#Thread
Just wanted to park it here that after 13 years of journalism and over a dozen international and Indian awards for my work, I still don't have a press card or any 'proof' that I am a journalist.

I have been working as an independent journalist for the last seven years.

Most of my reporting does not involve high profile people and tall buildings and so I have mostly managed without a press card.

But in Covid19 times, when there are restrictions & attacks on media has increased multifold, it is impossible to report from the ground without one.

All these years, I have resisted making a fake press card. I have also not used my own journalism connections to eke out a press card on principle. Since so many freelance journalists across the country dont have similar privileges.

With media organisations, including orgs who have closed bureaus as a cost-cutting measure, dependent on freelance journalists (including one who are called stringers, not even given the dignified with the word journalist), no structures created to safeguard our right to report.

I speak from experience since this does not stop at not having a press card. It includes legal costs of court cases for your stories, newsgathering expenses that you hardly remunerated for and many basic benefits that you will never get.

If you are an editor in a news org, or a person on board of a press body, please take the issue of providing identity cards to freelance journalists seriously. Start thinking of a system to address this. A system that is not dependent on favors or caste, class, gender networks.

We know there are no contracts for freelance work in India, we also know that we are paid less than peanuts & those peanuts don't even arrive in our accounts because of YEARS of delay. The least that can be done is to let us report with dignity without fearing the police baton.

Everybody benefits from the work od freelance journalists in the New Media model. A transparent structure to provide press cards will help news organizations too. By not doing so, people are being pushed to make fraud ids or use their privilege networks. TO JUST DO THEIR WORK.

Discourse about freelance journalism in India falls on deaf ears. But this is 2020 & we must demand our editors, press bodies to change. They all are complicit in pushing a gig economy as a revenue model. So all talk about press freedom is hollow if this disparity continues.

I know this is definitely going into thin air.

But like I said, this will remain parked on my Twitter timeline. Just so that no person in decisin making role in media can turn around and say 'I didnt know.' (n/n)