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After decades of being consigned to the margins — both in the media and the popular imagination — rural India and its people are finally getting to be seen and heard. They now have a unique home and address — the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) at ruralindiaonline.org.
Whether it’s the hard labour of the koilawallahs of Godda, the intricate art of the family weavers of Walajahpet, the comical ‘Potato Song’ of the tribal children of Edamalakudi, two-decade-old pictures of women at work, or the jaw-dropping diversity of faces from different districts — PARI turns the spotlight on the countryside in unprecedented ways. The website was launched on December 20 in Chennai.
More than journalism
Though the endeavour of journalist P Sainath, PARI transcends typical journalist modes of storytelling, and encourages flexible modes — using pictures, videos, slideshows, text, voices and sound. It also aims to be a resource point for studies and reports on rural India.
Sainath first sensed the need for the archive when he became a full-time rural reporter in 1993.
“I was travelling with migrant labourers from south Bihar (now Jharkhand) to Punjab. The public in these parts has a sound appreciation of public transport being for the public. I was the only naïve fellow standing at the counter in the railways station to buy a ticket.
“My companion travellers assured me: “ Chinta mat karo. Aap ko AC first class mein leke jayengay (Do not worry. We will take you in AC first class). This turned out to be the top of the train — hundreds of them travelled that way. I did so in some terror — you never really know how much a train sways until you sit on top of it. I could not get a single halfway-decent photograph and could not help think, what a spectacular sight it would have been, to record visually.”
PARI focuses on multiple facets: occupation, attire, dialects, culture, resource conflicts, the farming crisis, migration, health, environment and much more. Stories of Dalits, adivasis, women and children receive special emphasis.
Owning the stories
Core to the people’s archive is the recognition of an individual’s ownership over his or her life story. The individual thus has a stake in the making of the archive. In the PARI logo, for instance, the image of a woman balancing a load on her head is inspired from a photograph featured in the website’s ‘Visible Work Invisible Women’ section. Walking through mud and slush near the opencast coalmines in Godda, Jharkhand, the woman scours the dumps for waste coal, which she will sell as household fuel to earn a few rupees — this work saves the nation energy but is criminalised by law.
A broad appeal
As a multimedia innovation focusing on the rural, PARI has appealed to journalists and non-journalists alike. College students from Kerala, corporate managers, IT professionals, academicians and accountants are among the volunteers lending their time and skills to build PARI.
PARI will be licensed under Creative Commons (version 4.0), enabling the sharing of the website content, so long as it is not for commercial use. Its founder Sainath will speak about the endeavour in Delhi on January 5 at the India International Centre.
The writer is a PARI volunteer and freelance journalist currently working with the development sector
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