To take up tribal cause, 3 Khargone youngsters launch weekly newspaper

Three tribal youngsters have launched a weekly newspaper in the city to raise issues concerning rights of their community as the mainstream media “is not giving enough space” to highlight them.

Three tribal youngsters have launched a weekly newspaper in the city to raise issues concerning rights of their community as the mainstream media “is not giving enough space” to highlight them.

Around 5,000 copies the 8–page newspaper are distributed every week in around 100 villages.

‘Pradeshik Yuva Avaaz’, printed from Indore in Hindi, was started by Mahendra Kannoj of Palanpur village, Lokesh Mujalada of Kukshi and Gaurav Chauhan of Khargone on March 16 with the help of donation made by tribal people of the region. Notably, the youth don’t have any professional degree in journalism or any prior experience in the media industry.

Kannoj, who belongs to Bhil tribe, said: “News and problems of villages are not given space in the mainstream media. When given, most of them are biased and twisted. Hence, we started this weekly newspaper.”

Around 5,000 copies the 8–page newspaper are distributed every week in around 100 villages in Alirajpur, Jhabua and Dhar, Khargone, Ratlam, Badwani, Indore, Ujjain, Khandwa, Burhanpur and Dewas, he said. Four pages are printed in colour and the rest are in black and white.

Chauhan, who writes the newspaper’s editorial, said: “Our aim is also to encourage tribal youth to write about their own problems and violation of rights.” In the first page of every edition, there is an editorial that discusses various issues related to tribals, he added.

Kannoj said: “Price of the newspaper is Rs.4 per copy and all the copies are sold out every week. The demand for the newspaper is increasing day-by-day. Now, we are thinking of increasing the number of copies to 10,000 in the next couple of months.”

As of now, the newspaper has appointed 33 tribal and Scheduled Caste youth as reporters.

“We take advertisement from gram panchayat and the public representatives of our community. Our board has decided that we will take government advertisement only if they do not interfere in our newspaper,” he added.

“We are searching for a person who is specialist in journalism to guide us. We lack news writing skill but we are working on it.”