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Khabar Lahariya: India’s Rural Watchdog with a Feminist Eye

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Dixie Swenson

Aug 22, 2023

India

Categories:

Women, Empowerment, Journalism

Originally published September 28, 2021.


Khabar Lahariya, the newspaper, was started in 2002 by Nirantar, a feminist nonprofit in Delhi, as a literacy project. The purpose was to keep communities informed about practical local issues while providing income support to the local journalists. The newspaper is no longer in print publication but has moved totally to a digital format that also serves as a news agency reporting rural issues for other media digital enterprises and NGOs (non-government organization). 60% of the 5 million daily views on YouTube are from the local area, fulfilling the need for a source for practical local news.


It operates as a collective of women journalists employed in their home villages reporting in the local Hindi dialect. Journalist training is an intrinsic part of the editorial process where they explore issues of politics, development, and gender. No outside trainers are employed.


They invest heavily in training their staff, actively looking for potential reporters who are women from within the disadvantaged communities. The training goes back to basics, often addressing basic illiteracy and education. In fact, the paper was first conceived as a literacy project, the success of which pushed them to expand and challenge the very idea of journalism. What makes news, and who could tell those stories? The salary empowers the women, some of whom are the key income earners in their family. The hyper-local model, although it doesn’t scale it can replicate and the network sees no reason, other than resources, that it can’t expand into numbers of rural districts throughout India.


This model of journalism as a means of female empowerment could have interesting potential for enterprising local groups around the world. In many parts of the world, local newspapers, particularly in small towns and rural areas, have disappeared or been quite diminished. Yet the need for news and good journalism is still very much needed. This may be an interesting way to revive local journalism, and it could be accomplished by fostering journalism clubs in schools, other institutions (such as the YWCA in the US) or simply with a group of women wanting to make a difference. The start-up costs are reasonable with everything being done digitally. Khabar Lahariya started as a literacy project, and this could be recreated in impoverished areas anywhere to help girls and women learn to read and write or improve their literacy skills. The community gets good local news and local women, and girls are empowered to grow and succeed.


Picture Caption: Homai Vyarawalla: India's First Female Photojournalist

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0721.105.01.0928.21

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