Amita Tutti is a Community Correspondent and an Adivasi activist from the so-called Red Corridor. Amita’s unwavering commitment to exposing the truth is inspired by her father who was poisoned to death by “upper” castes during the Adivasi land struggle. Her community has suffered for decades, caught in between the Maoist-Naxalite insurgency and police atrocities.

Amita was born and raised in Sepagara of Jharkhand where she lived a hard life and struggled to make ends meet. She had an awakening of social consciousness when she realised that the struggle for food, clothes, and shelter is also a fight against corruption, injustice, and apathy. She is now an integral part of the Jharkhand Jungle Bachao Andolan as a grassroots crusader for forest and tribal rights in her region. She spoke about her journey in front of 2000 people at THINK India in 2010, where she shared the platform with speakers such as filmmaker Anusha Rizvi and economist Arvind Subramaniam.

As a Community Correspondent, Amita’s work 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.

She has also fought tirelessly against the discrimination and threats meted out to her community, particularly around land alienation. Through her video reports, Amita gives voice to those unheard by traditional media structures. In the village of Deyo, she filmed the government’s indifference to the region’s Gram Sabhas – local self-governments – and economically unsupportive of Anganwadi workers, caring for the health and basic education of young children.

Her camera goes where nobody else wants to go because she knows she has a voice. “Earlier, there was no one to hear us,” she says, “but today know there is an outlet where we can talk about our problems.”