Traditionally, in newspapers, a major part of resources and effort have gone into gathering hard news. But today, television and the Internet have dramatically changed the newsroom, and the front page is no longer what it was twenty or even ten years ago. Television, radio, the web are all far better than newspapers at breaking the hard story, and the intelligent newspaper recognises that and adapts.

So features have found their way to the front page. You'll even find the lead story sometimes written in what used to be regarded as a features style. The accent now is not simply on what happened - the hard news - but increasingly on the how and the why - the exploration of detail and the human angles which vividly bring home the point of the story and put it in context.

So today, the feature writer's brief is central to the newspaper's activity. Features deal with all areas of journalistic interest and are a major expression of a paper's editorial identity. They add depth, and allow the exploration of different angles to a story. They can anticipate trends, help form opinions and create links with readers.

Features are more persuasive, because they allow the reporter to go behind the immediate headline detail and provide context and analysis. They are not dependent on a breaking story, although they may well take a breaking story into a new chapter. And if the research and the story are good enough, it may turn out to be breaking news in its own right. We'll continue reacting to events as they happen, of course, but the agenda-setting possibilities of features reporting mean we can initiate our own stories, exploring human rights issues that are not currently in the news but which merit public examination.

Features are good for journalists. Unlike the traditional hard news story, features allow a more flexible structure and provide the reporter with ample opportunities to display imagination and style. Feature writers are not bound by the sparse, staccato style of the news report, but can adopt a variety of techniques to tell the story, which doesn't have to come to the point in the first two paragraphs. They are not circumscribed by a formula nor a rigid structure. They can meander in alleys, tease meaning out of symbolic detail. But this freedom brings with it distinctive challenges.

The format is not for those inclined towards quickies. Good features entail a tremendous amount of hard work, often team-work spanning days, sometimes weeks.

Today, readers are inundated with information from all directions and all sorts of sources. To be a successful feature writer, you must transcend this daily dose of sound bites, info bits and assorted data. For the reader, it's a barrage of information; for you, it's a mosaic of ideas and opportunities. A good feature presupposes the ability to distinguish the significant detail from the insignificant - and the craft skills to convert that into a compelling read. It takes experience, training and a lot of leg work -- visits to the sites as well as to libraries.

Features are particularly useful vehicles for reporters wanting to highlight human rights abuses. In a country like India, with its myriad problems and tensions, stories about massacres, abuses and violence have produced a certain ennui over the years. The reader, reporters are often told, is suffering from issue-fatigue, and won't be a reader unless the issue is directly relevant. At the same time, the competition for column space has increased. There is greater emphasis today on lifestyle stories, and new sections on subjects such as information technology or media, so issues journalism has to fight for its place. So how does a reporter persuade the reader to spend time on yet another story on dowry or child labour?

A well-crafted, well-researched feature, looking at HR issues from a new angle or with a different approach, is a possible answer. If there is a way of igniting fresh interest in an old but continuing problem, it is through a feature.

There are several techniques a feature writer can use. A feature can be an incisive analysis which offers fresh insight into an old problem. Or it can be a compelling narrative guaranteed to touch even the most tired or cynical reader. The bait which entices a reader to stop and read your story and not others is the human drama which creates a bond of empathy between the reader and the real-life characters you write about.

Features can work in several ways.

They can

• Explain what is happening
  
• Expand on a news item, an official statement
  
• Explore ideas, new concepts
  
• Investigate issues, social problems, scandals
  
• Describe events large and small; places; experiences; journeys; people
  
• Entertain with humour, perhaps, or colourful description
  
• Campaign for the righting of wrongs, the improvement of the human condition
  
• Comment usually in the form of a column

Let us look at a story which appeared on the front page of The Hindustan Times.

Sajjo, all of 12 years, in chains because she is mentally ill

Chained to a block of wood that weighs nearly 20 kg, 12-year-old Sajjo spends her days in the shadow of social stigma. Bruises and deep gashes are common on her fragile form. Sajjo's fault? She is mentally challenged and described as a "terror" by residents of Kali Kalyanpura.

Sajjo hits children, steals food and goods from shops. Her parents said she slipped out of the house one day. Neighbours told Sajjo's mother, Sayra, that she was seen boarding a bus.

"Finally, she was brought back by some people. They had seen her sing and dance and passengers rewarded her by throwing coins," recalled Sayra.

The incident spread around in Turkman Gate and she was branded as "pagal". People started throwing stones at her and would beat her up without provocation. Sajoo's parents were forced to chain her.

As she screamed and ripped her clothes apart, father Abdul Sattar and Sayra slipped a chain around her left foot. She was left on the rooftop. Her fits of rage continued. She would be immobile for hours in the sun, despite all efforts to cajole her to come inside the house. Once, Abdul tried to pacify her and was pushed off the roof. He sustained minor injuries ---- one more tale was added to her horror story.

"On her birth, doctors said she had a weak brain," said Sayra. The parents refused to believe it, till the girl began to show signs of abnormality. She would scream and turn violent without provocation, even bang her head against the walls.

"Every policeman in the area knows about her. They have often brought her home when she has wandered out. Sometimes she drags the block she is chained to along into the street. People laugh at her. Encouraged by them, she begins to dance and sing," said Sayra.

Sajjo appears to be intelligent. She watches TV and has favourite songs. "I want to see a doctor. I want to have a doll of my own," she says wistfully. With Abdul struggling to make two ends meet, toys have no place in Sajjo's life. Only scorn, rejection and beating.

Hindustan Times, 23.6.00

The photograph accompanying the story shows a young girl with short-cropped hair and wearing a blue shalwar-tunic She could be any Indian teenager.

But the first paragraph - a vivid description of Sajjo's appearance - lets the reader know she is not an ordinary child. Sajjo is chained to a block of wood. She has bruises and gashes on her fragile form. The thumbnail sketch of Sajjo creates a visual effect. And then, as in cinema, the reporter cuts to the next shot. We 'see' Sajjo, and then we hear the voice of her mother, Sayra.

"Finally, she was brought back by some people. They had seen her sing and dance and passengers rewarded her by throwing coins," recalled Sayra.

Sajjo is a terror. She hits children, steals food from shops. It is the same Sajjo who sings and dances. By mixing the commonplace with the not so commonplace, the reporter creates a certain stylistic tension which produces a warm, sympathetic portrait.

The next few paragraphs encapsulate the predicament of children like Sajjo. People throw stones at her and beat her up. Poverty aggravates her trauma. Had she been born in a well-off home, and received adequate medical care, perhaps things would have been different. But her father could not afford expensive medicare and in India, the state does not pick up the tab. Someone like Abdul is part of what is euphemistically known as the "unorganised sector," so he is not covered by health insurance. What are his options?

Abdul, an autorickshaw driver, sought medical advice ---- even quacks ---- but Sajjo's condition did not improve. With the burden of eight children and a monthly Rs 60 rent for their one-room shack, the couple gave up. As years rolled by, Sajjo became more uncontrollable.

There are tens of thousands of children like Sajjo in this country. Such children are routinely taunted and abused. Their plight receives scant attention, their rights are not generally recognised. But readers today suffer from compassion fatigue, so unless there is a powerfully etched human face to a problem, it is unlikely to have any impact.

The story is well done, but could have been better.

Sajjo is clearly a moody child and interviewing such a person is not the easiest task in the office diary, but the world as seen through Sajjo's eyes does not come through clearly. The reporter uses only one quote from the girl.

"I want to see a doctor. I want to have a doll of my own," she says wistfully.

Did Sajjo say anything more? If she did not, how did she avert the reporter's queries? How did the reporter try to draw her out? Did she show a violent streak in front of the reporter?

We are curious, but we don't get the answers. A feature format allows you the luxury, sometimes, of describing how you gathered your information - if it's relevant, of course. Your experiences as you conduct interviews or seek out details of a case study can bring colour to the story. How the reporter related to Sajjo, and how she responded, would have been a valuable addition.

Sajjo's story dramatises the plight of one mentally damaged girl, illustrative of many other suffering children and adults. Just how big the problem is, the story doesn't say, but the reporter could well follow this piece with a further story - or stories - about different kinds of disability, for example, or to explore more deeply the way Indian society treats its less fortunate brothers and sisters.

FEATURE WRITING BEGINS WITH AN IDEA

The best features differ from news in one fundamental way. News reporting is mostly reactive: an event happens and newspapers report it. Features can be pro-active; the writers find their own stories and set their own agenda.

By far the most important aspect of feature writing, then, is IDEAS. How to find them; to recognise them; how to make connections between events. Without this, the feature writer and the features pages could not exist.

Where do IDEAS come from?

Everywhere is the simple answer. You simply have to learn how to look.

Ideas come from reading - reading anything. Newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets, advertisements, street hoardings, reports. There could be a big story lurking in a one para brief at the bottom of a page in a newspaper, in a letter to the editor or in a vacancies ad in the classified columns. Cut it out. If you don't have time to develop it straight away, file it for future use. An IDEAS FILE will enable you to come up with a good story when less organised reporters are still twiddling their thumbs.

These days, of course, the reading does not have to be confined to printed matter. The World Wide Web has opened up fantastic possibilities for reporters in search of ideas. There are dozens and dozens of non-governmental organisations, think tanks, lobby groups which deal with human rights issues. Is there an Indian angle to what they are posting on the Net? Can you build a story to match what is appearing on other news sites around the world?

Network with reporters on the human rights beat in other cities and countries, sharing information, experiences and ideas. You'll learn a lot about insititutions, individuals and human rights initiatives in our country as well as outside. Most institutions these days have a presence on the World Wide Web. Check their websites for updates and news flashes. Subscribe to web mailing lists which deal with specific themes, just as you would ensure you're on the mailing lists for snail mail press releases from organisations working in the areas that interest you.

Think ideas, too, when you're watching television or listening to the radio. Even when you're with family or friends. Listen to what people are talking about. And most importantly, keep your eyes and ears open ALL THE TIME. A good reporter is never off duty, and there are stories on every street corner if you look hard enough.

Read the following story from The Hindu. How might you develop it as a feature?

NHRC takes up the cause of 'living dead'

This was human rights violations of a different kind. A group of poor people from Uttar Pradesh who were shown 'dead' in the revenue records and deprived of their lands, today appeared before the National Human Rights Commission to tell their story.

Taking a serious view of these 'shocking' incidents, the Commission has taken up the case which has brought into focus the way the poor were being exploited by influential persons who, in collusion with revenue officials, had shown them as dead and grabbed their land holdings.

The case was taken up by the Commission at the behest of the Allahabad High Court on a reference to investigate the human rights violations of the landholders. A complaint was also filed by one Mr. Lal Bihari of Azamgarh who had been shown to be dead. It had taken him almost two decades to convince the authorities that he was in fact alive and hence his land could not be taken away.

Even as the Commission called for a report from the U.P. Government, the High Court ordered an investigation by the District Magistrate, Azamgarh, and it was found that of the 90 complaints received, 30 were true and the CJM also submitted a list of errant officers/officials.

When the case was taken up today, the Commission was apprised of the action being taken to correct the revenue records wherever the land holders had been erroneously shown to be dead and this exercise would be completed by March 2001.

The Commission granted the U.P. Government two weeks' time to submitt a detailed report of the action taken so far not only in Azamgarh district but also in other districts of the State. The report would include action taken against erring officials as well as whether the victims got back their properties, the Commission said and adjourned the case to October 23.

The Hindu, 22.9.00

The subject matter lends itself easily to the story-telling technique. It's set in eastern Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest and most feudal pockets of the country. Start with one of the complainants - Lal Bihari, perhaps - and introduce his story. Broaden out to bring in the other complainants and the general theme of your feature. Then describe the land, the people, the socio-economic backdrop before getting even more deeply into the story behind the complaint to the Commission. What is it about Azamgarh that has allowed such a situation to develop? It might not be possible for you to visit Azamgarh yourself - the ideal approach - but talk to people who are familiar with the area. Perhaps people such as Lal Bihari.

You could also expand on the National Human Rights Commission itself. The reporter on the beat should know all about the NHRC, but the average reader perhaps has no inkling as to what this august body does. What is its significance to people like Lal Bihari? What other cases has it dealt with? Maybe this is something that could be dealt with as a sidebar. If you were writing for the web, it would be a link to a separate page.

To add depth to the story, you might speak with NHRC officials and those in the UP administration. But it always needs to come back to Lal Bihari and his friends. To people.

Journalists who have visited eastern Uttar Pradesh know the feudal character of the region. But we must not assume that all our readers are equally familiar with the place we are describing or its socio-cultural milieu.

Read the first few paragraphs of Luke Harding's story on the Gujarat earthquake for The Guardian (UK). See how he sets the scene in his intro. Neither Harding nor his readership are from India. So he has to describe Dinara in a way which brings it alive to someone who may have no idea what the region is like. Similarly, not all Indians know or have travelled to every part of their country so the approach holds good for us as well. Set the scene, describe the ambience in a way which makes it alive to someone who may not be familiar with the place.

The residents of Dinara have a harsh life at the best of times. The village lies on the edge of a vast expanse of desert. Nothing much grows apart from diminutive babul trees. Only camels seem at home, plodding among the shimmering salt flats.

And these are not the best of times. Last Friday the earthquake that levelled much of the Indian state of Gujarat left seven dead in Dinara, including an eight-month-old baby. As the tremors subsided, the villagers shook themselves and waited for help to arrive.

Yesterday - thirsty and desperate - they were still waiting. "We have had no water for four or five days. All of our wells have been destroyed. We have been forced to drink salt water," villager Omar Sama said. "We are not getting grain. Nobody has come to help us."

The village teacher, Sama Mirmama, added: "We are looking for bread. People living here believe that God is angry with us."

The Guardian, 1.2.01

Here is another feature from The Indian Express. It is about a hospice in Kerala, a final stop over for AIDS patients, and the story highlights one of the newer forms of human rights violations in India: the hounding of AIDS patients.

The last resort
(by Sreelatha Menon)

Appu Kuttan's wife and eight-year old daughter do not step out of the house for fear. They do not know how the villagers would react. All they know is that they are feared and loathed by every one. Because Appu Kuttan is HIV positive and the whole village knows of it.

While his family lives under virtual house arrest in a village in Palakkad district, Appu Kuttan has literally gone into hiding in a hospice in Peringandoor in Thrissur district. In fact, the Mar Kundukulam Memorial Rehabilitation Centre started by the Thrissur Archdiocese of the Catholic Church a year ago as a recovery centre for HIV patients in Kerala, where a superstitious fear of the disease prevails.

Out of the 38 patients admitted there in one year, 18 have died and only four have returned home. The rest are still there with no hope of leaving since their families do not want them back.

In fact, at the root of the very existence of this hospice is the story of a convict who had HIV and was left unattended and abandoned in the Medical College Hospital nearby. Father Joseph Kundakulam, who was formerly the archbishop there, came to know of this man afflicted with diseases and with a body covered with painful bedsores. He sent members of the convent to take care of him. After that, the priest was determined to start a place where HIV positive patients who had been rejected by society could be cared for, says the home's director, Father Varghese Palathingal.

The National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) has since offered its support to this hospice as one of the three pilot projects for hospices for neglected AIDS patients.

But the question remains whether such hospices are a solution, and what the inmates of the hospice in Peringandoor say enforces such doubts. Their stories of total rejection by society suggests that while a hospice may help a handful, an attempt to remove false fears and the stigma attached to the disease would go a long way in helping patients.

Among the inmates in the home is a couple from Thrissur district, two lovers who defied their parents and got married. They belong to two different religions. Nandini is just 22 years old and her face is always lit with a smile. She says that she did not know that her husband was HIV positive when she married him. He knew it but did not tell her, she says. But she forgave him because he hid his illness from her for fear of losing her, she says. When he collapsed one day, she rushed him to the district hospital in an autorickshaw. There they were kept waiting to see a doctor. And as Nandini ran up and down the hospital seeking help, the autorickshaw driver learnt about Joseph's HIV status. In an hour he was back where Nandini and Joseph lived, spreading the news to everyone that Joseph was HIV positive and no doctor was ready to see him.

The landlord promptly threw out the couple's belongings from their house, says Nandini. The two then moved to another hospital from where they were advised by the relatives of another AIDS patient to go to the hospice. "But before that, we contemplated suicide," admits Nandini, who says she owes her life to the hospice. While Nandini, who is also HIV positive now, has suffered no ailments so far, Joseph too is recovering under the care of the nuns of the home and visiting doctors.

But where would they go if they were to leave the home? Nowhere. Nandini has no hope of ever going back to the world that rejected her. Father Varghese Palathingal is contemplating jobs for women like her who may be left without any source of income because of HIV. And then there's the story of Kali from Kozhikode district. She was brought to the home by her own adult children, who asked her never to return, says Father Palathingal.

Murali, who has a grocery shop in a Thrissur village, is another inmate. "No one wants me to return," he says. But he is worried about his wife and children and he wants to go with them somewhere and live incognito.

The stories are endless, as many as the 16-odd patients there. Father Palathingal says the fear people have of the disease and the resultant ostracism patients have to face is evident in the opposition faced by the hospice from the local people. The locals are also opposing a proposed AIDS-cum-cancer hospital that is to come up in their village. They say they had nothing against the patients, but did not want their village to be a site for hospitals treating infectious diseases.

(The names of patients have been changed).
The Indian Express, 21.6.00

The feature about the hospice in Kerala does two things: it highlights a problem and it speaks of one partial solution. It is a mix of narrative and commentary, blending colour, anecdotes, and human drama with the big picture. The focus is on the victims - the people - and it is effective.

The reporter is moved by the plight of Appu Kattan and the other AIDS victims. In small ways, she makes clear where she stands. She does it through punctuation - look at her first paragaph - and through some of the words she chooses. The convict left unattended and abandoned….body covered with painful sores. Or…The landlord promptly threw out the couple's belongings….. That's acceptable in features. The reporter is entitled to react to the story, to approach it from a particular point of view. That doesn't mean, however, that she would be entitled to say: "I think….." Comment goes elsewhere in the paper.

The closest Menon gets to comment is this passage:

But the question remains whether such hospices are a solution, and what the inmates of the hospice in Peringandoor say enforces such doubts. Their stories of total rejection by society suggests that while a hospice may help a handful, an attempt to remove false fears and the stigma attached to the disease would go a long way in helping patients.

It might have made a good conclusion…but we'll come to that later. First, you have to put the story together.

Features structure

If newspapers were simply concerned with facts, they would be filled only with news stories. But they're not. They present a forum for many different kinds of writing - news analysis, human-interest stories, personal opinion columns, personality profiles.

All of these come under the heading of features, so it isn't really possible to say: "This is how you write a feature." There are as many different ways of writing as there are stories to be told.

But whatever kind of feature it is, it should give the reader more than mere facts. Features are generally longer than news stories, and the writer has more material to manipulate. More varied material too. So you must have some idea of the shape of the article before you start to write. You need a structure.

The aim of story structure is to give your feature a pattern, an order which will make it easy for the reader to absorb. Without structure, even simple stories become confusing and hard to understand.

Your story needs control. It needs a beginning, a middle and an end. Which sounds so easy. But it is surprising how many experienced writers, as well as beginners, find the creation of a features structure difficult. Structuring is not easy, particularly when you have accumulated a large mass of material.

The structure is something only the writer will notice. It's rather like the human skeleton - you can't see it, but if it wasn't there the body would simply collapse. So with stories.

Structure alone is not enough, however. The good writer takes the reader along a clear path from first word to last word. Not necessarily a straight path - it might curve, or even come full circle, but the development will be like a staircase - one step after another from top to bottom, joined together with craftsmanship. Even spiral staircases work like that, so there is room for flexibility in the way you build your path.

Creating the structure

In a hard news story, structure often comes from the intro. Put the right point in the first paragraph, and the rest of the story flows from there. Features are different. Their content is more complex, their range is wider and their purpose is different. All of those things affect structure.

So first you have to decide in your own mind what the feature is for. WHY are you writing it? What QUESTIONS are you setting out to ANSWER? What story are you trying to tell? What is your THEME?

The answer to these questions will help to establish your priorities, which in turn will help you to manage the material your research and your interviews have produced.

Prepare a structure plan. Different writers adopt different approaches to this, but all involve going through the material you have gathered, selecting the points that matter to your theme and discarding those that are irrelevant. It may help to transcribe all your interviews, from your tape recorder or your note book.

Go through the material and mark the passages you want to use. Note the quotes you want to use. List all of these things on a separate piece of paper, then go through them again to fit them into connected sub-themes.

Arrange the points within the sub-theme so that they connect properly and support each other, then give the sub-themes themselves an order, with a logical development that supports your main theme.

Some people do it by writing the points individually on small cards then shuffling them about to find the most effective order. One writer used to type everything out in properly finished, but unconnected paragraphs, then cut the typescript up with scissors to put them in the best sequence! Not a system that would suit many people, of course, but not far removed from what we have been discussing.

Like that writer, find a method that suits you, and use it. It appears to takes time, but it should save you time in the end. Even if it doesn't, the difference it will make to the quality of your feature will make it time well spent.

As you go through your interview material, there is a temptation sometimes to deal with the interviewees one by one. You write into the feature everything person A said, and when you have finished that, you start on person B. It is a trap you should avoid. It's a structure of sorts, of course, but generally speaking not a good one. Far better to take your sub-themes one by one, and quote each interviewee on that before moving on to the next topic.

Let's say your feature is to do with education for girls. The main theme might well be that girls get a raw deal in many countries when it comes to schooling.

After your intro (of which more later) the first sub-theme might be the scale of the discrimination against girls. You pick up points from your research demonstrating how boys get more schooling, and perhaps a few quotes to support the statistics. Then you move to sub-theme 2.

Why is there so much opposition to the idea of education for girls? Quotes from parents, from social workers, from community leaders.

Your third sub-theme would examine the effect this attitude has on the girls as they grow to woman-hood. Quotes from parents, again, perhaps the same social workers and community leaders, but also from girls themselves.

Fourthly, your investigations might have thrown up a family which has gone against tradition and given their daughters a proper schooling. You quote them, the girls' teachers, and of course the girls themselves.

Fifthly, but not quite finally, you have a sub-theme looking ahead to try to assess the effect of this discrimination on a community changing to meet the demands of a more developed society. Then finally, the conclusion - and we'll come to that later as well.

What now? You have a structure, with an outline plan for the pathway of words you will create for the reader. The next step also sounds easy. Find an intro.

Writing the intro

The intro to a feature is not like the intro to a hard news story. That hangs on the main point of the story, sparsely written and direct. The feature writer takes a more open view, with a variety of approaches to the story. It may be a direct frontal attack, but it is quite likely to build a more oblique route into the story, using narrative, case studies, quotes or anecdotes.

What news story and feature intros have in common, however, is that they are both the crucial selling point for the story. The good journalist uses the intro to capture the reader's attention. If the intro isn't a "grabber" - something that really pulls the reader into the story - then the reader will not be encouraged to read on. And with features, written to greater length than news stories, that is a particularly acute waste of the journalist's time, the newspaper's resources and the reader's money.

So features intros, just like news intros, need punch to create impact and demand attention.

They must be well-written, of course, but unlike the news intro, they may well extend over two or three paragraphs. It depends on the material.

Be specific. Use a case-study approach to begin your story, taking one person's story to introduce and illustrate a wider idea. As with the story about Sajjo:

Chained to a block of wood that weighs nearly 20 kg, 12-year-old Sajjo spends her days in the shadow of social stigma. Bruises and deep gashes are common on her fragile form.

It is a good start and the reader is compelled to continue. You can go on from there to describe similar cases, or to discuss the issue more broadly, whatever your material suggests. But you have the reader on the hook, and that's the key.

The intro to the story on the hospice in Kerala takes a similar approach:

Appu Kuttan's wife and eight-year old daughter do not step out of the house for fear.
Contrast this with the intro on the Hindu's "living dead" story. The point of the story comes through, but without a human element, it makes for dull reading.

This was human rights violations of a different kind. A group of poor people from Uttar Pradesh who were shown 'dead' in the revenue records and deprived of their lands, today appeared before the National Human Rights Commission to tell their story.

A feature writer is a story teller. Here's another way this story might have started, leading with a striking fact.

Lal Bihari was officially dead. Revenue records in Uttar Pradesh said so. And it took him nearly 20 years to prove them wrong.

Or you can try a narrative intro, taking the reader along with the story, like this:

When Bhanwari Devi's 13-year-old daughter was raped in the bajra fields by an upper caste youth, she picked up a lathi and went after the rapist herself. She had no faith in police and courts. Either way, she was prevented from seeking any redress by the upper castes of Ahiron Ka Rampura. "The village caste panchayat promised me justice," she says. "Instead, they threw me and my family out of Rampura." Nearly a decade after the rape, no one in this village in Ajmer district has been punished.

It doesn't mean much, though, in Rajasthan. On average in this State, one Dalit woman is raped every 60 hours.

From: A Dalit Goes to Court, P. Sainath's award-winning story for
The Hindu, 13.6.99

You can even start with a quote, if it's a good one:

"Bullshit" says Nata Duvvury, quietly. She is responding to the theory which holds that Kerala's women are more sexually liberated than others in India and that this is thanks to the customs of the Nair caste.

New Internationalist, March 1993

Beware history in the intro. Only historians and children are likely to be attracted to a story that begins "Once upon a time…" In other words, keep the essential background until later.

And beware, too, the intro to the intro. That is the two or three paragraphs at the start of some features which are mere preparation, even background, for the real story to come. Look at your feature and see if you lose anything by cutting the first two or three paragraphs. If the answer is no, you've fallen into the trap.

How do you find the intro? There is, of course, no set of rules which will automatically produce the intro to order, but there is one piece of advice which will help.

Look for an intro from the moment you begin researching a story. Experienced writers usually sit down at their computers with at least an idea in their head of the way they will start. Perhaps it's an anecdote, an eye-catching quote, a stark fact - but it is something they will have noted in the story collection process as a possible way to start. As they begin to write they may realise that their possible intro doesn't work - even the best writer runs into problems sometimes - but at least they have started to put words on paper.

And that is one of the keys. If you are stuck for an intro, don't sit there with your head in your hands waiting for inspiration. It won't come. Do something. Start writing.

One writer claimed he always began in the middle of his features because he didn't know what he wanted to say until he'd written it. That was probably bad planning, but there is the germ of an idea in his method.

Start writing, somehow. Start with a question, perhaps, just to get you going. Say it's a feature about a campaign to raise literacy levels among rural women. Start like this:

Why are the women of rural India going back to school?

It's not a good intro, but it allows you to start writing. You can always - and in a case like this, you must - go back to re-write the intro later, for you can be sure that the real intro idea will emerge as you write.

Building the reading path

With your intro established, the task now is to fill out your structure plan with the facts, the quotes, the anecdotes, the analyses you have decided to use. But they cannot be presented as a set of individual contributions. They must fit together to create a clear reading path.

It involves linguistic and thematic links - the use of related words, such as wife and she; repetition of words; words and phrases such as but, on the other hand, and now, which act as connectors; and a sequence of related ideas.

Look again at P. Sainath's story on Dalits going to court. His two-paragraph intro - a narrative case-study - establishes the tone of the story and introduces the theme. Paragraph three broadens the context to give some idea of the extent of the practice, and the last sentence - In this State, the extent of under reporting of such crimes is perhaps worst in the country - opens the door that leads to paragraph four.

The link is picked up there with the words victim and atrocities. Both relate to such crimes in the preceding sentence. In paragraph five, the link comes right at the beginning: The incident….

Lower down, Bhagwan Devi says …if we are attacked again, no one…will help us. The next paragraph begins: Her cynicism is grounded in reality… The personal pronoun is the simplest of links, yet one of the strongest.

And so it goes on. Arun Kumar believes the conviction rate in Rajasthan is better than in the rest of the country. A logical thematic link leads to: What do the figures say? Or, a little later on, …rape cases declared "false" average around 27 per cent. Next paragraph: This (the direct linguistic link) is like saying that women in the state tend to lie….

The whole feature flows in an apparently effortless flow from first word to last, but it was put together with immense care by a craftsman. Are you creating a reading path of similar strength?

Look also at the feature by the British journalist Tim McGirk, He wanted to kill our babies for being girls. (See appendix) Our analysis examines the structure of this excellent story, and the way McGirk's technique builds a strong writing path.

And in conclusion

Hard news stories simply finish when you reach the last fact, the last full-stop. Features need a proper conclusion.

That needs planning too, and you can do it in the same way as the intro. Keep your mind alert for conclusion possibilities as you carry out your research. You are looking for something to round the story off, to sum it up, perhaps to symbolise everything you've been saying for the last few hundred words. It might be a good quote, or another instalment in a case study. It might well relate back to your intro, tying it together structurally. Or it might look forward.

Sreelatha Menon's story on the AIDS hospice in Kerala ends with another damning example of the fear ordinary people have of the disease.

The locals are also opposing a proposed AIDS-cum-cancer hospital that is to come up in their village. They say they had nothing against the patients, but did not want their village to be a site for hospitals treating infectious diseases.

Properly crafted conclusions are one reason why features are more difficult to cut than hard news stories. A well-written feature cannot be shortened by deleting the last two or three paragraphs.

EXPRESS FOCUS, JULY 4, 2000

Missing the wood for the trees

What's a forest without people, ask the tribals of Jashpur district in Madhya Pradesh, as they are asked to move out in the name of developing a sanctuary. Rajendra Khatry reports.

The rain-laden dark clouds kissing the green hilltops encircling Badalkhol sanctuary in Jashpur district in Madhya Pradesh bordering Orissa make a pretty picture. But there are rumblings in the mountains, and the streaks of lightning flashing across the sky warn of dark days ahead.

For hundreds of years, the tribals in this region have protected and nurtured the forest, using its products to feed themselves. But instead of acknowledging their contribution, the Forest Department seems more keen on displacing them from their natural habitat in the name of developing a sanctuary.

Aware of the government's moves, the tribals in the sanctuary area are gearing up for the big fight.

"Who will dare drive us out of this place? The forest is ours, we belong to the forest, and no one can separate us," declares Puniya Ram, a resident of Rangpur. Adds Janghu Ram, from Dumarpani village, "Kill us if you want. We will never leave this place." Others say they do not want compensation. "Just leave us alone where we are," is all they demand.

The Badalkhol sanctuary in eastern MP, with an area of 105 square kms on the banks of Eib river on one side and Dorki river on the other, is the 33rd sanctuary to be developed by the state government with aid from the World Bank. The area derived its name from the fact that earlier, the forest was so dense that once you entered it, it was impossible to see the clouds (badal). Illegal felling of trees by timber mafia has denuded the forest over the years.

An eviction notice in the form of an appeal was recently served on four villages inside the sanctuary --- Ranpur, Rajour, Kurhatipna and Dumarpani. Although the Forest Department does not say so openly , it is evident that once these villages are vacated, the tribals from the 34 villages on the periphery of the Badalkhol sanctuary will have to make way as well.

The Badalkhol sanctuary development project is more than two decades old. In 1976, under the Wildlife Protection Act, the MP Forest Department first issued a notification for the protected area's development. The plan had no role for the tribals, though. At best, they were considered an obstacle.

Stiff resistance from the tribals - mostly the fierce hunting tribe of Pahadi Korwas --- however bogged down the project. In 1982, the Forest Department served a verbal notice on the inhabitants to vacate the forest. The tribals refused, but the department persisted. The tribals retaliated in anger by massacring hundreds of animals and birds in the sanctuary.

Since then, the government has mellowed down its approach. Now, the government is experimenting with the idea of inducements to lure the tribals out of the forest. The Forest Department has offered Rs 1 lakh each to the family that vacates the sanctuary. But there is still no talk of a rehabilitation plan. The result of this "grand offer": the tribals just did not refuse, but got even more belligerent. In desperation, forest officials rushed to the area to explain to the tribals they had no plans to oust them by force. They even distributed a written statement signed by the District Forest Officer (DFO) declaring that nobody would be displaced against his or her wishes. But the tribals are not convinced.

DFO of Jashpur, Arun Pandey, said the government wants to develop the sanctuary to protect wildlife and the forest. He has been at pains to remove any doubts from the minds of the tribals and convince them that the Forest Department will not use force at any cost.

"We are not enemies of the tribals. In fact we have formed hundreds of Forest Protection Committees comprising tribals from the concerned areas all over the district," he says. And the inducement offer? Well, according to the government's existing forest policy, the forest will be safe only when there is no disturbance from human beings or their domestic animals. "Eventually eveyone may have to leave," he admits.

District Collector of Jashpur, Durgesh Mihstra, says the tribals displacement issue has been blown out of proportion. "The administration is conscious of the rights of the forest dwellers even as it wants to protect wildlife," he says. A separate department has also been formed for the development and protection of the Pahadi Korwa tribe, he says.

It is ironical though, that while the government has launched an ambitious project to help the Pahadi Korwas, simultaneous plans are afoot to uproot them from their homeland. The charge that the tribals have begun to destroy the forest and damage the eco-system holds no water, not in Jashpur, not anywhere in the country.

Living in abject poverty in mud houses in far-flung areas with no electricity, proper roads or drinking water, the tribals hardly present the face of the timber mafia that the forest department charges them with. The tribals cut wood mostly for domestic purpose like building houses, or lighting their chulhas and not for commercial exploitation. They depend on farming to sustain themselves.

Alleged harasssment by the Forest Department is slowly but surely driving the tribals in Badalkhol sanctuary area to desperation. Things will only worsen if the Forest Department does not tread carefully.