Help support rural journalism

A survey conducted by the Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi, estimated that 69% of India's population gets only 0.67 % of front-page coverage in daily newspapers. The reasons given are "non-profitability" and that such coverage is "unlikely to attract advertisers".

The People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) is a contemporary journal that covers the sidelined 69% of Indians, counting for 833 million rural people counted in Census 2011. Much of what makes the countryside unique could be gone in 20-30 years, leaving behind no systematic record to educate and motivate us to save this incredible diversity. We are losing worlds and voices within rural India of which future generations will know little or nothing of, even as the present one steadily sheds its own links with those worlds.

There are surely many practices in rural India that should fade away. Many of them are tyrannical, oppressive, regressive and brutal in nature, and must be done away with. Untouchability, feudalism, bonded labour, extreme caste and gender oppression and exploitation and land grab are a few such subjects. The tragedy though, is that the nature of the transformation underway more often tends to bolster the regressive and the barbaric while undermining the best and the diverse. We want to document and report on all facets of life in the Indian countryside.

All PARI stories are about the everyday lives of everyday Indians, not about celebrities and film-stars. Every PARI story, photograph, film, comes from the field. All of them are reports on the extraordinary things ordinary people do and face; on their lives, aspirations, incredible skills and sufferings. We have reporters across the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari who do this incredible work in multi-media formats that are translated in upto 13 languages.

PARI hosts reporting on the countryside that is current and contemporary. All of PARI’s own content comes under the Creative Commons and the site is free to access.

Our compelling series on how poor and marginalised Indians were being denied social welfare benefits due to Aadhaar glitches was noticed by officials, prompting them to help a young Dalit girl, whose scholarship was denied to her because her name was misspelt on the card. The issue was rectified within in a week and her scholarship was granted thereafter.

In a remote village in the mountainous region of Uttarakhand, villagers had a post office that lacked posting facilities. Our story by an intrepid reporter was widely circulated, resulting in the opening of a functional post-service.

PARI stories are now being used as educational material in schools and colleges, particularly in Bangalore and West Bengal.

The initiative has also inspired the Canadian province of Nova Scotia to start their own People's Archive, which is currently in the developmental stage.