The meaning of “patrakar” has been seeing an evolution with the advent of social media and technology and 27-year-old Kavya Karnatac epitomises this revolution.

It was when the Lady Shri Ram College graduate moved to Mumnai to pursue her Masters in Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2018, that she gained insight into Deonar, home to one of the biggest garbage dumps in Asia. Now residing in Delhi, her time in Mumbai provides crucial context for her recent video series on the health crisis plaguing the residents of Deonar. The first video in the series — with its shocking glimpses of the 12-storey mountain of garbage and sewers gushing past the houses — has got over 10 lakh views since April.

It’s been a challenging journey upto this point for Karnatac, who started her company kkcreate two-and-a-half-years ago, pretty much on her own. “At the time, I was working for another company as a video producer and started kkcreate so that I could keep doing something [on the side] for something that is my own. By the time I quit and got into it full time, I had saved up three months’ salary and had no clue where I would head. Ek Rs 16,000 ka phone aur 40 rupaiya ka green screen, but I knew I would get somewhere [I had only a Rs 16,000 phone and R40 cloth that served as my green screen],” she tells us over a phone call from Delhi. 

Kavya Karnatac’s YouTube channel has gone up to 3.2 million subscribers