Jayanti Buruda, a tribal woman from Odisha, makes it to Forbes India’s W-Power 2024 list

Jayanti Buruda, a tribal woman and journalist from Malkangiri district in Odisha, has made it to the 2024 Forbes India W-Power list, which features 23 self-made women from across India.

Besides being the first woman journalist in her district, Buruda has also been actively involved in empowering members of her tribe, Koya.

As the ninth of 11 siblings, Buruda helped her mother gather wood, graze cows, and pluck mahua flowers in the jungle surrounding her village, Serpalli, until she enrolled in the only school in the village in Malkangiri district.

However, her two teachers who taught all the subjects helped her develop an interest in academics, and she went on to become the only girl to clear her class 10 board exam in a class of 10 students, according to Forbes India.

Despite opposition from her family, Buruda gave tuition to children of labourers in the slum area of Malkangiri town, where she developed an interest in social work and began volunteering for the Indian Red Cross Society.

Here, she faced discrimination from men in positions of power, which led her to want to study journalism so that her position and work received respect.

Following a one-month internship at Ajira Odisha Studio in Bhubaneswar, under the guidance of filmmaker and journalist Biren Das, Buruda learnt how to handle the camera, conduct an interview, and edit a film.

Though she got a job with a regional news channel in Bhubaneswar, she would be undermined and not given credit for her stories. But none of this weakened her resolve.

In 2017, Buruda became the first recipient of the NWMI Fellowship for Women Journalists. Besides monetary support, she was also given a laptop. She then started the Jungle Rani initiative in 2023, a social media platform for tribal stories that do not make it to mainstream media.

Since last year, she has also been associated with the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, an independent think tank of the Indian School of Business. As a cluster coordinator, her work involves talking about CFR (The Community Forest Resource Rights).

“We want to create our own media house, our own platform and wish to present these stories,” Buruda told Forbes India.

(The copy was updated to correct an error in the headline)