VOICES FROM THE MARGINS
DISHA MULLICK 37 MD, KHABAR LAHARIYA, DELHI
In the Khabar Lahariya office in South Delhi, a dozen women sit at their computers, each absorbed in the tasks of editing, producing and releasing into the world the news as reported by its network of women journalists deep in rural Uttar Pradesh. Since 2002, Khabar Lahariya has existed as a way for marginalised women to tell stories, for them to go out into their neighbourhoods and communities and examine how things work, to ask questions of the men (and it’s nearly always men) who control the resources and how they’re used.
For nearly a decade-and-a-half, Khabar Lahariya was an eight-page newspaper, produced entirely by women in Bundeli, Awadhi and other languages local to the parts of Uttar Pradesh it covered. The women came from largely low caste and rural backgrounds and had received basic education but were uniformly brave, full of curiosity, character and a desire, born in part out of economic necessity but also reserves of self-confidence. Managing director Disha Mullick speaks mysteriously of an ‘it’ factor that they recognise in the women they hire. This intrinsic quality is supplemented by a few days in a workshop to learn reporting basics, how to think critically about the news and report it, and, more significantly, by a period shadowing an established Khabar Lahariya reporter.
The result is a distinctive style, a commitment to feminism and marginalised people but also a commitment to journalism rather than advocacy. Khabar Lahariya may have been founded by the Delhi-based non-profit Nirantar but its mission has always been newsgathering, with no agenda other than proving that women from the ‘hinterlands’ can be solid, professional journalists. Khabar Lahariya left the newsprint game a year or so ago to become a digital platform. This has, Mullick says, expanded their reach from tens of thousands to millions. Khabar Lahariya’s YouTube channel has over 200,000 subscribers.
Going digital has enabled reporters to find their voices as perhaps print could not. The engagement with the audience, of course, is instant, more immediate. It’s an odd argument to have to make when the print version has won international recognition and multiple awards, but in its digital avatar Khabar Lahariya is even more distinctive. Not only does mainstream media not cover these stories, even when it does it never covers them the same way.
Khabar Lahariya helps redress the balance, giving space to voices the mainstream media refuses to hear. If it can persuade its expanded audience to vote with their wallets, Khabar Lahariya may just redefine what it means to be a media outlet, just as it has who is ‘allowed’ to be a journalist.
“I finished 5th grade and got married... Now I’m doing something I could never have imagined. I am a journalist—and a digital one at that” Shyamkali, Senior reporter