Community Correspondents

Virendra Ahirwar

Born on 8 July 1983, Virendra is an activist working in Jan Sahas Social Development Society. His community suffers from various issues among which the caste and untouchability are the prime subjects of concern. He strives to remove these ill facets of his community and bring a social and economic change among his people. He belongs to a place where caste and identity are the prime issues. Discrimination on the basis of caste and the practice of untouchability is most common in his community. He has seen these ill facets since his childhood and joined the local activist group at an early age. He has been working extensively in eradicating such bias for more than 10 years and yet deems himself unsuccessful in achieving his target completely. He has participated, organized and executed mass movements and rallies for dalit rights. He also works on advocating women on health and nutrition. He’s very articulate on the matter of untouchabiity and has experienced it personally since an early age. This only led him to raise his voice and mobilize his community people against the issue. Virendra is a tailor by profession and earns a marginal living for his family of seven. He has been working with Jan Sahas by advocating people on various issues and organizing campaigns to mobilize people. He believes in change and wishes to continue his work for the marginalized people. He believes that the mainstream media has ignored such issues due to the sensitivity of them. Also these are practiced in open in the rural and backward areas where government laws and schemes are not able to meet their designated role due to the stronghold of these ill facets in the society and people itself. He wishes to use the IndiaUnheard platform to bring awareness and advocacy among the people and use the power of media to bring in the change. He believes in the action and reaction theory hence wants to take actions against this evil progressively and wishes to see the reaction in the near future. On the mainstream media, he prefers to let it be how it is and believes in concept of creating a new media platform voicing the unheard and ostracized people with the help of IndiaUnheard.

Videos from Virendra