Peoples’ Archive of Rural India (PARI)

PARI is both a living journal and an archive. It will generate and host reporting on the countryside that is current and contemporary, while also creating a database of already published stories, reports, videos and audios from as many sources as we can. All of PARI’s own content comes under the Creative Commons and the site is free to access. And anyone can contribute to PARI. Write for us, shoot for us, record for us – your material is welcome so long as it meets the standards of this site and falls within our mandate: the everyday lives of everyday people.

The use of many libraries and museums in India has fallen, more so in the last 20 years. This was compensated by the fact that what you can find in our museums, you could also find on our streets: the same miniature painting schools, the same traditions of sculpture. Now those too are fading. Library and museum visits amongst the young are more rare than routine. However, there is one place future generations the world over, including Indians, will visit more and more: the Net. Internet access, particularly broadband, is low in India, but it is expanding. It is the right place to build – as a public resource – a living, breathing journal and an archive aimed at recording people’s lives. The People’s Archive of Rural India. Many worlds, one website. More voices and distinct languages, we hope, than have ever met on one site.

It means an undertaking unprecedented in scale and scope, utilising myriad forms of media in audio, visual and text platforms. One where the stories, the work, the activity, the histories are narrated, as far as possible, as far as we can manage, by rural Indians themselves. By tea-pickers amidst the fields. By fishermen out at sea. By women paddy transplanters singing at work, or by traditional storytellers. By Khalasi men using centuries-old methods to launch heavy ships to sea without forklifts and cranes. In short, by everyday people talking about themselves, their labour and their lives – talking to us about a world we mostly fail to see.