifetime Achievement awards are Yamini Krishnamurthy, Pandit Jasraj, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shiv Kumar Sharma and artists Krishen Khanna and Sankho Choudhury. This year it had chosen to give the award to Paritosh Sen. But the veteran artist was unable to be present at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre because of ill health on Friday evening. Artist Shuvaprasanna accepted the award on Sen’s behalf from Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi.