Prema Sridevi and Himanshu Kala won the K P
Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for Social Impact Journalism 2021. The winning
entry titled, ‘Manual scavengers: Shit hits our head in manholes, our co-workers have
died | Govt says ‘no deaths’, is an account of the lives and
deaths of sanitation workers in Delhi, focusing on the human condition. The
documentary feature film was produced by The Probe.
The final jury comprising Ayaz Memon(Chairperson), Swapna Sundar
and Harsha Subramaniam chose the winners from shortlisted entries.
The award, which comprises a trophy, a citation and INR
100,000/- in prize money, was presented to the winner by the Chief Guest
Ayaz Memon, Senior Journalist and Columnist, at the Convocation of the ACJ
Class of 2022.
Other stories that were considered as final nominations and have
been awarded special mentions by the jury (in no particular order) are as
follows:
·
‘Why India doesn’t want its student
talking about caste’ by OmkarKhandekar in The Morning Context.
·
‘Scrub Typhus | The common deadly disease that you
haven’t heard of’ by AradhnaWal in Scroll.
·
Stamina – Women, sport and citizenship by
SohiniChattopadhyay published by Fifty Two.
The jury’s citation read as follows:
“Taking off from statements made by Dr. Virendra Kumar, the
Minister for Social Justice, journalists Prema Sridevi and Himanshu Kala guide
us through the lives and, more importantly, deaths of the informal workers who
descend into sewers, without proper protective gear, to manually unclog and
clear them.
The report fearlessly enumerates the circumstances that force
men to take up this dangerous and foul livelihood – poverty, lack of alternate
employment, government disavowal, failure of civic bodies to upgrade and
maintain urban sewers, and finally, the social stratification that makes the
practice socially acceptable. By getting members of the manual scavenging
community to speak, Sridevi and Kala have helped identify the wrong-doers – the
dishonest contractors who force men down sewers, the Engineering College that
turns a blind eye to the egregious practice, and the by-standers who are
unwilling to address the situation.
The impactful report by Sridevi and Kala
starkly repudiates official statistics that deny manual scavenging-related
deaths through a disingenuous turn of phrase. We applaud the earnest effort of
the journalists and that of The Probe, in underscoring the
role of journalists as spokespersons for the voiceless.”