media, information, the contemporary

Author: Mrinalika Roy


  • Khabar Lahariya’s Online Foray: Successes and Failures

    This is the fourth and final research note from Mrinalika Roy, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme.

    More and more NGOs are joining the online bandwagon. I have mentioned the pros and cons of NGOs going online and the organisations helping them in this endeavour, in my earlier posts. Here, I look at how far going online helped Khabar Lahariya and whether they have been able to realise all they set out to do.

  • Fielding Technology: Notes From Hinterland

    This is the third research note from Mrinalika Roy, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. This is the third post of my project, where I look at the transformative affect that technology has had on the working of a rural newspaper Khabar Lahariya, thereby on the rural sphere and…

  • Charting e-Territory: How Khabar Lahariya made the Digital Transition

    This is the second research note from Mrinalika Roy, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. In 2014, when Khabar Lahariya bagged the Global Media Forum Award hosted by Deutsche Welle [1], it was a watershed moment for the rural newspaper that had ventured online only in 2013. It showed first-hand how internet can help an NGO reach a wider audience. “Online votes played a big part in our victory. It helped us get noticed by the judges. We were surprised by the level of support we received,” said Poorvi Bhargava, editorial coordinator for Khabar Lahariya. To say that technology has been a boon for the rural newspaper would not be unwarranted.

  • Khabar Lahariya: Rural Empowerment Goes Digital

    In this post, Mrinalika Roy, one of the researchers who received the Social Media Research grant for 2015, introduces her proposed work. When a New Delhi-based NGO ‘Nirantar’ began India’s first-of-its’s-kind, rural newspaper ‘Khabar Lahariya’ in May 2002 from Bundelkhand district – a semi-arid region where 60% of the population depends on agriculture for sustenance — their aim was to bring rural women into the sphere of journalism, information and technology.