How a Local Newspaper in India Is Empowering Rural Women to Write About Their Communities · Global Voices
Newspaper readers. Photo credit: <PERSON>
How do you make the voices of women in poor, rural areas of India heard? A hard-hitting community newspaper is a good place to start.
Khabar Lahariya is a women-run rural weekly newspaper produced in the local languages Awadhi, Bajjika, Bhojuri, and Bundeli in the Indian states of Utter Pradesh and Bihar. The paper is distributed to 80,000 readers across 600 villages.
It describes itself as a “local watchdog” and a “weapon of the weak,” reporting on injustices and corruption affecting rural communities that don't normally receive media attention. Launched in 2002, Khabar Laharia became available online in February 2013.
Every year, international broadcaster Deutsche Welle holds a competition for the the best blogs produced over the past 12 months – this year, Khabar Laharia won the Global Media Forum Award. Jury member and blogger <PERSON> called the paper “a shining example that a functioning democracy is dependent on access to information for all people.”
To learn more about their story, we spoke with <PERSON>, Khabar Laharia's editorial coordinator.
A rural Indian reader with a Khabar Laharia newspaper. Photo credit: <PERSON>
Rising Voices (RV): Why did you choose the name Khabar Lahariya, which means “News Waves” in English?
<PERSON> (PB): Most of what Khabar Lahariya is, even the name, comes from the women reporters. Actually, the name came from a collective exercise when the founding members sat with the first group of women reporters back in 2002. It was the women reporters from the villages who wanted to give it a name that would strike a familiarity with the readers, was easy, and meant something to them
<PERSON>: Is the team made up of volunteers?
PB: No, no. All of these women are full-time employees with Khabar Lahariya. For many of them, this became a source of income which they could use on their own terms, or an additional source of income which helped them improve the standard of living for themselves and their families.
RV: Do you have any men in your team?
<PERSON>: No, we don't.
RV: How many of you run the project?
PB: It started out as a space that women had made for themselves, and so it has stayed that way. It all happened in a context where determining spaces and dynamics for themselves was very important for women. 926
And yes, 40 women spread over 2 states, all of them rural, mostly from marginalized communities.
The 40 women of the Khabar Lahariya team. Photo credit: <PERSON>
RV: Some of the participants barely knew how to write and read initially, and they are now professional reporters. Was it a difficult process?
PB: […] The women came from different educational backgrounds. Some were neoliterates [with basic literacy] who had not had formal education, but then there were others who were enrolled in educational programmes. It was an interesting experience, a learning experience for all of us as well, because there were many things we could learn from them […]
RV: Do you have a particular style for your readers, who are also coming from rural provinces with perhaps low literacy? How have you reached out to them?
PB: The style of Khabar Lahariya is not difficult, but is different. Each of the six editions comes out in the local language of the area (some people call them “dialects” but we prefer to stick with “languages”). Many of these languages aren't used to produce written material anymore, so [the language printed in the newspapers] is something that the indigenous people of that area speak and are familiar with, something the reporters speak in all the time, and it preserves languages that would otherwise fade away. Since the language is easy and the newspaper is designed differently from mainstream newspapers (bigger fonts, easy words, conceptual definitions for complex issues), it makes it a good read for rural poor populations who might not have gone to school for very long.
Distributing the newspaper. Photo credit: <PERSON>
RV: Can you tell us a bit about your move to publish online last year? How was it made possible?
PB: In 2012 we got a grant from the United Nations Democratic Fund for two years. This was also the period when <PERSON> expanded from three [linguistic] editions to six. A website, and putting <PERSON> content [online] was part of the activities that UNDEF funded. 507