Maharashtra village switches off TV and mobiles to ‘detoxify’
Villagers of Mangaon in Kolhapur district are staying away from TV and phones for 90 minutes every evening so that children can study and elders can socialise without distractions.
At the stroke of seven last Wednesday evening, the searing sound of a shrill siren pierced through the stillness of Mangaon village in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra.
The siren was a signal to the villagers to switch off their mobile phones and television sets and most of them complied.
The gadgets stayed off till 8.30pm.
During the hour and half without phones and TVs, the villagers huddled in circles to speak to each other. Some picked up books to read. A few even possibly spent time looking upwards at the sky for counting the stars.
But the forced abstinence from two modern-day necessities did not go in vain.
In the words of Raju Magdum, the village sarpanch, it helped in mental cleansing – something akin to digital detoxification.
“Our social bonding was suffering as we overwhelmingly stayed engrossed in watching TV or surfing the internet on our smart phones.
“The decision to collectively switch off both TV and phones helped us to reconnect with each other,” gushed Magdum.
Delighted with the positive response last Wednesday, Mangaon, a village of some 15,000 residents, has now decided to continue with the brief but effective self-imposed bans daily.
Notification of a different kind
Every evening, a siren mounted atop the office of the local panchayat office now wails loudly exactly at 7pm, notifying residents that it is time to switch off.
Geetanjali Upadhyay, a mother of two school-going children, Sujal and Akshara, does not hesitate to heed the call. She enthusiastically switches off her television, even if it means skipping some of her favourite serials.
She also ensures that her two children have switched off their mobiles.
“After a long time, I could sit with my kids and teach them properly. Otherwise, they would keep using mobile phones. It was difficult to make them concentrate on their studies,” Upadhyay pointed out.
The initiative in Mangaon – a brainchild of sarpanch Magdum – is certainly novel. It is also rare though not unique.
Inspiring initiatives
A similar experiment had been attempted by five villages in Sangli district of the state in September 2022 after village elders noticed lack of social interaction among residents. These five villages too had an hour-long ban in place every evening.
Some 2,000 members of the Jain community in Raisen of Madhya Pradesh are also known to have attempted a similar ‘cleansing’ by shunning television and phones for 12 hours daily for a period of 50 days.
“Those initiatives were inspiring. We needed to replicate them in Mangaon as well,” Magdum explained.
Positive response
On January 26 – Republic Day – he first notified the residents of his intention to impose the 90-minute ban on March 8. He put out messages on the gram panchayat WhatsApp groups. Posters and notices were also put up on village walls.
But now that the ban is to be imposed daily, local cable operators have been requested to discontinue their services to the village between 7pm-8.30pm. Villagers with DTH connections have been asked to voluntarily switch off their TV sets for the period.
What if someone disregards the directive?
For the time being, the order of the sarpanch is not binding. But the panchayat has decided that if a resident disregards the appeal more than five times, he or she would be penalised with a hike in their property tax.
Magdum is convinced that the initiative will work since no villager complained when the cable operator switched off its service from the second day onwards.
Meanwhile, Pravin Patil, 48, is ecstatic.
“My son is in tenth standard and he is studying hard without distractions during those 90 minutes. I too have been engaging with my parents more than before,” he said.
These are significant positives of the ban, and no wonder, Mangaon seems overwhelmingly supportive of it.
The lead image at the top shows children engrossed in studies during the ‘off-screen time’ at Mangaon village in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra (Photo by Jyoti Thakur)
Jyoti Thakur is an independent journalist based out of Delhi. She covers gender, environment, politics and social justice. She is a Rural Media Fellow 2022 at Youth Hub, Village Square.
