|
Neha Dixit
Neha Dixit is an Indian freelance journalist covering politics, gender and social justice.[1] She has been awarded over a dozen awards including the Chameli Devi Jain Award (2016) as well as CPJ International Press Freedom Award (2019).[1][2] Early lifeNeha attended school in Lucknow, and graduated in English Literature from Miranda House, University of Delhi. Thereafter, she pursued a Masters in Convergent Journalism from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi.[3] CareerNeha began her career as an investigative journalist with Tehelka, before switching to the Special Investigation Team of India Today.[1] Since 2012, she has been a freelancer.[4] Her works have been published in The Wire, Al Jazeera, Outlook, The New York Times, The Caravan, Himal Southasian, and The Washington Post among others.[1][5] Notable reports and awardsIn August 2014, Dixit detailed the circumstances faced by seven rape survivors of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.[3] This won her the 2014 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism and the 2015 Press Institute of India-Red Cross award.[3] In 2016, Dixit chronicled (for Outlook) the abduction of 31 girls from Assam by a Hindu nationalist organization to infuse them with "nationalist ideologies" — a criminal defamation suit was subsequently filed against Dixit, in what was condemned by Committee to Protect Journalists as a tool of intimidation.[1][5] The same year, she was conferred with the Chameli Devi Jain Award, the highest honor for women journalists in India: her meticulous nature of coverage and cross-checking of involved facts were admired in particular.[5] In 2018, she reported on poor Indians, who were unethically drawn into participating in illegal drug-trials by pharma giants.[1] In 2019, Dixit documented a range of extrajudicial killings by police forces in Uttar Pradesh and other states, getting threats from high-ranked police officials, in the process.[1] Her reports prompted a note of concern by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.[1][6] The same year, she received the CPJ International Press Freedom Award.[1] She has been recognised as one of the most credible Indian journalists in India because of her painstaking in-depth ground, intersectional reporting that steers clear of binary, opinionated, formulaic mainstream coverage of news. She has been a visiting faculty at Ashoka University, MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia University, NALSAR, Hyderabad, IIMC and others. BooksIn 2016, Neha was one of the first Indian journalists to use a graphic format for reportage. She contributed a story "The Girl Not from Madras" to the comic book anthology 'First Hand: Graphic Non-fiction from India', about the exploitation of women in India.[7][8] She contributed a chapter on Sexual violence during sectarian violence in India to 'Breaching the Citadel, an anthology of sexual violence in South Asia 2016 by Zubaan Books.[9] She wrote the piece, 'Outcast[e]/Outlawed: The Bandit Queen (1996)' for the book ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films: Studies in Desire and Anxiety published by Palgrave Macmillan. Details the history of desire and anxiety underlying the cinematic representation of the modern Indian woman.[1] The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown IndianOn August 14, 2024, Dixit's first non-fiction book, 'The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian' published by Juggernaut Books was launched in Delhi.[10] The book looks at the last three decades of Indian socio-political and economic turmoil through the eyes of an urban poor, migrant, working-class woman and her family.
John Reed reviewed the book for Financial Times and wrote:'Ahead of the book’s launch, publicists were comparing it to Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012), her chronicle of life in a Mumbai slum. However, Dixit goes one step further by zooming out and providing a historical sweep...Dixit’s book is a vivid and memorable account of how post-economic reform in India works. It is a trenchant and invaluable people’s history of the bottom of the pyramid in the world’s most populous nation.'[12] Rahul Jacob wrote in the Mint Lounge, 'There will likely not be a better book of gritty Indian reporting for years to come-and certainly none that takes contemporary Indian economic myth-making to task as The Many Lives of Syeda X poignantly does.’[13] Priya Ramani wrote that it is 'the invisible India book everyone must read.'[14] Priavi Joshi wrote in the Scroll.in, 'The book is a testament to what fine journalism promises to be – rich, complex, empowering the forgotten, and capable of capturing the zeitgeist.'[15] Ruben Banerjee wrote in The Federal that 'The story that Dixit ends up writing is a paean to the grit and gumption of the untold millions adrift on despair in urban India, narrated without condescension. The book is also as much a testimony to the author’s bottomless commitment to narrate and document real stories of a mass of real and unsung people that should really matter.[16] [17]
Soutik Biswas writes in the BBC: "Ms Dixit’s book shines a spotlight on the invisible lives of India’s neglected female home-based workers."[19] Personal lifeDixit is married to Nakul Singh Sawhney, an Indian documentary filmmaker.[20] Dixit has been charged with "inciting hatred" by the Government of India, a move that has been criticized by the Committee to Protect Journalists.[21] Because of her reporting, she has been subjected to threatening calls and an attempted acid attack and a break attempt in her house.[22]
References
External links
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
