Amidst the fanfare of the bigger multi-million dollar productions, an indigenous entry in the Oscars 2022 shortlist remains unnoticed. Writing With Fire, an Indian documentary film about the newspaper Khabar Lahariya, made it to the Oscars 2022 shortlist. The documentary focuses mostly on accounts from rural India’s most underserved areas.
Khabar Lahariya is India’s only feminist grassroots news network, written, edited, produced, delivered, and sold solely by rural women from underprivileged communities. These female journalists travel to the most remote corners of India’s interior to report on local news and social concerns from a feminist perspective.
It publishes ordinary stories of ordinary people in areas that are completely out of the spotlight of media attention. The major goal, according to Kavita Devi, the co-founder, was to create an all-women news platform that would generate employment among the underserved. In 13 districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, roughly 20 women are now members of the reporting team.
By virtue of its existence and hard core investigative journalism, Khabar Lahariya seeks to reshape the mediascapes socio-economic and cultural landscape.
It’s time we acknowledge and promote such works that familiarise us with the ground realities. News networks like these, among many other such, have been successful in lifting the status of these women’s lives and training them to earn a living while also bringing the voices of the unheard into the forefront.
Writing With Fire—Recognising Local Journalism
