IndiaUnheard Community Correspondents
Shripati Sinko, Odisha
Shripati Sinko is an adivasi activist from Angul district Odisha. He feels that government officials often look down on adivasis and therefore deny them basic rights such as education and healthcare. When the adivasis try to claim these rights, their protests fall on deaf ears. Shripati was inspired to join the India Unheard platform to take the work of his movement further. After the training he feels that he can make videos that will force the officials to listen to what his people have to say and take action.
Anupama Sathi, Odisha
Anupama Sathi is a Community Correspondent from Jagatsinghpur district Odisha. She has been involved in helping organisations and students file RTIs in her area. She feels that her involvement in organisations like Mahila Ayog, a women’s rights group, has given a massive boost to her self-confidence. On the India Unheard platform, she wants to make videos that highlight community level problems such as corruption and government inefficiency.
Rangadhar Mahapatra, Odisha
Rangadhar Mahapatra is our IndiaUnheard Community Correspondent from Jagatsinghpur district Odisha. A few years ago he along with his village faced the prospect of being homeless. Since then he has been involved in a people’s movement which fights for people’s land rights. He wants to publicise issues that are in the villagers’ interest and sees video as a potent tool to do this.
Nitu Chakiya, Odisha
Nitu Chakiya’s primary area of interest is working with slum communities to help them deal with the problems they face regarding electricity, roads, water and drainage. She says that though political leaders claim that they have done work in these communities, the reality is different. She wants to document issues that have been neglected for years by the other media.
Dashrathi Behera, Odisha
Dashrathi Behera is an activist from Deogarh district, Odisha. He works on issues like farmer’s rights and wants to make videos that help take forward their cause. He is looking forward to using the skills that he has gained at the recent VV training, where he was able to exchange ideas with activists like him,, to bring the voices of his people to a wider public.
Purna Chandra Nayak, Odisha
Purna Chandra Nayak is our IndiaUnheard Community correspondent from Sundargarh District, Odisha. He has been involved in social work with adivasis and Dalits for some time now and is proud that he has been able to use his education and exposure for this. The media, he says, doesn’t go into the interiors of the country to report the issues there. He wants to change this situation and wants to make videos that reflect issues that are relevant to his community.
Amit Topno, Jharkhand
In the escalating conflict between a draconian state and violent insurgency, Amit Topno believes that the ones who lose out most are the innocents caught in between. Amit is an adivasi inhabitant of the conflict-prone region of Khunti. He has witnessed a million violations that the state and insurgents have committed in the name of ‘development’ and ‘freedom[’. It is a difficult region to work in but Amit has a decade’s worth of experience as a grassroots organizer and leader. As a Community Correspondent he says that it will be his responsibility that these injustices are heard, understood and redressed. You can watch Amit's video here.
Amita Tute, Jharkhand
Amita Tute is an adivasi activist from the Red Corridor in District Khunti, Jharkhand. She says she has lived a hard life and struggled to make ends meet. She had an awakening of social consciousness when she realized that struggle for food, clothes and shelter is also a struggle against corruption, injustice and apathy. For the last few years, she has been an integral part of the Jharkhand Jungle Bachao Andolan as a grassroots crusader for forest and tribal rights in her region. Amita has been instrumental in safeguarding and asserting the rights of the many innocents in her village who are constantly accused of being ‘naxalites’ or ‘sympathetic’ to the naxalite cause. Watch Amita’s videos here.
Neeru Rathod, Gujarat
Neeru Rathod is the 8th child in a family of 11 girls born to a Dalit construction worker in Surendranagar district of Gujarat, one of the most feudal and caste-ridden regions of India. Circumstances were difficult growing up but she found her path in 2006, when Video Volunteers and the NGO Navsarjan selected her to be part of a Community Video Unit. As part of the Community Video Unit, Neeru found her vocation and passion. She became an expert producer and committed video activist, seeking to set right the social issues that she was highlighting and leading hundreds of people in protest. She has conducted hundreds of village video screenings, speaking into a microphone in front of a huge screen late in the evening to thousands of men, shattering their ideas about what a woman and a Dalit can do. Her work has brought water, roads, electricity – sea change to villages in her district. She has also made videos on sensitive issues like the AIDS epidemic and single women in rural India.
Sanjay Parmar, Gujarat
Sanjay Parmar belongs to the Dalit Community. He found his passion in video and social change when he was trained by Video Volunteers and the NGO Navsarjan to be part of a Videoshala Education Community Video Unit. Sanjay began to use videos as an educational tool to teach and empower dalit children in his community. Later, he began to actively document continuing practices of untouchability and everyday discrimination against Dalits. He screens these videos back to his community and tries to get his people to talk about the 3000 year old atrocity that continues to oppress and stifle them. Watch his videos here.
Jogendra Singh, Kanpur
The slums of Kanpur were where Jogendra Singh was born and brought up. It was difficult but Jogendra calls himself a persistent and even stubborn individual. Against all odds, he completed his education with a master’s degree in social service. He then returned to give back to his community and his people. He started by helping the children of the slum with their education. As an IndiaUnheard correspondent he speaks for the long due recognition of their fundamental rights. Watch his videos here.
Shankarlal Raikwar, Uttar Pradesh
Shankarlal Raikwar belongs to a community that dances at festivals and carnivals for a living. Shankarlal is an expert in performing feminine roles especially from mythological texts like the Mahabharata. He is proud of his art but unfortunately it makes him a point of ridicule in society. He is also worried about getting older, and about the ridicule his children may face as other children learn of his dancing profession. He looks at IndiaUnheard as a new beginning, a platform that he intends to use to spotlight the issues of marginalized and ostracized communities like the one he belongs to. Watch his videos here.
