A local newspaper project in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu empowers villagers to tell their own stories and report on news that matters to them.
‘Gramam Pudiya Udiyam’ (Village New Dawn) was inspired by Venus Upadhyaya, a journalist who grew up far away in Jammu and Kashmir.
She spoke to The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time about the project and how communities can use media to express themselves.
Edited excerpts:
The Wall Street Journal: Why did you want to become a journalist who works with communities?
Venus Upadhyaya: I come from a small city with few opportunities but lots of questions, particularly on how to use media for community development. I wanted to experience a form of journalism that mobilizes and inspires people to think independently.
In 2006, I quit my job with The New Indian Express, a national English daily, to assess a post-tsunami rehabilitation program in and around Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. The program worked with 30 scattered villages, and the people needed a way to connect with each other.
I was already interacting with children from the villages and helped them start a monthly newspaper. From then on, the project belonged to the children—they made the decisions. I only encouraged them to express their views and made sure the stories that were important to them were published on the front page. They even chose the name: “Minmini Poochi,” which means firefly, a small but powerful source of light.
WSJ: How did the adults respond to a children’s newspaper?
Ms. Upadhyaya: In most rural communities, parents don’t think that children can be wise, but I saw a group of children who needed a platform to voice their thoughts. When the first edition was circulated, something changed in the way these traditional fisher folk perceived their own children—with pride.
I learned that a community project couldn’t be successful if the people don’t feel a sense of ownership and involvement. People need to relate to the news they read. I wanted to follow this dream of experimenting with community media and facilitate a project that engaged not only children, but the community as a whole. I sent a copy of Minmini Poochi to the Sri Aurobindo Society Village Action and Movement in Pondicherry, and they asked me to facilitate the creation of a similar newspaper for seven nearby villages.
WSJ: What was different in your approach to this project?
Ms. Upadhyaya: I was only enabling a process of participation in these villages, watching it unfold without imposing my thoughts or ideas. I don’t speak the local language, Tamil, but this wasn’t a limitation. When I first arrived, I realized that the villages were divided along caste lines. The upper castes and scheduled castes hadn’t interacted with each other for centuries. SARVAM’s hope was that a community newspaper could dismantle notions of difference and make each caste aware of the problems the others face.
WSJ: How did SARVAM spark interest among people in the idea of a village newspaper?
Ms. Upadhyaya: We met with groups of people from each village and gave them clippings from local papers to demonstrate what mainstream media thinks is newsworthy. We asked them to create their own newspaper, using a simple layout and focusing on what they thought was important for the community. Then we established that a team of 10 coordinators and two photographers would gather news and contributions from each village. Initially, they had to go door-to-door and requested people to submit. Now they receive between 20 and 30 letters a month, and people get angry if their letters aren’t published.
WSJ: What are some of the challenges in sustaining ‘Gramam Pudiya Udiyam?’
Ms. Upadhyaya: The community coordinators constantly have to prevent interest groups from treating Gramam Pudiya Udiyam as a political mouthpiece. They have tried to address the problem by using neutral words and phrases in editorials, and not publishing news that promotes one vested interest over another.
WSJ: Has the newspaper empowered people in the village who can’t read and write?
Ms. Upadhyaya: People can perceive and analyze what is important to them even if they are not literate. The older women in the villages often ask their children or husbands to read to them. For example, take Lakshmi’s story: She is a 39-year-old woman who owns two cows and earns a decent income of around 6,000 rupees ($110) a month, but was illiterate. She told me that she felt left out amidst her family and friends when they talked about what they read in Gramam Pudiya Udiyam, but consoled herself by looking at the photos. One afternoon, her daughter, Kalpana, saw Lakshmi gazing at the paper and offered to teach her to read and write. With Kalpana’s help, she gradually gained basic literacy, and no longer feels left out.
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