Sainath's Rural India archive to capture lives of everyday Indian

Award-winning journalist P.Sainath Monday launched an online archive showcasing audio-visual and print stories that depicted the complexities of rural India by "recording the everyday lives of everyday people".

"This is an initiative that connects a third of the nation with other the two-thirds as most of their roots lie in rural India. It is a living journal and an archive that is aimed at recording the everyday lives of everyday people," Sainath said at the launch at the India International Centre here.

People's Archive of Rural India (PARI), a not for profit website, launched on Dec 20 last year, is an educational tool that seeks to document the daily lives of common people through diverse digital media, said Sainath, its founder.

The website would host and combine video, still photos, audio and text articles by anyone who had interest in storytelling, he said.

The content of the website is available to all for no charge along with videos and photos that are free for download for non-commercial purposes, he added.

Projected as a rural data base, Sainath said over 6,000 photos of men, women, and children were available on the website that presented visual diversity on a single page with head-shots of people from disparate professional backgrounds from across India.

He said the website hoped to grow by public participation while inviting people to submit pictures, text articles, photo stories, films that recorded "the everyday life of everyday people".

The website can be accessed at: http://www.ruralindiaonline.org