Mamta Pared was our colleague at PARI. A young journalist of rare talent and commitment, she passed away tragically on December 11, 2022.
On the first anniversary of her passing, we bring you a special podcast where you can listen to Mamta narrating a story of her people - the Warlis, an Adivasi community from Wada taluka in Palghar district of Maharashtra. She had recorded this audio a few months before her death.
Mamta wrote about their struggles for basic amenities and rights. An intrepid journalist, she reported from small hamlets, many of which simply don’t exist on maps. She was driven to cover hunger, child labour, bonded labour, access to schooling, land rights, displacement, livelihoods and more.
In this episode, Mamta narrates the story of an injustice in her village, Nimbavali, Maharashtra. She narrates how government officials tricked villagers into giving up ancestral land under the guise of a water project for the Mumbai-Vadodara expressway. The project tore through their village, and the compensation offered was grossly inadequate.
At PARI, we were very privileged to know and work with Mamta; all her nine stories on PARI are listed here .
Mamta lives on through her writing and her work with the community. She is deeply missed.
We would like to thank Himanshu Saikia for help with this podcast.
The photo on the cover image of Mamta is from the website of Citizens for Justice and Peace where she was a fellow. We thank them for permitting us to use it.
