With sun, salt and skilled hands, women in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, preserve fish.
And their own lives. A visit to Therespuram locality brings home the complexity of their
universe
Aparna Karthikeyan is an independent journalist, author and Senior Fellow, PARI. Her non-fiction book 'Nine Rupees an Hour' documents the disappearing livelihoods of Tamil Nadu. She has written five books for children. Aparna lives in Chennai with her family and dogs.
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Photographs
M. Palani Kumar
M. Palani Kumar is Staff Photographer at People's Archive of Rural India. He is interested in documenting the lives of working-class women and marginalised people.
Palani has received the Amplify grant in 2021, and Samyak Drishti and Photo South Asia Grant in 2020. He received the first Dayanita Singh-PARI Documentary Photography Award in 2022. Palani was also the cinematographer of ‘Kakoos' (Toilet), a Tamil-language documentary exposing the practice of manual scavenging in Tamil Nadu.
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Editor
P. Sainath
P. Sainath is Founder Editor, People's Archive of Rural India. He has been a rural reporter for decades and is the author of 'Everybody Loves a Good Drought' and 'The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom'.
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Photo Editor
Binaifer Bharucha
Binaifer Bharucha is a freelance photographer based in Mumbai, and Photo Editor at the People's Archive of Rural India.