Name of Fellow: Aman Gupta
Genre: Journalism
Area of Work: Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh
Aman Gupta is a young journalist from Uttar Pradesh. He has been pursuing freelance journalism after completing his journalism diploma from India’s premier mass communication institute Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC).
During his studies at IIMC, he was disillusioned by the works of mainstream media and delved into issue-based journalism in 2018. His work focuses on environmental issues, rights, social issues and political investigations.
Born in farmer’s family in Bundelkhand’s Hamirpur district, Aman had to move to nearby towns to pursue his studies. His farmer father was particularly interested in education and he helped his aunts to go out of the village to study higher education. His aunts became the first women from his village to out of the village for studies. This helped Aman to go out and complete his studies.
His educational journey went through struggles as he had to drop out from B.Sc. and a year later, he joined Allahabad University to complete his graduation in arts. Again, he was troubled by the fact that he was unable to decide what to pursue next. But as he was interested in social issues, he wanted to travel across the country to learn about the people.
This interest of changing places led him to join IIMC and since then he is traveling across the country to report on issues concern the people and environment. He believes that mainstream journalism is restricted to surface level reporting, so he did not join the media industry. For pursuing deep and complete stories, he chose freelance journalism. This also gives him space to travel various to places and meet people. With research orientation and attitude, this helps him in finding the stories behind peoples’ lives and connect them with political and social policies.
Currently climate change has become climate crisis, and it is highly impacting peoples’ lives to the extent that communities are forced to even change their traditional livelihood practices. Climate crisis affect everyone from rural areas to people living in hills, to riverine communities, to people living in cities. Hence, he started covering climate crisis and its impact on the lives of people from different communities.
He is also documenting the conditions of community members of Saharia tribe in Bundlkhand region. He has been making visits to Saharia tribe habitat in Lalitpur, one during lockdown and another afterwards. He is engaging and building rapport with Saharia youth, understanding their lives and problems. He has written his first on the tribe which appeared on Down To Earth in February 2022.
He envisages to continue reporting on environment, social and political issues and highlight the concepts of equality and justice for the tribes. He is also creating awareness among the community members about the Constitutional values and rights to empower the community to raise own issues.