Janavani: A Reporter in Every Village

The newspaper "Janavani" (People's Voice) was created in January 2004 to share news about Orissa’s rural poor in India. "The Janavani Charitable Trust that runs Janavani on a purely voluntary basis has been developing this idea for the past five years. 'During that time, we ensured that around 800 young men and women from rural and tribal-dominated areas were trained and equipped with the necessary reporting skills,' says Behera. Besides providing training to field reporters, staff and journalists from NISWASS also train panchayati raj officials. Reporters positioned in every village and block headquarters report on development in their village and the villagers' problems."

According to the author, until the creation of the newspaper, "the problems, needs and experiences of the rural masses and the marginalised rarely find a voice in the mainstream national and local media. Few people realise that information can be an effective instrument in ensuring the participation of rural people in the development process."

The subject matter of Janavani ranges from: "safe drinking water supplies, health and infrastructure facilities, sanitation, firewood, forests, housing, electrification, vocational training programmes, people's demands and aspirations, population growth, corruption, primary school education, primary health centres, education for girls, the status of women, etc." The five major themes of the paper include: social development and poverty alleviation, women and development, child rights, dalits and tribal/indigenous people and human rights.

A former editor of Janavani, Professor Krushna Charan Behera, describes target readers as those who are "underdeveloped and deprived of the benefits of development" and that the newspaper serves as a source of news based on their problems and experiences providing useful information as well as stories describing people's participation in development projects.

According to a farmer from Khandapa village, Dayanidhi Behera, “The newspaper has not only provided information on a number of issues about which we were unaware, but it has also provided an opportunity to poor people across the state to voice their problems and needs.”

Aside from providing development information, one of the goals behind Janavani is to help people understand their rights and entitlements. A founder-coordinator of the Bhubaneswar-based National Institute of Social Work and Social Science (NISWASS) says of people, they "often remain passive just because they are uninformed or ill-informed. Our job is to empower them by giving them adequate and necessary information.”