Balaknama
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The story so far…
2003, 2022
Priyangi Agarwal, March 5, 2022: The Times of India
New Delhi:A boy forced to keep his hair long because he p lays the r ole of a girl at local fairs to earn money. Street children in Noida without a public park in their area. Students in Gurgaon wasting time on games on their mobile phones meant for online class. Girls being harassed by boys on their way to school. What is common among these? Each is a disparate reality in the lives of children and are all part of the 100th edition of Balaknama newspaper.
Balaknama is not your regular tabloid. It is brought out by street kids and working children and carries stories of their issues and struggles. Launched in 2003 as a quarterly paper, Balaknama now has Hindi and English monthly editions with a circulation, respectively, of 5,000 and 3,000. The ma jority of the readers are street-connected children. A team of 64 children runs the paper. Of them, 49 are “talkative reporters” who gather news and share it with the 14 main re porters, who write the stories. They write in Hindi and the content is translated into English by adult students.
Kishan, who began as a talkative reporter, has been the paper’s editor for nearly a year. “I worked at a kiosk selling tobacco and betel leaves. One day, members of NGO Childhood Enhancement Through Training and Action (Chetna) contacted me and took me to their centre for studies. Though my parents initially objected to my being associated with Balaknama, they later gave in,” said Kishan, who left his work at the kiosk a few years ago and is currently i n Class X. Some children spare time from their hectic schedule to bring out paper. Farzana, 11, a talkative reporter for nearly three years, said, “I sell pens at a metro station for an hour in the morning and later go for studies. I talk to other children on the streets to understand their problems. ”
The stories done by these youngsters have had an impact. “After a story on child beggars in Noida who are unable to study because they had to sup- port their families in 2017, we met the senior su perintendent of police and launched a programme called ‘Nanhe Parinde’ and deployed four education vans to teach such children,” said Sanjay Gupta, director, Chetna, and mentor for Balaknama.
He described the newspaper as a tool of empowerment for streetconnected children.
Former editor Jyoti, 21, recalled, “When the first news story I wrote was printed in the paper, I was so happy. ” The daughter of an alcoholic rickshaw puller, she used to live under the fl yover at Sarai Kale Khan and often went without food because her father spent the money on intoxicants. When he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the family didn’t have money for his tre atment. “I became a ragpicker, begged at times and even began taking alcohol,” said the Class X student. Her life changed when she met members of Chetna and got associated with Balaknama.
Ov er the years, reporters from citi- es like Lucknow, Agra, Mathura and Gwalior have reported for Balaknama. “We can accommodate only 40 news items in an edition, but we receive over 100,” said Vijay Kumar, advisor to the paper and a final-year MA student. “We have an editorial meeting in the last week of the month to select the stories. It is attended by the editor, mentors (former editors) and reporters. ”
