“Will your writing even make a change? We are tired of talking to journalists…”

It was in 2011, by then I was 15-years-old, and went to the ground for a report documenting the lives of marginalised farmers and issues that communities were grappling with – at the riverine villages of Kapili in Northeast India’s Assam. The story was for a weekly newspaper.

Those were my initial days of reporting and imperceptibly delving into situations where I would always have a bunch of questions on the notion of journalism itself. I would often come across affected farmers seeking answers from me as to how this would uphold the interests of the farmers amid the agrarian crisis, the floods and the alarming climatic conditions. Similar questions appeared when I started reporting on the D-voter issue, meeting families of those facing “arbitrary” actions – labelled as illegal immigrants and detained by the authorities. While the helplessness was always evident, but to their precise question that would the story make a difference, I would often prefer to be silent, and wouldn't answer just for the sake of answering, as I feared we would be misleading them by either promising a change, an expected impact or simply addressing the “accountability” questions.

Over the years, as I continued to report from different states in India focusing on human rights, social justice and policy issues, on communities facing layers of marginalisation and being crippled with issues often deliberately crushed against communities and many a time, cold-shouldering sensitive events that further fuel the “historical injustices” and throughout these trips, I faced the similar questions that I faced in 2011.

Last year, in 2024, I was reporting in one of India’s coastal states facing the brunt of the country's “energy needs” (leaving it to readers to interpret), I was encountered with questions from locals as one young man appeared to be out of discontent and irascibility, asked: “Will your writing even make a change? We are tired of talking to journalists…”

This was for the first time on ground, I discernibly answered the question that we as reporters face. I was uninterrupted, uncensored and honest as I answered this in presence of activists and several other villagers. Here's a rough translated quote (originally spoken in Hindi):

“I'm surely not an advocate for the cause or the way activists and villagers see this issue. If you think or even attempt to portray this way, then I would already be misleading you and this would be a case of dishonesty. If you ask me whether I feel your pain or not, any answer to this shouldn't matter at all. Present day’s most contentious subjects show that the historical information are not always evidence driven, lack clarity, information on crucial sides of oppressive elements were attempted to be undermined with the powerful controlling the information flow, deciding what to be told and what not to be told. And many a time people who would document such information fairly would even face resistance from affected communities. The right potential solutions come from the right information, and we are stuck with the information. The activists here flag the same, when things lack transparency and right information, any cause or a case can clearly face the hurdle. I'm here to document the facts for you, for all us, to document the information the way it is. I want to exactly write the facts the way they are today for the history of tomorrow. This is more about preserving the information which in itself is at risk. If your answers to my questions come in a sense of denial, and if the same comes from authorities, I'm sure I would anyway be decoding the facts forward irrespective of what positions all the stakeholders take. And I call it informational justice.”

The same year, in October, I wrote: “Well, I call it "informational justice" -- Won't that anyway be helpful for your cause and advocacy? Even if it doesn't, I won't plead guilty to the history of tomorrow, as I rightfully told the "truth" of today. But what if state-led propaganda suppresses it? Wait, no propaganda can suppress "facts" from ones who are to question the present based on the true history of the past written by someone alive in the past. It's your turn to find meaning in the word 'alive'.”

For me journalism was simply not out of curiosity or passion, it was out of the dire need to document and decode information that are mostly shrouded by the powerful.

And as always, I promise to come with more uninterrupted, uncensored and straightforward stories in the days to come. Cheers to journalism!

(Views expressed are personal)