Journalism That Matters
Celebrating IndiaSpend’s wins at the Laadli awards, the fifth consecutive year of recognition
Dear Reader
I am happy to tell you that five IndiaSpend stories were recognised at the Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity this week. This is the highest number for any organisation across the country. And it is extra special because we achieved this despite the odds—we’re a small team working with a diverse network of writers nationwide, and dependent on donations to keep going.
It was seven years ago that Laadli recognised IndiaSpend as the ‘Best e-Magazine’, and many of my colleagues have won the award over the years. In fact, 2025 marks the fifth straight year of recognition for IndiaSpend’s journalism at Laadli.
I’d like to take this opportunity to celebrate our award-winning stories and appeal to you, Dear Reader, to show us your support. If you like our work, please consider making a donation here. Even a Rs 250 monthly donation from a quarter of our readers would help us bring you many more urgent and important stories that need our attention.
The Toiling Hands
Basanti and Shyamvati have many things in common. They are both in their thirties, and have three children. They both moved from Rajasthan to Faridabad for work. They started off as helpers in automobile component manufacturing units and went on to become power press operators. Neither was provided training for the work, having been forced to pick up the skills on the job. Both of them needed the extra money, and both had their hands crushed in accidents on the job at their units. Now, both of them are struggling to access medical entitlements, and neither is able to find work.
This is a recurring story in India’s automobile supply chain sector, in units that are poorly monitored, where ill-maintained machines coupled with inadequately trained workers are leading to thousands of injuries. Most of those injured are migrant workers with little support. Women workers are particularly vulnerable due to gender wage disparity, illiteracy and lack of proper training to operate power presses, lack of job opportunities post accidents, family pressure, and difficulty in accessing legally entitled post-accident support.
This story, by Shreehari Paliath, won the Laadli in both the national and the northern region categories. You can read it here.
The Precarity of Gig Work
Nine in 10 workers in India are informal, and informal work is already precarious—bereft of contracts, social security, fixed timings or other benefits. But gig and platform work has compounded these issues. Workers are at the mercy of large corporations, their increasingly opaque algorithms and rates, and have little or no negotiating power.
And women are more vulnerable. They work in people’s homes, as beauticians, masseuses and domestic workers, on a trust basis. But when issues arise, their grievances are not adequately heard and the threat of their account being blocked looms large. State legislations for gig work have become vital to uphold labour rights particularly for women.
Calling gig workers as ‘partners’ instead of ‘workers’ is a cunning sleight of hand and puts a warm and fuzzy feel-good cover to a new form of digital feudalism, says Rajendran Narayanan, faculty at the Bengaluru-based Azim Premji University.
With the gig workforce expected to expand to 23.5 million workers by 2029-30, a three-fold increase from 2020-21, experts feel that more states will have to regulate work which falls outside the traditional employer-employee ambit of the organised workforce.
Shreehari Paliath won a Laadli for the southern region for this story.
Struggling Shelters
Garima Grehs are India’s shelter homes for transgender persons, operated by community-based organisations with government funding support. The programme offers a one-year stay at the shelter aimed at rehabilitating the residents, steering them away from begging and sex work, and imparting skills to facilitate job placement, enabling them to live with pride and dignity.
However, these shelter homes are struggling to stay operational due to inadequate and delayed funding, and the scheme falls short in addressing many core needs of transgender individuals, including access to specialised medical care, employment opportunities and safety from harassment by police or others.
Further, strict entry criteria and the one-year residency cap leave many transgender persons without long-term support, despite the high need for inclusive and accessible housing for them—they struggle against family pressure and police violence, despite legal protections. Lack of awareness and support systems from the state make these shelters a battleground for dignity and safety, Nileena Suresh reported in May 2024.
Nileena won a Laadli award from the western region for this story.
Women Bear The Brunt Of Stigma, Neglect
A ‘healer’ asked Manorama to prick her swollen leg with a needle. The wound caught an infection & oozed pus for days. She saw doctors and healers in Sitapur, Lucknow, even Nepal. After nine years of such ‘cures’, she had a diagnosis: lymphatic filariasis.
In India’s lymphatic filariasis-endemic districts, a swollen limb leaves scars deeper than just shame. It isolates patients, dims marital and caregiving prospects. Among the dozen women filaria patients that Mansi Vijay spoke to, two experiences were common: Their pain was consistently dismissed both at home and in medical settings; they noticed other women suffering from “heavy feet” who rarely sought medical attention.
India plans to eliminate lymphatic filariasis by 2027 as a public health threat, three years before the World Health Organization target. But the deep-rooted mistrust of the rural healthcare system and misconceptions around this complex, neglected disease need to be addressed first, Mansi reported. This story won a jury appreciation citation.
The Uneasy Link Between Poverty & Trafficking
Assam’s tea garden workers are paid low wages, have no rights over lands that they lived on for generations, and seldom have schools to send their children beyond primary school. As a result, girl students end up dropping out, looking for work outside the teagardens, many of them falling prey to trafficking.
These gardens also see a high prevalence of gender-based violence. Trafficking has become “industrialised” in Assam’s tea gardens, activists say. Traffickers are often locals–families trust them to help daughters find a job.
In a tea garden, Maitreyee Boruah watched women workers hunched over between rows and rows of tea bushes, their deft fingers plucking the tender leaves and buds and tossing them into the basket strapped behind their backs.
What struck her, she wrote in this story that won a jury citation, was the silence. The workers hardly ever talk to each other--they are not allowed to speak, as conversation might slow down the quick movements of their hands. “To me, that sight served as a metaphor for the lives of Assam’s tea garden workers--they work, and they suffer, in silence.”
Together, these stories paint a picture of precarity, lack of support, and neglect—all of which need to be addressed in policy and practice. Once again, I request you to please support our work by making a one-time or recurring donation here.
PS: We’re still tracking developments from the COP as negotiations come to a close. Watch our social media channels for more updates and insights.