Name of Fellow: Sunita Munda
Genre: Journalism
Area of Work: Bokaro, Jharkhand
Sunita Munda is a young tribal journalist working from Ranchi, Jharkhand. She is among the few tribals to join the profession.
She joined journalism in late 2019 after experiencing a personal issue. She was barred and expelled from her college when she protested against hikes in fees. The young bachelor of education student reached out to local MLA, the state government and even the Governor against the university’s decision to hike the fees. In retaliation, the university authorities expelled her.
As a young student, she tried to reach out to the local leaders to solve the issue as her career was at stack. But no actions were taken on the issue by any authority. So, she decided to highlight the issue through the media. When she raised the issue in media, her case got prominence and actions were taken. Subsequently, the Jharkhand High court ordered the university authorities to take Sunita back into the college.
This incident hugely impacted her about putting the issues in public domain through media. Realising the potential of media in creating public opinion, she started her career in journalism. As a tribal woman journalist, she covers tribal rights, land alienation and displacement.
As Jharkhand is a mineral rich state and the mines are located at tribal dominated forest areas, tribals face extensive displacement. Once displaced from their land, the tribals lose their traditional livelihood of collecting forest produce and agriculture. Without livelihood options, the tribals end up in slums in cities where they are subjected very difficult living conditions. Therefore, she thinks highlighting this issue requires particular attention.
She has been engaging with displaced people from Bokaro and discussed extensively with rural women to understand their problems. Through covering the stories of displaced people she wants to highlight the violation of Constitutional values. She has also established a new Youtube channel jointly with her friends to cover various social issues including the stories of displaced people in context to the concepts of equality and justice.
As Jharkhand witnessed agitations due to government change in certain language policy, she has extensively covered language protests in Bokaro and Dhanbad.
She intends to continue covering the displacement of tribals in her career and through her journalism, she wants to highlight the traditional way of tribal lives. She wants to produce a documentary on the protests and analyse the impact of the policy change and how these affect the values enshrined in the Constitution.