The Wire's Sukanya Shantha and Caravan's Prabhjit Singh and Arshu John win ACJ Journalism Awards 2020

The ACJ Journalism Awards 2020, instituted by the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, were announced yesterday at a virtual ceremony.

Prabhjit Singh and Arshu John of the Caravan won the award for investigative journalism, while the Wire's Sukanya Shantha won for social impact journalism. The winners were awarded Rs 2 lakh and Rs 1 lakh, respectively. The jury for the awards comprised Andrew Whitehead, Anuradha Raghunathan and Parry Ravindranathan, while the chief guest at the ceremony was Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

Singh and John's Caravan report, published last September, investigated the communal riots in Northeast Delhi last year. The jury described it as a "detailed" and "meticulously researched" account of the riots.

"Their journalism...is built on the vivid and unsettling testimony of those who witnessed and suffered in those riots," the jury said, adding that the report challenged different versions of what had happened.

Published in the Wire, Shantha's report was titled "From Segregation to Labour, Manu’s Caste Law Governs the Indian Prison System". It examined caste-based discrimination within prison systems and how labour within the prison is, according to prison manuals, assigned on the basis of caste.

The jury said the report "powerfully meets the two essential requirements of successful social impact journalism: it exposes an injustice which has been very largely concealed from public view, and it lays the groundwork - through well researched and clearly expressed reporting -to stimulate and inform a campaign for redress.”

The awards had received 47 entries in the investigative journalism category and 79 for social impact journalism. Entries were submitted across six languages and 37 news organisations and publications, as well as from independent journalists.

Under investigative journalism, the jury selected three stories for special mentions: the Environment Undone series in India Spend by Disha Shetty, Tish Sanghera and Pankhuri Kumar; "Inside Syria – the Naked and the Dead" by Lakshmi Subramanian published in the Week; and the Women’s Health series published in the People’s Archive of Rural India by editor Shalini Singh.

Special mentions in the social impact journalism category went to "Shooting Up – Himachal Pradesh’s spiralling heroin problem" in the Caravan by Diya Gupta; documentary Ennore: Living in Ashes in Asiaville by Aparna Ganesan, Vigneshwar K, Vivek Manoharan, and Prajeesh K; "Buzz of hope: After numerous tiger encounters, traditional honey gatherers of the Sundarbans get a new lease of life" in Gaon Connection by Tanmoy Bhaduri; and Corona Cyclips in Asiaville by Sruthin Lal and Dibyaudh Das.