Scroll.in's Supriya Sharma has been named the winner of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka award for Reporting on Politics and Government for 2014. She has been awarded the prize for her outstanding "Window Seat" series, written over six weeks as she took a 2,500-km railway journey from Guwahati to Jammu ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Her aim, as the first piece in the series said, was simple: "to talk to people about the things that matter".
The two dozen stories in the series (which can be read here) included conversations about schisms in Assam's Bodo areas, an exploration of labour conditions in the tea gardens in West Bengal, a snapshot of an MLA in a dirt-poor part of Bihar who decided to arrive at his wedding in a helicopter, and ended at a polling booth at the Line of Control in Kashmir.
The Ramnath Goenka awards, the organisers say, "aim to celebrate excellence in journalism, recognise courage and commitment and showcase outstanding contributions and individuals every year". The awards pay "tribute to journalists from Print & Broadcast, who maintain the highest standards of their profession despite being in the face of political and economic pressures, who still manage to produce work that generates and sustains public trust in the media and impact the lives of people".
This is the second major award Sharma has won this year. In March, she received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist for the year 2014-'15.
This is Sharma's second Ramnath Goenka award. In 2013, she won the prize in the Uncovering India Invisible category, for her reports from Chhattisgarh.
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The two dozen stories in the series (which can be read here) included conversations about schisms in Assam's Bodo areas, an exploration of labour conditions in the tea gardens in West Bengal, a snapshot of an MLA in a dirt-poor part of Bihar who decided to arrive at his wedding in a helicopter, and ended at a polling booth at the Line of Control in Kashmir.
The Ramnath Goenka awards, the organisers say, "aim to celebrate excellence in journalism, recognise courage and commitment and showcase outstanding contributions and individuals every year". The awards pay "tribute to journalists from Print & Broadcast, who maintain the highest standards of their profession despite being in the face of political and economic pressures, who still manage to produce work that generates and sustains public trust in the media and impact the lives of people".
This is the second major award Sharma has won this year. In March, she received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist for the year 2014-'15.
This is Sharma's second Ramnath Goenka award. In 2013, she won the prize in the Uncovering India Invisible category, for her reports from Chhattisgarh.