Nitin Jugran Bahuguna is a senior freelance journalist with over 30 years of work experience who divides her time between Delhi and Dehradun. She has investigated and written extensively on human development issues pertaining to gender, health, child labour and environment. She worked for nearly 17 years with the United News of India (UNI) and also as a media consultant with several United Nations organizations on human development issues. She has authored her first novel, “Comet in the Village”, which is set in a remote mountain village in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. During 1996-97, with a financial grant from UNICEF, she undertook an in- depth study on the complex issue of child labour in India visiting industries having large concentration of child workers such as brassware in Moradabad, carpet-weaving in Mirzapur and Bhadohi (all in UP), the gem polishing industry in Jaipur, beedimaking and rope-making in Vellore, sari weaving in Kancheepuram, matchbox making industry in Sivakasi and in the stone quarries and steel industry in Chennai and its outskirts (all in Tamil Nadu). One of her stories on bonded child labour in sari-weaving industry in Kancheepuram captioned: “Kids mortgaged for loans” featured as a front page story in various major dailies and was followed up by two of India’s leading television channels and sparked off a national debate on the subject. Over the years she has highlighted several crucial issues with her investigative journalism. In 2001, her story entitled “Widowed by AIDS, they fight for survival”, based on a visit to Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu, was published in “Grassroots”, a monthly journal brought out by the Press Institute of India and was awarded the best feature of that issue. During 2002-3, working as a consultant for UNIFEM (Now known as U N Women), she visited several areas where women and girls had been trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. Her feature, “A village with no adolescent girls”, based on a visit to a village near Mysore in Karnataka, also won best feature in Grassroots magazine. Currently, Ms Bahuguna is a Media Consultant with WWF – India at their Sustainable Agriculture Programme (SAP) Division.
