Based in India
Nominated by the People’s Archive of Rural India
“Parth’s significant contribution was showing the harrowing COVID death toll on journalists in India. He faced personal risk to report this story under very challenging conditions. He told the rural story of the pandemic in India when we can all get a little obsessed with reporting this from teeming cities – he reflected their struggles and gave them a voice.”
-Martin Adler Prize Jury
“At a time when most journalists are busy chasing stories that have the potential to go viral, Parth has been consistently reporting from some of the remotest parts of the country. His dedication and commitment towards giving a voice to the voiceless is peerless. Very few reporters of his age are as relentless in covering some of the most marginalised sections of society. The stories he does are hardly covered in the mainstream media. While most coverage has focused on cities, Parth has reported from the villages, where the devastation is most apparent.
He is one of those rare reporters who has mastered the art of storytelling. His ability to adapt while writing for different outlets is admirable, considering that he writes for national and international outlets. Even after working so hard to get these stories, he never makes it about himself, and always remains an objective observer. For that, I think he deserves the recognition.”
-Namita Waikar, Managing Editor, People’s Archive of Rural India
Read some of Parth’s work for People’s Archive of Rural India:
Biography
Parth Nikhil is an independent journalist based in Mumbai. Over the past seven years, he has written for multiple publications – national and international – including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and People’s Archive of Rural India, among others, covering rural India and sociopolitical stories. He was awarded a fellowship at People’s Archive of Rural India in 2017-18, during which time he documented the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region. Through this fellowship, he examined the lives of farmers and migrant workers unfolding across a year through 30 different stories. The European Commission honoured him with the Lorenzo Natali Media Prize in 2018 for his stories on migrant sugarcane cutters. He was also awarded the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Prize for reporting on the farm crisis and was part of the PARI team that won the Prem Bhatia Award for environmental reporting in 2020.