Deepak Joshi won the first prize for his photograph, published last December, of Pratibha Hilim, a differently-abled teacher taking classes for 20 children with no access to phones or computers to join online classes at her home in a village in Maharashtra’s Palghar during the lockdown. Photographer Deepak Joshi and senior correspondent Sadaf Modak of The Indian Express won awards for their work on Friday. While Joshi won the Press Institute of India-ICRC first prize for best photograph, Modak won the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity.
Three former journalists of The Indian Express also won Laadli awards for reports during their stint with the newspaper.
Joshi won the first prize for his photograph, published last December, of Pratibha Hilim, a differently-abled teacher taking classes for 20 children with no access to phones or computers to join online classes at her home in a village in Maharashtra’s Palghar during the lockdown.
The report ‘Maharashtra: 80 cases of child marriage stopped, 16 FIRs filed since lockdown enforced’, which won Modak her award, was about the sudden spike in the number of child marriages during the same period. The report highlighted the factors, including closure of schools, impact on economy, the financial distress of the parents and uncertainty over livelihood behind the increase in cases across the state.
Somya Lakhani, formerly with The Indian Express, won the award in ‘Print – News Report, English’ category for her report in this newspaper on women who found themselves out of jobs during the pandemic, and the economic toll it took. Shalini Nair, also a former journalist with this newspaper, received a jury appreciation citation for her op-ed, published in The Indian Express, which argued that increasing the age of marriage will disproportionately affect Dalit and Adivasi women.
‘As September Covid-19 surge sweeps rural Maharashtra, hunt for beds’, a series of reports from three districts of Maharashtra on desperation of Covid-19 patients in rural areas for hospital beds, reported by Tabassum Barnagarwala, then working with The Indian Express, won the third prize in the category of rural reporting by PII-ICRC.
The PII-ICRC Awards recognise work on under reported issues, and Laadli Media Awards take into consideration reportage on gender issues.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
