An Android app designed to give voice to tribes at the heart of India's Maoist insurgency was launched September 20 as part of a campaign to end the conflict through the combination of oral tradition and new technology. The app allows tribes living in the remote jungle interior of the Dandakaranya forest to become citizen journalists, posting and sharing pictures and stories on CGNet Swara, a mobile phone-based reporting platform cofounded by Indian journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary and American computer scientist Bill Thies. Many indigenous people, known as the adivasi ("original dwellers"), in the Dandakaranya region are blighted by problems typical of so many of India's remote communities: land loss and evictions, lack of schooling, absence of medical care, and dearth of civic amenities—combined with deep mistrust of local authorities. In the foourteenth years since its launch, the platform has logged over a million calls and thousands of published reports. These have included everything from reporting cholera outbreaks and resolving payment disputes to sharing news about village affairs. The network also features poetry and folk songs. Our team will facilitate and manage the interaction in hybrid mode i.e taking in-person questions onsite and taking questions from the streaming platform such as youtube or zoom. Last five to six minutes of the talk would be dedicated to the interaction with facility to reach out after the event.
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