Grassroot Journalism
Her-Story of Literacy

An account of events that shaped th feminist revolution of Khabar Lahariya, this article builds the her-story that spans a journey from literacy to media literacy via a series of vignettes on grassroot reporting.

By Pooja Pande

K for Kavita

Of all the particular moments of her life that are special, Kavita recalls one with a strong force. She conjures it into imagination well past its 25 years and brings it to life as if it were yesterday.

She is roughly 15 years of age and is drawing something with her finger in the sookha atta strewn about on the ground of the kitchen – celebrating a milestone that she has recently achieved. She is just about to start kneading the dough for the day’s rotis – to be consumed by the family comprising both four-legged and two-legged members who will spend it farming – but just for a moment, she is smiling at the flour, tracing in it, the letters of her name in Hindi. She feels it inside her, a powerful identity-marker. That she is this, these shapes in the flour – she is Kavita.

The sounds of the rasoi take on new meaning; etching themselves into her memory anew.

Start at the source

Many women of rural Uttar Pradesh enroll themselves into a literacy programme for adult women at the time.

The Mahila Samakhya programme was launched in 1988 as a concrete programme for the education and empowerment of women in rural areas, particularly of women from socially and economically marginalised groups. One of the core stated objectives of the programme implemented in U.P., Karnataka and Gujarat was to ‘develop the ability to think critically.

Through this programme, many discover the multiple meanings of self and purpose in a world wrought, for the worse, by patriarchal pressures that consistently oppress them.

That 90’s batch of the MS programme usher in a wave of feminist revolutionaries who go on to pursue unconventional life paths, finding themselves urged and inspired by a new found superhero-like power – literacy yields understanding, and they begin to look at the world and their own places in it afresh.

An occupation of public space by those kept away from it for too long, follows. Some do so via governance, and run for local body elections. Others consider their options in law and justice. Some, like Kavita, find it in journalism.

Or rather they re-invent it.

The local chai tapris of Chitrakoot where they live are marked by the sheer lack of women, especially those from marginalised communities and castes. It is all par for the course, but with a new-found understanding of the way things are these neo-literate women, Kavita among them, begin to start the work of how the way things can be. Tapping the hidden potential of destinies waiting to be unlocked – their own, and through them, the world’s.

Seeing how the dhabas are “serious” spaces of news consumption, where “serious” issues around citizen rights are discussed at length, they see how half of the citizens are being denied rights to access these spaces and the information that circulates in them. The idea of a newspaper of, for, by women, begins to form. The ripples of change the women feel inside them finds resonance in the name of the newspaper project that they will into being – waves of news, or Khabar Lahariya. 

Khabar Lahariya is India’s only women-run independent news outlet, bringing hard-hitting and powerful investigative journalism, human interest stories, and vibrant cultural and entertainment content from the country’s most remote areas. What started as a print newspaper in 2002, with hyperlocal stories often written from a feminist perspective for a rural and semi-rural audience, it now has a network of 25 female reporters across six states in north India and an audience of up to 20 million.

It is the early 2000’s and a Khabar Lahariya editorial meeting is in progress. The Chitrakoot office where the women eat, sleep, take care of children and each other, bond with, rib one another, learn from and teach one another, and bring out entire newspaper editions, is currently abuzz with heated debate over a recent “news story” that has taken a couple of neighbouring villages by storm.

“Didi, I’m telling you. Everyone is talking about it, so it must be true”, says one young reporter. The faux headline doing the rounds – ‘Local Woman Delivers Snake Baby’ – is probably even being written somewhere, she adds.

“Most likely in a mainstream legacy newspaper”, sniggers another.

Her older colleague rolls her eyes at the commotion and gently reminds everyone to take a pause and go back to their training days – how they all spent weeks upon weeks learning the ropes of reporting, learning to ask questions around the “chaar ka’s – kya, kab, kahaan, kyon”. She urges them to apply what they learnt and imbibed not so long ago, in classrooms strewn with blackboards that had on them hand-drawn maps of India, Uttar Pradesh, and Bundelkhand, where most of the women are from. A globe provides an understanding of the world – to locate herself on the blue planet, locate her purpose – make tangible a nagging feeling of something to work on, something to work with, something to make right.

The editorial meeting concludes with the group deciding that they must go out and find the source of this story.  

Credibility in the time of crisis

These early experiments in media literacy, playing out in an era when the term itself wasn’t quite  a buzzword yet, serve Khabar Lahariya well over the next few decades through many a year of snake baby “news pieces” (yes, those are still around). They take the shape and form of regular inputs, sessions, workshops, the process updating itself as the women work hard to empower themselves and each other. A diverse team of urban and rural women turn into unique media practitioners, in the process creating a first-of-its-kind dynamic media literacy and training programme that is truly grassroots, and thoroughly community-embedded.

In 2020-21, on the heels of its 20th anniversary, this way of being informs Khabar Lahariya’s work through (arguably) the worst crisis of our times – a pandemic that quickly transforms into an ugly infodemic, its lethal impacts as dire as the virus itself. From targeting vulnerable populations and communities to spreading misinformation and factually incorrect data about the disease and the vaccine, the infodemic adds to and creates chaos and very real danger, amplifying across social media feeds in rural and small town areas.

Leveraging the credibility built steadily and firmly over two decades, Khabar Lahariya rises to the occasion and pivots to address the growing misinformation and raise awareness as a much looked-up-to local platform. Via YouTube videos, Instagram Stories and Facebook Lives, the field reporters and editors speak at length about the latest suspect news story gone viral, and counter common conspiracy theories around the spread and prevention of COVID-19. Via text articles, Khabar Lahariya fills in the gap in urban news feeds too, addressing the lack of awareness that plays out in the cities when it comes to news stories and updates from villages.

The work fuels another birth story steeped in media literacy. Chambal Academy formally begins operations with a pilot online course in MoJo, training over 200 young women and girls from villages and small towns across five states of northern India. It equips rural women to engage in the digital public and be storytellers and catalysts for change. New generations of journalists, media practitioners, storytellers, influencers, come forth in the churning.

Kavita, now the Editor-in-Chief of Khabar Lahariya and the current co-CEO of Chambal Media, the company that runs it, works with her Managing Editor Meera, Chambal Academy Lead Priya, and several others, on media planning through 2024 and beyond.

Sheer survival

A young practitioner identifying as queer is holding a session on gender for her colleagues at Khabar Lahariya; even as she shares her personal understanding of social constructs based on her lived experiences, they are together unpacking the multiple facets of the topic, bringing in their work and their social media identities – the thrill and the dangers of a world overloaded with content. This exercise is called the ‘Seekhe-Sikhaye manch’ (Learn & Teach platform), in a nod to the long-standing culture and history of Khabar Lahariya, which encourages and thrives on a feminist sisterhood model of collective knowledge-building.

Khabar Lahariya forays into more states, including Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, with an ear-to-the-ground coverage strategy of the 2023 state elections. Chambal Academy branches into capacity-building as a means of exploring sustainability, the perennial challenge in seeking to build a robust alt feminist business model.

One could argue that media literacy in this her-story is a matter of sheer survival.

At a recent editorial meeting at Khabar Lahariya (which now often takes place on Zoom), a senior reporter aptly shares, during a discussion on sources, “Pukhta jaankaari hi power hai (Credible information is power)”.