WUNRN
The WIP - The Women's International
Perspective
"Mahila Paksh is more than just a newspaper. It is a social
organization run by women for women. The readers aren't customers, they're
members. And the reporters aren't professionally-trained journalists with the
latest gadgetry, but local women with stories to share."
May 11, 2009
By Mridu Khullar
-
The male vice-principal of a woman's college in
A six-year-old girl playing in an empty field is raped by a local dhobi (Hindi for a
person who launders clothes for a living), and eventually dies as a result of
her injuries. Sandhya Kaushik, 26, chances upon her story and finds that months
later, the rapist still walks free. She writes about the details of the case
and the girl's family is able to renew their fight for justice, this time with
the media on their side.
•
Mahila Paksh has given women an outlet for their stories and a way
to create community. Photograph by flickr user Steve Evans
used under Creative Commons
licenses. •
An unknown man comes to a small village and collects money from poor villagers by promising them new ration cards. Hundreds of villagers are conned, and thousands of Rupees lost when the man never reappears. Laxmi Baghel, 36, prints the details of the incident, and when he finally turns up at the Nagar Nigam, the police are already there waiting for him.
These are just some of the successes that the people behind Mahila Paksh, a weekly
Hindi newspaper published in
Mahila Paksh is more than just a newspaper. It is a social organization run by women for women. The readers aren't customers, they're members. And the reporters aren't professionally-trained journalists with the latest gadgetry, but local women with stories to share.
Together the three chalked out a plan for the newspaper that would not only inform women, but motivate them to fight for themselves. They would give women a platform to air their grievances, while also teaching them how to individually and collectively tackle their problems. They decided they didn’t want to represent women - they wanted to make women capable enough to represent themselves.
The newspaper has had a domino effect, with details of the paper
spreading through word of mouth. Today, Mahila
Paksh is a network of almost 100 correspondents from around
The newspaper has not been without its share of struggles. Money has always been tight, and there have been weeks when publishing the next edition has seemed impossible. "This paper has taught us that if you continue to do your work with peace, patience and dignity, people will automatically come to you," says Rupesh. "And so far it has always somehow worked out. Even during the difficulties we've been in, due to threats from people we've exposed or the problems with bureaucracy, we've never once become so desperate to think about shutting down the paper. We've always thought, okay, we've learned something from this, and this is how we'll handle it next time."
One woman whose life has been completely transformed is Laxmi Baghel, a woman who lives below the poverty line, was once a domestic worker washing dishes for a living, and now proudly wears the badge of reporter. Laxmi and her family were thrown into a deep financial crisis when a man they'd borrowed money from fraudulently increased the interest rate many times over. Each month, he'd show up at her husband's place of work and demand his entire salary in the name of interest.
Broke and desperate, Laxmi approached Mahila Paksh and wrote her story. When it broke, there was a huge uproar in her husband's office. The man who had cheated them sought them out and apologized, promising to never bother them again.
That was Laxmi's first published story and her first realization
that the solution to her problems wasn't in an outside force - it has been
within her all along.
Other stories that Laxmi has covered include exposing nurses who extorted money from mothers of newborn children to hand over the babies, reports on doctors who've conned patients of their government aid, and a detailed analysis on an outbreak of the insect-borne virus Chikungunya. Laxmi has become so popular in her village that women now come to her seeking justice. She personally accompanies each one to the nearest police station to file a complaint, a copy of Mahila Paksh in one hand, should trouble start brewing.
"I'm such a poor woman, and I never thought I could achieve so much," says Laxmi. "Now when I go to the Collector's office, he treats me with such respect, and even if I take a woman's case to him, he doesn't make me wait. He immediately gets to it."
Laxmi personally hand-delivers the newspapers to her readers each week. Along with distributing papers to the women in her neighborhood, she drops by the offices of the Collector and the Commissioner (high-level government officials) to give them the latest copy.
If the woman she's written about is illiterate, Laxmi, who just a few years ago could barely read and write herself, sits down with the woman and reads it out to her.
Like Laxmi, other reporters for the paper have also experienced tremendous growth in their personalities. Instead of being hesitant and subdued, now they find that they're more inspired to fight injustice whenever and wherever they see it.
Most of the women who work at the paper hold other jobs, and the paper doesn't in fact, have any full-time reporting staff. Stories are delivered each week in person by these freelance correspondents scattered around the country.
Their families, too, take an active interest in the paper’s operations. It's not uncommon for these women to cook dinner or do household chores while their husbands read the latest stories out to them.
The sense of belonging the women experience is one of the major
reasons for this paper's success. But more than anything, it's the common
belief that in helping others, they're also really helping themselves.
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