For years, the women of Chitrakoot, a tiny district in Uttar Pradesh, have been nursing a movement of sorts. In the pandemic, there was an urgency to give that movement a voice. Feminist and Dalit journalist Meera Jatav tells mid-day in Hindi over a telephone call that the COVID-induced lockdowns had come down heavily on rural women, who worked as daily wage labourers and farmers. “Many of them lost their jobs and sources of incomes. The pressures and demands had doubled on the home front, and the violence against them too.”

As founder-editor of the path-breaking newspaper Khabar Lahariya, which inspired the Oscar-nominated documentary Writing with Fire, Bundelkhand-based Jatav had worked tirelessly for nearly two decades to put the stories of womenfolk at the forefront. But in 2020, as the country’s poor grappled with disease, death and joblessness, she felt there was a need to amplify the struggles of these women. She launched Chitrakoot Collective, along with former Khabar Lahariya colleague Priyanka Kotamraju. “We wanted to document the story of every working woman in Chitrakoot,” says Kotamraju. Jatav adds, “Some of them had risen to the occasion and started to distribute food and even masks. There were others who launched support groups. It was important to celebrate their lives and work.”