Kirgapati is a village 12 kilometres outside the town of Kanker in Chhattisgarh. It is cut off from its neighbouring hamlets by a brook that gushes through the emerald green landscape during the monsoon. In 2012, the bridge on the brook fell apart. Since then, every year, Kirgapati’s Adivasi residents put together a makeshift bridge on it, mostly with wood and hay.
For Sachin Yadav, 26, a local reporter, this is an essential story. Based in Kanker, Yadav is a hawker-turned-journalist who reports on governance in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region. Yadav brought his phone and mic to Kirgapati, where, with the help of a friend, he recorded a video interview with the villagers. “The ration does not reach our village very often,” the sarpanch told him, “we have approached the MLA, but the bridge hasn’t been built in a decade.”
