Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Its 9 in the morning. Meera Devi Jatav checks her bag one last time,making sure her diary,pen and visiting cards are all in place and then heads to the local Primary Health Centre in Mau village,in UPs Chitrakoot district. Jatav,who works for the rural newspaper Khabar Lahariya,is out to find out about the outbreak of a disease in the village.
Last week,we reported about this outbreak in which 20 people from Mau fell ill. There were no medicines in the local PHC and people were suffering. But after we carried our report with a photograph,things changed. The district administration has become active and medicines have been sent. I am going to check whether the patients have got medicines or not. Follow-up bhi toh kari rahi na hum, says Meera,who is in her early 40s.
Meera is the editor,but also reports for Khabar Lahariya,the newspaper that was launched in Chitrakoot district in 2002 by Nirantar,a Delhi-based organisation,to give a voice to the marginalised,especially women. Nirantar was working in the region with a programme for womens empowerment and Khabar Lahariya became a tool to promote literacy. At present,it has a readership of 25,000 in about 400 villages. Priced at Rs 2,the newspaper is printed from Allahabad and prints about 5,000 copiesit always sends a copy each to the district collectorate,block office,tehsil and local police station.
Jatav,who has studied till high school,was already working with Nirantar and when the newspaper was launched,she was asked to join in. After being one of the first few reporters for Khabar Lahariya,Jatav is is now also the editor of this Bundeli weekly newspaper. She handles the Mau block and is responsible for gathering news from the block office.
Though her husband,a farmer who works as a field support staff for the pulse polio programme,and her family were initially apprehensive as her work involved late nights and they feared her stories would get her into trouble with government officers,they are now proud of her. The Rs 7,000 she earns every month is welcome too.
