I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community: Bob Schiffer
Looking back at the days when I was presenting news stories in the morning assembly at my school, I am sending hundreds of thankful words to Allah that He gave me the right time to choose journalism as my profession.
Belonging to a rural village in Kashmir, I have seen people facing numerous problems, and no one is paying attention. Whether it is the government or mainstream media, no one is keenly performing their duties. I have been doing journalism for the last four years, not as a full-time journalist but as a freelance multimedia journalist. It’s an honour for a journalist to have a positive impact on the stories he or she is doing.
I have contributed to several local and national media outlets like ETV Bharat, Youth Ki Awaaz, VillageSquare, etc. While working, my main focus remains on the ethical aspect of journalism. I have worked on local issues, culture, tradition, health, education, climate, and development within Jammu and Kashmir.
In 2021, I was selected for a media fellowship by Youth Ki Awaaz. In that fellowship, I was able to cover a few important stories which were hardly making it to any other media platform. Firstly all the stories were based in rural areas, and another thing was that some of the stories were critical to the government.
An important story I did during that fellowship was based on the Lack of menstrual hygiene education in women belonging to the Gujjar and Bakerwal community. Gujjar and Bakerwal communities comprise about 15% of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir. These people live simple lives in houses made of mud and wood, and many are nomads.
While I was filming the documentary, it took me a week to film a lady who faced my camera for the story. All the women were saying about their unawareness of menstrual hygiene education, but none was ready to face the camera and speak.
Camera shyness and taboos about menstruation were not the only reasons for not speaking in front of the camera. But many were not aware of the media or camera.
To look deep into this matter, I travelled to three districts viz, Pulwama, Shopian and Budgam. People of this community were saying that neither government nor any other institutions were working in these communities. Gynaecologists at these three respective district hospitals receive patients with retrograde infections, which is the main reason for Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID), which causes infertility in the women of this community.
There is a government scheme called the Menstrual Hygiene Scheme, which was introduced by The Ministry Of Health and Family Welfare. This scheme was introduced to increase awareness among adolescent girls on menstrual hygiene and to give access to and use of sanitary napkins to adolescent girls belonging to rural areas. When one checks whether these people are getting the benefits of the scheme, turns out that the scheme only seems to be present on paper, not on the ground. Women in this community don’t know how to take care of themselves during menstruation.
I have contacted NGOs and social activists about whether they are working in these areas, but I didn’t get any positive answers from anyone.
Recently a local NGO, The Sky Trust Kashmir, in collaboration with New Delhi-based NGO, Shashi Kiran Charitable Trust, held three days of awareness camps in those areas where I did that story.
I was contacted by Shahbaz Ahmad and Zahida, co-founders of The Sky Trust Kashmir, a few weeks after they had checked my story.
They have organized awareness camps at different places in the Gujjar and Bakerwal communities and trained hundreds of women on how to take care of themselves during menstruation. Reusable sanitary napkins were distributed to the women.
An old lady who spoke to me on the issue while I was doing that story asked me not to bring her face to the video, which I did. I set my camera on her back, and then she was comfortable narrating her story. She took part in the awareness camp where hundreds of women thanked her as whatever was happening in the area was only because of her as she spoke to me on the issue.
All the participants thanked the efforts of Youth Ki Awaaz for publishing such a sensitive story.
All my stories for fellowship were so impactful that other media organisations gave coverage to issues which I covered.