Frontiers, every day

for this award: “fearless”, “comprehensive”, “furtherance of public interest”. Together they signify what newspaper journalism in a democratic society is all about. Because ultimately a newspaper is a public sphere which informs citizens about the big moments of their times and enables them to draw their own conclusions about them and fashion their own responses to them. It exposes wrong-doing, acts as a memory bank by reminding people of forgotten dimensions, provokes action in situations of extreme and often calculated official apathy. The events in Gujarat in February-March 2002 certainly constitute one such moment. It demanded not just the routine coverage of the cataclysmic developments, as and when they occurred, but an ability to go beyond the “skin” of each event, to penetrate the seeming normalcy. When the barbarian at the gate is not a single individual but a mob with important political connections, exposing just who the guilty are demands a patience and a persistence in revisiting the story that is not generally associated with journalism, with its constant and urgent search for the new story. Of course, in a situation like Gujarat, with its myriad human dimensions, the story can perhaps never be complete, never be fully told. Certainly there is always scope for doing a better job of the telling of it. But this acknowledgement in the IPI citation that our coverage of these events is “the best example of furtherance of public interest by a newspaper” cannot but encourage us to keep going, to keep at it.

Therefore, it is with a sense of gratitude that we receive this award. Gratitude to those who honour us in this fashion; gratitude to those who had the courage to allow us to tell their tales — sometimes at great danger to themselves; gratitude to our readers who support us in this project of news creation, of crossing frontiers day after day.