On October 11, 1980, the Delhi edition of the Indian Express published a news item in single column on an inside page headlined "10 undertrials blame police for losing sight." It concerned a habeas corpus petition moved in the Supreme Court on behalf of undertrial prisoners in Bhagalpur jail in Bihar who "alleged that the police deprived them of their eyesight by using acid".

The sketchy report attracted little notice. But more than a month later, a well-researched, detailed and strikingly-presented follow-up shook Parliament.

On November 22, the front page of the paper displayed the picture of a blinded man under the heading "Eyes punctured twice to ensure total blindness." The article by Arun Sinha, the Patna Correspondent, drew attention to the atrocity. Bihar Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra reluctantly ordered an inquiry. Two days later, the matter was raised in Parliament. The weeklies took up the story, and published more close-ups of the blinded prisoners, with gory details of eyeballs being pierced with cycle spokes and acid poured into them. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said she was sickened and phoned the Chief Minister, who, on November 30 suspended 15 policemen. The expose continued with Indian Express Executive Editor Arun Shourie writing two front-page articles criticising the administrative, police and jail procedures which allowed such atrocities to take place.

The Bhagalpur blindings provide an object lesson in the crucial contribution that sustained journalistic research can make in creating public awareness of human rights, more so in a traditional society in which entrenched abuses are apt to be overlooked. The reporter must be able to place the abuse in its wider legal, social and constitutional context to enable the reader to realise its implications. Stories on human rights must touch the conscience of the reader if they are to arouse rethinking of traditional norms. This requires skill in presentation as well. But the impact can be more lasting and more valuable to society than other newspaper events.

In Bhagalpur, many residents protested against the suspension of the policemen, arguing that such punishment deterred crime more effectively than protracted legal cases. It took a sustained campaign on the rights of prisoners, together with the impact of pictures of the blinded men, to touch the public conscience and expose similar brutal practices elsewhere.

In recent years, media has reflected and further strengthened increasing awareness of human rights in many areas in which they were overlooked before. Exploitation and ill-treatment of domestic workers, often children, is still routine in many households. But a series of press reports describing the cruel conditions in which they are often kept has pierced the silence and forced the police to intervene.

Special cells have been set up to deal with violence against and ill-treatment of women following sustained exposure of dowry deaths and other crimes.

Bonded labour - workers and children chained to fields or workplace for their lifetimes to repay old debts - is treated as an offence only after the press joined social activists in exposing the evil. Now the police are active, at least in Delhi. On September 10, 2000, it was reported that the "South District (Delhi) police have rescued 19 children from Bihar who were being used as bonded labourers." They were between six and 12 years of age. But investigations into the trauma of the children and the circumstances in which they were bonded in Bihar are missing.

Few countries, if any, have inherited such a wide-ranging legacy of social, cultural, economic and other restrictions on human rights as India. At the same time, India has given itself a Constitution guaranteeing human rights to an extent unequalled for a country of its size and complexity. But human rights abuses persist; in some areas they have increased. The primary reason lies in widespread ignorance of the rights due to every citizen of the country, even fifty years after the Constitution came into force in 1950. India was a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations even earlier, in 1948.

India has nurtured a free press since it became independent, except for the brief experience of censorship under the Emergency regulations of 1975-76. This provides an opportunity to create widespread awareness of human rights, a social obligation yet to be adequately fulfilled, as evident from India's low listing in the annual UN Human Development Reports. As a developing country, the range of human rights issues requiring media intervention is particularly wide, with a marked social content. This was recognised by the United Nations in December 1986, when the Universal Declaration was expanded to include Right to Development. Access to education, health services, food, housing, employment and fair distributions of income were mentioned specifically. Measures to ensure that women have an active role in development were stressed.

Few papers have taken up the challenge; it needs study and skill to rouse reader interest in often distant processes of human development. But reports selected by the Press Institute of India for publication in Grassroots, its monthly journal on development reporting, demonstrate that such stories can stand out and have a far more lasting impact than routine news stories, however big their headlines. Kalpana Sharma of The Hindu received a prize for her sensitive treatment of the gradual change in caste relations enabling lower caste girls in a Karnataka village to defy the traditional custom of "sitting in the laps" of upper caste elders, and bring out what this meant for social reform. Latha Jishnu's account of the transformation of a remote backward village in Madhya Pradesh by a locally conceived literacy programme has helped promote literacy in the region. Other reports make such issues as panchayati raj, exploitation of tribals, preservation of forests and water conservation meaningful for the urban reader.

One of the biggest contributions of the press in recent years is to make the right to information a national issue. The campaign for right to information began five years ago with villagers of south Rajasthan demanding access to official files containing details of money disbursed for local development works. They knew that much of the money was misappropriated, but could not prove it without access to the files. Though opposed by the local bureaucracy, they were able to establish corruption in some cases. Taken up by the press, especially local newspapers, the campaign spread to many parts of the country. At the time of writing, four states have passed their own right to information legislation and the Central Government has introduced a Bill in Parliament.

That the press has a role in promoting awareness of human rights, then described as social reform, was realised long before Independence. In 1823, the noted Bengali author, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, brought out weeklies in three languages to campaign against caste discrimination and sati and for widow remarriage. Social reformers elsewhere followed his example. Nearly a century later, Mahatma Gandhi, the most outstanding exponent of journalism in the service of human rights, entered the field. He focussed on the evil of untouchability but also campaigned for women's rights, basic education, prisoner's rights (long before Bhagalpur), community health, rural employment and other development objectives later adopted by the United Nations.

In 1933, Gandhi brought out the first issue of Harijan, or God's children, his name for untouchable. It marshalled support, including a contribution from Rabindranath Tagore, for the Temple Entry Bill that sought to give untouchables the right to enter temples, the first step in their liberation. That the Bill was defeated in the Central Assembly and officially described as "a serious invasion of private rights" indicates the temper of the times. Largely due to Gandhi's sustained campaign at public meetings and in print, untouchability was abolished and its practice forbidden in 1950 under Article 17 of the Constitution. But, as recounted vividly by the prize-winning journalist P. Sainath in a series of articles in The Hindu, it continues to be practised in many ways. The challenge to eradicate the most deep-rooted denial of human rights in India survives.