Their page three is about farmer workshops,gossips are about promises made by local politicians and the editorials address a variety of issues,from how to increase the productivity of buffaloes to the need to gather funds to construct a bund to solve the water problem of the village. The Right to Education Bill may or may not be big news for them,but the need to improve the school in the village sure is. So while political parties claim to work for the common man,these local,village-level publications work on the common man beat. With a proud PRESS written on their scooters,the editors and reporters of these publications are out on the field every day,searching for stories,even throwing their weight around if they have to. Gavkari (Marathi for villager) is a 12-page daily,published across villages in Nasik,Jalgaon,Aurangabad and Ahmednagar,and focuses on farmers issues and other political stories. There is a difference between politics in Delhi and what happens in rural India. While its the party that defines politics at the Centre,at the village level,it is the neta who plays a major role. And similarly,the issues that bother people here are different from those in urban areas. Most of the issues we publish are farmers issues such as fertilisers,crops and so on. While the national media influences policy makers,local publications are read by local leaders. So our job is to reduce the gap and compel local leaders to push our issues in state or central assemblies, says Aniruddha Devtakke,district in charge,Gavkari. The big story of Raju Jagdales newspaper Pushkaraj,which is circulated in Daund,a taluka near Pune,involves the resignation of a corrupt officer in the local administration. When we realised that a woman officer in one of the administrative buildings was taking bribes,we carried a series of stories,highlighting the fact files. Not only was action taken against this lady,but the entire administrative set up underwent a makeover. Today,every one who walks into the nagar parishad building thanks Pushkaraj for having been their voice, says Jagdale,while admitting to the threats and hardships that local reporters have to face while at work. The readership of Ananta Asha,a four-page weekly in Baramati,shot up when it highlighted the cause of workers in a local factory,whose faulty machines ended up cutting workers fingers but the management shrugged off its responsibility. When the same paper portrayed the contrast between the world-class Vidya Pratishthan School in Baramati and the unhygienic village schools,Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar had to take note. But we understand that we need to balance both positive and negative stories. We thus carried an inspiring story of a 4th-standard pass villager who has a library of 700 books, says Shashank Mohite,editor,Ananta Asha. Out in the Naxalite-affected Gadhchiroli area of the state,Lalsoo is a freelance reporter whose work focuses on tribal issues. Its difficult to reach Lalsoo on his mobile phone thats usually out of network coverage zone. Yet,when he files his story,he reiterates that cardinal rule in journalismthe most important news is the one happening in the backyard.
