How People in the Most Remote Corners Are Turning Into Journalists To Preserve Fading Cultures

Cover picture credits: Pramiti Negi

Chander Ram (77) vividly recalls the three high Himalayan passes leading into Tibet, as if it were just yesterday that he was trudging them with his mules and goats. When the Indo-China war broke out in 1962, Chander was caught in its crosshairs, right in the middle of the Gyannim Mandi, one of Tibet’s largest trading outposts of the day. 

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But he made it out of there safely. His escape makes for a great story, and Beena Nitwal (42) was intent on documenting this piece of oral history before it got lost in time, just like so many other stories hidden in the folds of the mountains. 

Beena belongs to the Bhotia community, native to the villages of Kumaon. She identifies as a Himal Prakriti Fellow alumna— the Himal Prakriti Storytelling Fellowship runs for six months, training mountain people in remote pockets of the Indian Himalayan region to document their own stories. 

Beena has never travelled beyond her village of Shankhdhura, but her stories have. They are steadily making their way across the world in the form of URLs, through the videos and articles that go up on Voices of Rural India. 

Handing them a medium to tell their stories 

A camera pans around a simple home in Sarmoli village of Uttarakhand. At first, it seems like a travel vlog. Closer inspection will reveal that it is one, a raw, real account and depiction of Deepak Pachhai’s home turned homestay in the mountains. 

A conversation with Deepak (23) reveals this isn’t his first video story. It is his second, he shares with pride. “My first-ever video story was on the van panchayats (community-based institutions for managing forest commons unique to Uttarakhand). I wanted to talk about the mahila chowkidars (the women who patrol the forest) and the struggles they face,” Deepak shares. 

As the panoramic video continues playing, Deepak explains that, for someone who wasn’t savvy with filming, editing, or production, making his own mini vlog was a distant dream. 

“I first learned how to use my phone camera efficiently, including camera angles, then eventually I learnt editing. I learnt how to not just take pictures and videos, but also how to put them together to tell a visual story,” he says. Deepak was one of the Fellows of the second batch of the Himal Prakriti Storytelling Fellowship programme in 2024. “I felt so happy the day my first video was published on Voices of Rural India for the world to see. It was a huge achievement for me,” he says. 

As Malika Virdi, the co-founder of Voices of Rural India, shares, this storytelling web portal was born out of the COVID-19-induced lockdown of 2020. 

“During that one year of quiet, we had no income from tourism. The website first carried a handful of stories crafted by storytellers from five states across the country that were impacted by the closure of community-led tourism enterprises,” she shares, adding that the eagerness of people to read these stories gave it impetus. Today, the platform features over 100 stories that are written by people from rural communities across the country.  

The goal was simple: to give voice to the people of rural India to tell the stories of their lives and realities, including the fading authentic traditions of the Indian hinterland before these slow-walked into oblivion. Elaborating on the model, Malika shares, “When tourists or urban folk travel across rural India looking for experiences, they often end up writing stories shared by their rural hosts. We believe that rural communities should own the narrative and tell their own stories. We felt that it was also an opportune time to bridge the digital divide, and we encouraged rural storytellers to use the diverse digital media that is now accessible through the internet and a phone. Each storyteller was paid a small sum of Rs 1500 for a story published on the website.” 

Today, Voices of Rural India spans 11 states across the country. “We work to build the capacities of each storyteller to become proficient in using the written word, their phones and cameras, in storytelling, video editing, and narrative building. While initially it was a challenge, now people are far more eloquent and confident and own their story; they aren’t mere subjects of the tourist gaze anymore,” Malika, who is also the Director at Himal Prakriti, which currently anchors the website, adds.

What began as an effort to generate income for affected communities through digital journalism soon evolved into an archive of oral histories of traditions, local folklore, and rural Indian culture and natural heritage, recorded in the voices of the communities themselves. 

The topics chosen for storytelling weren’t ones that were primarily good for SEO. Instead, they relied on a bio-cultural algorithm, one of legacy and trust. 

For instance, Deepak’s story on the thunairtrees (Himalayan yew) of Uttarakhand highlights their umbilical link with the mountain communities. The tree, renowned for its medicinal properties, stands tall, like a guardian of time. “These ancient trees are far from ordinary,” Deepak writes, “every part serves a purpose and tells the story of our land and its people.”

Celebrating the voices of rural India

For Deepak, like many others, becoming a part of Voices of Rural India and writing these stories has contributed to his ecological literacy. For instance, he learnt that the grand thunairtrees, found at altitudes between 2,000 and 3,300 meters above sea level, grow at a snail’s pace, increasing by only about an inch in height each year. 

Learning about the thunair was like finally recognising an old friend. You see, Deepak’s grandmother would often tell him stories about the central beam of the roof of their house, built in 1991, that was made from the thunairtree. 

“A few years after building our house, a fire broke out and destroyed it completely. Strangely enough, the thunairwindows and doors remained unharmed, and they are still used in our new house and are in good condition even today,” he shares. 

Only one who has lived closely with a mountain forest would understand the importance of the thunair.

Through its model, Voices of Rural India is causing a paradigm shift in the way stories are told. 

As Isha Shah, co-founder of a global youth-led organisation, Youth Climate Connect, and part of the Himal Prakriti coordination team at Voices of Rural India, shares, the model is premised on making storytelling more effective and attractive. “It's not just a tool for documentation, but also a skill that people in rural areas can develop, given the popularity of social media and their engagement with it as consumers of content. Developing storytelling skills has become an incentive for people to stay in their village and to create and own their own unique content, instead of migrating to cities, a common problem in Uttarakhand.” 

What sets the fellowship apart is that it isn’t just limited to young people; elders in the community are treasure troves of stories and experience, and those interested in storytelling are supported to tell their stories.

In the past three years, Himal Prakriti’s fellowship programme has enabled 51 storytellers from across the Indian Himalayan region to publish hundreds of stories on the Voices of Rural India portal. Each of the five Fellows selected per year works with a team of two other storytellers from their village or region. Together, as a team, they must produce four stories by the end of six months. “These stories could be on topics and medium of their choice: photo story, written story, video story, or even multimedia. The Fellows are paid an honorarium of Rs 15,000 per month for six months,” Isha explains. 

The walking library 

As I scrolled through the Voices of Rural India, a multitude of different topics colour its archives. One story that stood out was that of the walking librarian Radhamani K P. Radhamani (in her 50s)  is a librarian at Pratibha Public Library, an offshoot of the library movement in Kerala (a grassroots cultural revolution that established public libraries to promote literacy). The library was built in 1961 in the village of Mothakkara in Wayanad, Kerala. Despite its legendary presence, villagers, especially women, had limited access to books until recently. Heavy farming workloads, tight schedules, and long commutes made regular visits to the library impractical.

Since 2012, when Radhamani started working at Pratibha Library, she has been visiting the homes of the women to deliver books. “I carry around 25 to 30 books every day – a mix of different genres – in a cloth shopping bag, so that members can select books of their choice. The cool weather in Wayanad makes it conducive for walking. People who work outdoors, in the fields, also take books from me while I’m on my way to their houses,” she writes. 

By sharing her story, Radhamani believes it will lend confidence to others. The same belief is shared by Beena.  

Beena studied up to class 10. 

Then she was married off. 

In 2020, when she was handed the agency to write her own story, it struck her that she had forgotten how to write. “I had lost practice, because after school, I never studied or wrote. I was so busy looking after my family, seeing to my children, that I never did anything for myself,” she shares. 

“Then in 2020, Malika jisaid, ‘Let’s write our own stories.’,” Beena recalls. Gradually, she learnt, guided by the editorial team at Voices of Rural India. “I learnt that there is a difference between an essay and a story. I remember the editor had so many questions in the feedback that came in after the first story.” 

These questions are crucial, Isha says. “We use modules to train the Fellows in basic tools like 5Ws and 1H (In journalism, the 5 Ws and 1 H refer to the essential questions a reporter must answer: who, what, when, where, why, and how, to clearly and completely explain a news story.) Once they share their first draft, we share our feedback. We focus on giving collaborative feedback. We do not ask them to change the story in any way because it's their story, but we just focus on asking critical questions so they can deepen the story.”

Along with this, workshops are conducted on storyboarding and character development. The intention is to craft a story that reads differently from an essay, Isha reasons. Through providing people like Beena, Deepak, and so many others with the wherewithal to document their stories, Voices of Rural India is ensuring they are no longer incognito, but instead own the narrative and are the main authors of their lives and their land.  

Read their stories here. 

Sources 

'A Last Journey to Tibet – the Story of Chander Ram': by Beena Nitwal, Published on 6 October 2024.

'Thunair: A Tree Alive for a Thousand Years': by Deepak Pachhai, Published on 15 December 2024.

'The Walking Library': by Radhamani K P, Published on 16 November 2020.