When Ms. Vasundhara Sirnate asked if I would be interested in joining her new public-interest organization, the Overwatch India Initiative, I immediately knew that I wanted to participate. Ms. Sirnate had been my internship supervisor when I interned for the Polis Project’s Violence Lab last summer, generously supported by the Arts Student Employment Fund. The internship at Overwatch would build on the work that I did in 2020, and was an opportunity to learn and practise data journalism. Needless to say, support from my new professional network and the Arts Internship Office made my summer internship in 2021 memorable.
I am a rising fourth year Honours student studying History with a minor in Social Studies of Medicine. My academic interests lie in the intersections of history, health policy and law, and data. My coursework at McGill focuses on these disciplines and their relevance to South Asia and Canada. Working with Ms. Sirnate at the Polis in 2020 first exposed me to the importance of data made and owned by the public. Such enumerations allow civil society to set priorities and direct attention to where it counts.
The Overwatch India Initiative, albeit new, brings together seasoned scholars from Computer Science, Economics, and Political Science to build that kind of public-oriented data. It is sensitive to the fact that good policy must treat data, not as a mere collection of information, but as aggregates of living people. One of the most important lessons at this internship was that data collection entrusted a responsibility to act on that data too. During the internship, I hoped to gain experience in empathetic data-work by constructing original datasets on public violence and publishing insights.
From early June to August 2021, I worked as a research intern on the Indian Violence Archive, documenting incidents of identity-based violence in India. In the past, we recorded incidents between 2005-2019. This summer, we recorded incidents from 1850 to the present, with the help of machine learning (ML) techniques. We supported an interdisciplinary team to construct ML techniques by sharing insights on common keywords and vocabularies of violence in India. Despite my anchorage in social sciences and humanities, witnessing and learning from computer and data scientists opened up many ideas of how I could leverage interdisciplinary connections.
Here, I would like to note that my internship experience was not divorced from any reality. With the devastating third wave of the pandemic in India, we also pivoted to capture deaths in hospitals due to alleged medical oxygen shortage. We believed this was within the purview of the India Violence Archive because the state also inflicts violence upon its citizens through bad policy. This exercise was difficult; Everyone in the country knew people who had died because of the coronavirus, and somehow, we strongly felt that it was our burden to document this tragedy. We recorded over and these numbers became the basis of journalistic and civil opposition towards the central government’s COVID-19 management.
Working with such large datasets and ideas is laborious and hard work. Having to do it in real time, as people lost their lives due to state mismanagement was even more taxing. During this time, I understood how crucial rest was to my productivity. I lived a life outside of this internship, and the greatest kind of public interest work began with people around me and with myself. While my friends in Canada were transitioning into a “normal” summer experience, vaccine inequity stole any sense of security for most low and middle-income countries. I saw it necessary to my productivity to even request time off when I needed it—and suffice to say, it re-energized me.
Remote work also came with challenges: I initially struggled with goal-setting. My solution to it was to block time and use the pomodoro method wherein I stretched or spent time with my cats during the five-minute breaks. I stayed on track by reflecting on daily data entries (and taking notes for special cases). I would then summarize these reflections for weekly meetings with my supervisor.
In the end, I am grateful for having worked with Ms. Sirnate and folks at Overwatch. It was humbling to labour during what was a difficult time for many people. I am very grateful to have the privilege to stay safe during a pandemic, and work. This experience would not have been possible without the Internship award, which I was honoured to receive.
I extend my thanks to the Faculty of Arts Internship Office and the Arts Undergraduate Society for the Arts Student Employment Fund. Just like the previous year, I received the award while I lived a vastly different pandemic reality in India. I would be remiss to not mention how the AIO’s support helped maintain the dignity of my labour and encouraged me to always lend my privilege and energy towards what I could do for my community.
