'Khabar
Lahriya', became the only digital rural news network in the country. It not
only serves groundbreaking "real" journalism from rural India,
but also breaks all gender based taboos that exist in our country.
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| Khabar Lahariya produces hyper-local reports and gives voice to local people |
‘Khabar
Lahariya’ is working in the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar
and Chhattisgarh. What makes Khabar Lahariya unique is it's journalists, women
from Dalit, tribal, Muslim and backward castes made unique this digital
newsroom every day just by doing their job fearlessly.
Khabar
Lahariya was started with an objective to produce local and independent
content, bring a feminist voice to local media, and establish women as
journalists in small towns and villages and now is published in various
rural dialects of Hindi, including Bundeli, Avadhi and Bajjika dialects.
Khabar
Lahariya, which literally means ‘News Waves’ in Hindi was started as a local
language newspaper in 2002 with the support of a Delhi-based gender education
organization called Nirantar. The NGO had helped the government execute the
literacy programme in Uttar Pradesh.
While
talking about how the Khabar Lahariya began, Ms Kavita Devi the
co-founder of Khabar Lahariya said-"Once the government’s literacy
programme was over, Nirantar started a four-page broadsheet newspaper called
‘Mahila Dakiya’ with an aim to continue to educate women and give them a voice.
Not only did it enable the sustained production of reading material in local
languages and promoted an overall environment of learning, but it broke gender
and caste barriers too. This is how some women of Banda including me entered
the world of print journalism which was mostly dominated by men in the region
at that time. I do not have any degree or formal education in journalism.
Mahila Dakiya was discontinued and in 2002, Khabar Lahariya was launched with
the support of Nirantar and a staff of seven women who wrote, produced and
distributed the fortnightly newspaper in Bundeli and Hindi languages. It was an
eight-page weekly local newspaper that covered everything from local to global
news."(source: NDTV)
Khabar
Lahariya is run under Chambal Media,
Khabar
Lahariya is India's only grassroots, feminist news and media platform, housed
under Chambal Media and run by an all-women team of reporters, editors, and
media practitioners, reporting on media-dark geographies of the north Indian
hinterland.
According
to Srishti, Spokesperson, Khabar Lahariya-
"Because
the newspaper was not taking any ads, it was becoming difficult for them to
sustain and also more and more people started consuming digital news, so in
2015, Khabar Lahariya became a completely digital platform and was taken up as
a brand by a Delhi based media organisation called Chambal Media. Khabar
Lahariya is still not taking any commercial ads. It relies on Chambal media,
grants from Independent and Public Spirited Media Foundation and takes up
projects of UNICEF and other organisations, helping them produce digital
reading materials, awareness building projects and other such
collaborations."
With
an aim to train more rural women to become reporters, Khabar Lahariya is
launching Chambal Academy in April this year, the organisation is also working
towards recruiting more local women and those from underprivileged communities.
"Along
with highlighting women’s issues and stories around women’s health, education,
livelihood and domestic violence, Khabar Lahariya also covers issues related to
forest rights, land, rivers, water, politics, communalism, crime, accidents,
environmental issues."
“We
do not leave anything. We cover as many things as we can and we try to do it
better than others as we bring the local people’s perspective and feminist lens
to our news coverage." -Ms Devi said.
 |
| Women reporters of Khabar Lahariya are breaking many barriers and stereotypes on a daily basis |
Khabar
Lahariya was initiated to complement the Sahajani Shiksha Kendra programme,
The
programme provides basic literacy training and educational support to
rural women and girls by filling the information gap that previously existed in
these hinterland rural areas.
The
principal goal of the programme is to foster a culture of family or
intergenerational reading among rural families, and promote most importantly,
lifelong learning among rural women, through the production of a contextually
relevant and gender-sensitive newspaper. The newspaper endeavours to eradicate
illiteracy in the State by enhancing and sustaining the literacy skills of
newly literate women and communities by:
-enabling
women to learn skills in news gathering and production, thereby creating a pool
of community-based female journalists skilled to produce and disseminate
essential news and information to and about their communities
-raising
women’s awareness of issues affecting their communities in general and women in
particular, at a local or national level
-providing
women with opportunities to articulate these issues which are particularly
relevant to their lives
-providing
low-cost news and information to women in areas with limited or no access to
reading materials
-enabling
women to participate more effectively in community and national development
processes and make informed choices (civic education and gender empowerment)
-promote
family literacy, intergenerational learning and community development.
 |
| Khabar Lahariya started i's journey as a printed newspaper in 2002 |
Oscar-nominated
documentary 'Writing With Fire' shows the real story of this entirely woman led
newspaper Khabar Lahariya,
Wrting
With Fire' the only Indian documentary in the Oscar-2022 race, traces the
journey of a vibrant community newspaper, Khabar Lahariya, from print to the
digital world, directed by filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh. It is the
first Indian feature documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best
Documentary Feature. Shot over five years, it is a story of determined
journalists, some mothers and others single, and their commitment to press
freedom.
Writing
with Fire follows the three women as they first learn, and then train their
teammates on going digital — scenes show them struggling to operate the video
cameras on their new smartphones, and to edit.
The
women have grown up experiencing violence and discrimination When they report
in the field, they mostly meet upper-caste men, who appear to tolerate them.
The
film tracks them juggling domestic responsibilities and pressures, while
commuting long distances to cover reports about illegal mining, rapes, murders,
and interviewing police officers and politicians when Uttar Pradesh went to the
polls in 2017.
Since
its release at Sundance last year, where the film won two awards, Writing With
Fire has received critical acclaim globally and bagged 28 international awards.
India's first newspaper run entirely by women, is a struggle against the rural-patriarchal society. As a digital news outlet, Khabar Lahariya is currently reaching over 10 million people. Currently, it has over 30 reporters out of whom about 18 are working in 14 districts of UP, some in 7 districts of MP and some in 2-3 districts of Bihar and Chattisgarh.
Initially,
Khabar Lahariya mostly focused on women's issues but soon expanded its coverage
of local politics, crime, social issues and entertainment.
As
of now, the YouTube channel of the Khabar Lahariya site has over 500,000
subscribers.
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