This Odisha journalist helps tribal women & girls take charge of their own health and share their stories

In 2015, Jayanti Buruda became the first tribal woman to join Kalinga TV, a news channel based in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, as a reporter. “I wanted to be a journalist so I could bring to light the problems faced by tribal women. My parents did not support my goal, so I left home and completed my journalism degree from the Central University of Odisha, Koraput with financial help from my friends,” recalls the resident of Serpalli village in Malkangiri district. However, Buruda soon realised that mainstream news did not fully understand the problems of tribal communities or cover them comprehensively. “Malkangiri was only looked at for Maoist stories,” she claims.

During reporting trips, Buruda regularly came across problems that the communities faced in terms of health and education and felt a drive to help them. In 2018, she launched Bada Didi Union, an organisation that focuses on girls’ education and sexual and reproductive health. “I had seen teenage pregnancies in Ashram Schools (residential schools for children of tribal communities, launched by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs), and wanted to inform the students about reproductive health and menstrual hygiene practices,” she says.

Apart from Buruda, Bada Didi Union comprises other tribal girls and women who volunteer their time to organise awareness workshops and meetings in Ashram Schools across Malkangiri. “Through this work, I also realised that tribal women were unable to raise their voice for issues that troubled them. So I decided to create a platform to help them tell their stories and gain confidence.”

Thus, in 2022, Jungle Rani was born. It is a social media-based news platform with the tagline “Ama kahani, ama dwara, ama pain” (Our story, by us, for us). The platform is managed by 50 tribal women from all seven blocks of Malkangiri. Buruda has trained them in journalistic practices such as writing scripts, preparing field reports, and shooting and editing videos. Experts from Bharti Institute of Public Policy, part of the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, also conducted two sessions on mobile journalism for the group.

The women are tasked with capturing stories that highlight their lives, using mobile phones. These are then uploaded to the Jungle Rani Facebook page for public viewing. So far, the stories released are based on the relationship between tribal communities and the forest and biodiversity; their culture; and their awareness of the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

“With Jungle Rani, I have made films about how our people depend on forests for livelihood and how they prepare for the traditional podu [slash and burn] cultivation,” says Laxmi Kirsani, a resident of Bodbel village in the Bonda Ghati area of Malkangiri and a member of Bonda, a particularly vulnerable tribal group. “Working with a camera and telling the stories of my people has given me self-confidence,” adds Kirsani, also a volunteer with Bada Didi Union.

Buruda now plans to expand the scope of Jungle Rani to other tribal-dominated districts of Odisha, like Balangir and Mayurbhanj.

This was first published in the 16-30 November, 2023 print edition of Down To Earth