Jyoti Yadav

Born and brought up in a below poverty line family in a village in rural Haryana, she fought her way out of the state’s stifling patriarchal set-up to reach the national capital to pursue her

higher education. She became the first person to graduate and post-graduate in a marginalised farmer’s family.Being a first-generation learner who migrated to a metro city, she fought multiple battles to overcome the linguistic challenges, disadvantaged caste group and gender identity.

In journalism, she wears both her rural and urban lenses to bring an element of critical intersectionality to her reporting and writing. She o?ers a rare, insider-outsider perspective to social, political and cultural features.

Women in oppressive societies do not just need any job; they need jobs where they can express themselves and their lived experiences. That is why she chose journalism as her career.

She has been travelling solo across India, and often at a great personal risk, to bring the stories of people who are relegated to the corners of national conversations.

In 2020, She spent three weeks on the road, covering India's biggest public health emergency and migrant exodus that the country had experienced in its 75-year- history. Her stories ranged from the plight of migrants walking home, rural quarantine centres to women delivering babies on highways etc. Her coverage won her the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award 2022. In 2021, she again spent 60 days, right in the thick of deadly second wave, traveling to India’s deepest rural pockets.

She published many award winning investigative ground reports, and they ranged from telling the story of an 8- month- old pregnant teacher who died after being forced to do election duty, to that of a desperate son in jail for arranging oxygen for his ailing father; from overloaded crematoriums and mass cremations to the emergency rooms of rural hospitals turning into war rooms, quacks taking advantage of rural populations, on dysfunctional ventilators in government hospitals and on children orphaned      by covid       who were abandoned by their villagers.

She views her work and mission as a woman journalist as one making a critical intervention in this national journey.

Awards:

?      International Press Institute (IPI) Award 2022 for her coverage of the deadly second wave in UP and Bihar.

?      Thomson Foundation’s Young Journalist Award (Runner Up) 2022 for her series on decades old gang rape cases.

?      Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism for her coverage of the migrant exodus and the first wave of covid pandemic in 2020.

?      IIMC’s Young Journalist Award (Jury Special) 2023 for her investigative series on the women judges in district courts.

?      Redink Award 2022 (special mention) for the report on the life of Ayodhya’s Mohammed Sharif who performed last rites of more than 5,000 unclaimed bodies.

?      UN Laadli Media Awards (2020, 2021 and 2022) for her stories on India's rape culture, bought wives