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- 106 out of the 121 news agencies analysed had dominant caste leadership. In more than 70 percent flagship debate shows, most of the panellists were from dominant castes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- No more than 5 percent of all articles in English newspapers are written by Dalits and Adivasis. At approximately 10 percent, Hindi newspapers fare slightly better.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Only one in five panellists on key prime-time TV shows were women. One out of four articles written in English dailies were by women.<\/li>\n<\/ul>
In order to shift the conversation, there’s an urgent need for an alternative media that focuses on community-driven narratives and evidence shaped by the oral histories, voices, and lived experiences of people from diverse marginalised identities. Nonprofit organisations have made various attempts in filling this gap. Starting with localised mediums such as community radio<\/a>, nonprofits have recently ventured into digital media, which is now consumed by a vast percentage<\/a> of the Indian population. Here are the various ways in which nonprofit media outlets are amplifying underrepresented voices and issues:<\/p>
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<\/a><\/div>1. Bolstering perspective-driven narratives<\/h3>
Perspective-driven narratives draw on lived experiences to centre the impact of inequity, marginalisation, and other cascading socio-economic challenges in individuals’ daily lives. Such interventions help marginalised people become active participants in the discourse by enabling them to reclaim control over how their experiences are understood and disseminated in the media. For example, People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI)<\/a>, describes itself as a “living journal and an archive” that captures narratives from India’s rural geographies. PARI publishes text, video, and audio reportage from rural Indians, and the stories are often in the first person.<\/p>
2. Telling data-driven stories<\/h3>
Data-driven and fact-based storytelling helps spotlight underserved causes, sectors, and geographies by building evidence. It focuses on making technical evidence—such as government data on development—available to the wider public, as well as demystifying and contextualising its implications for diverse interest groups. For example, IndiaSpend<\/a> is a data-led journalistic platform that disseminates figures on India’s social and political economy, employing context-specific lenses such as education, healthcare, gender, and climate change.<\/p>
3. Disseminating niche development narratives<\/h3>
Development-focused niche media resources narrate challenges, barriers, and progress linked to the social sector. Platforms such as India Development Review (IDR) and publications such as the Centre for Science and Environment’s Down to Earth<\/a> are examples of niche media agencies that are actively reshaping narratives on India’s development challenges and spotlighting the needs of marginalised communities. They do so by working closely with grassroots organisations and amplifying perspectives from civil society practitioners. This model operates along the premise that there is immense experiential wisdom among nonprofit practitioners, and it needs to be widely disseminated to infuse more nuance into mainstream development dialogue.<\/p>
4. Strengthening the media action ecosystem<\/h3>
Nonprofits are carrying out ecosystem-level interventions linked to media amplification in two distinct ways. For example, the digital publication The Third Eye<\/a> blends personal essays and interviews with community members with sectoral themes such as public health and education. Building on several decades of its parent organisation Nirantar Trust<\/a>’s engagement with feminist approaches to grassroots knowledge production, it also conducts offline trainings and experiential learning exchanges across grassroots organisations. Similarly, Point of View<\/a> (POV) publishes articles and research papers across its various verticals<\/a>, which focus on the intersections of knowledge systems, digital ethics, and the rights of marginalised groups including women, queer people, and persons with disabilities. At the same time, POV also runs awareness workshops and curricula for these communities and advocates for inclusive government policies.<\/p>
![\"a](\"https:\/\/idronline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/newspapers.jpg\")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/a>Monetisation models are challenging for nonprofit organisations to replicate. | Picture courtesy: Pixabay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure> Challenges faced by nonprofits in this landscape<\/h3>
Despite their efforts, these nonprofits still struggle for survival. Private digital media platforms in India are increasingly relying on subscriptions and paywalls<\/a> to generate revenues. However, such monetisation models are challenging for nonprofit organisations to replicate. This is especially so because the focus of nonprofit organisations is to make knowledge accessible and open to the public. The alternative—social sector funding—is also hard to come by.<\/p>
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