Acknowledgments

It was the Founder Chairman of ThoughtWorks, Neville Roy Singham, who made me believe that the People’s Archive of Rural India in its present form was possible. Roy thought the project was nuts, but loved its audacity. Drawing from a (physical) photo exhibition of mine in 2011, he laid out the possibilities of a fully curated photo exhibition – and more – online. We were able to use the original text panels online too, and you can see the outcome of that effort on Visible Work, Invisible Women.


At every stage, subsequently, Roy’s ideas and energy pushed forward the making of PARI. No acknowledgement of his contribution can be strong enough.


When PARI was still a fledgling notion, Prof. Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, now Dean of Faculty, Liberal Arts & Professional Studies of York University, Toronto, made a critical contribution to its ideas, concepts and clarity. The strong education-related component of PARI owes a great deal to her influence.


Volunteer techies from ThoughtWorks India made the PARI platform possible. Without them, none of this would have materialised. Many helped in immeasurable ways, but Manoj Mahalingam (then with TW) and Satish Viswanathan played key roles in getting us off the ground. Siddharth Adelkar was and is central to our overall effort.


As PARI enters Phase 2 of its existence, we have Aditya Dipankar making an astonishing difference to the website’s design and appearance. We also have the inimitable Thejaswi Puthraya who is there for us, from before the launch, on all matters tech and some beyond.


Scores of others helped in big and many ways:


Software Development Team: Launch Phase

Anilkumar Kodi

Aruna Shanmugakumar

Arvind Ram A.

Balachander Swaminathan

Devarajan N.

Dinesh Kumar

Gaurav Manoharrav Ingalkar

Gopinath Jayabalan

Gowri Jayalakshmi R.

Jayakumar Chinnappan (Tech Lead, final lap)

Jeyakar J. Vaiz

Manoj S. Mahalingam (Tech Lead)

Mohit Shankarrao Pote

Mubashar Nadeem Sibgathullah

Pradipta Kundu

Raj Kumar

Ram Ramalingam

Ramalingam Singaravel

Satish Viswanathan

Senthil V. S.

Suganthi Krishnavathi T.

Thejaswi Puthraya

Vivek Singh

Logistics Team

Baskar G.

Karthik T.

Poornima R. S.

Ratnakar Nath

Swecha Technology Team

Bhuvan Krishna

Kiran Chandra

Praveen Chandrahas

Digital Archivist

Venkataraaman S.

Software Development Team: Design Phase

Deepan Rajkumar R.

Deepthi R. (Tech Lead)

Gayathri M. (Team Lead)

Jayakumar Chinnappan (Tech Lead)

Lokesh Sharma

Nimesh Pulikaparambil

Olivia Waring

Sankar Parameswaran

Satish Viswanathan

Venkatesa Madhan

Vidhyalakshimi S.

Vinoth Kumar R.

Inception Team

David Siang Fong Oh

Kartik Kannan

Koundinya Goparaju

Nikhileshwar Gamedhar

Ruchi Mahajan

Shashank Raghavendra

Design Team

Aditya Dipankar (Team Lead)

Gaurav Sharma

Samir Bellare

Shiraz Iqbal

Suvani Suri

Legal Advisers

Rina Kamath

Rishab Bailey


Translators

Crazy Frog Media Team

Mohan G.N. (Lead)

Naren H R

Prasad Naik

Rajaram Tallur

Sandhyarani N.

Santosh Tamprapani

Shama Nandibetta

Other Translators

Chandan Dey

Chhaya Deo

Chinta T. K.

Debasmita Bhowmik

Hemant Shah

Jyotsna V.

Kaushal Kaloo

Kavitha Muralidharan

Medha Kale

Naren H.R.

Nibha Rani Roy

Pallavi Kulkarni

Pallavi Malshe

Pushpa Kandaswamy

Qamar Tabrez

Rashmi Rekha Das

Ratna Bharali Talukdar

Saravanan P.K.

Shaji K.A.

Shirish Khare

Siddharth Chakrabarti

Siddharthan Sundaram

Smita Khator

Subramanian Sundararaman

Uma Maheshwari

Usha Turaga-Revelli

Vilasini

Vishnu Varatharajan


Core Group, Support, Admin

Aditi Chandrasekhar

Amita Joseph

Amiya Pani

Aparna Karthikeyan

Bharat Patil

Bini Bharucha

Biraj Patnaik

Chitrangada Choudhury

Deepa Bhatia

Divya Jain

Gauri Adelkar

Hutokshi Doctor

Jaideep Hardikar

Jayati Vora

Jyoti Shinoli

Kavita Carneiro

Lubaina Kitabi

Madhusree Mukerjee

Mathew Cherian

Mausumi Bhattacharyya

Namita Waikar

Naveen Roy Benadict

Olivia Waring

Onkar Mandlekar

Praveen Chandrahas

Purusottam Thakur

Revathi R.

Rishab Bailey

Sainath P.

Samyukta Shastri

Satish Viswanathan

Shalini Singh

Sharmila Joshi

Shreya Katyayini

Siddharth Adelkar

Sinchita Maji

Sweta Daga

Subuhi Jiwani

Sukhada Tatke

Thejaswi Puthraya

Urvashi Sarkar

Vidyut Kale

Vishaka George

Zahra Latif


A very special thanks to P.R. Gandhi, Kartik Shah, Deepak Soni and Eesha Thakkar of P.R. Gandhi & Co, Mumbai, and Prakash Shah of Delhi, for their invaluable assistance.


We also wish to acknowledge the huge encouragement and support we have got, and continue to get, from individuals like  Abhijit Dutta, Anil Choudhury, Mariam Ram, Romi Mahajan, Sudarshan Loyalka, Sudhanva Deshpande and Vijay Prashad.


We are greatly indebted to the volunteers, journalists, filmmakers and other contributors who continue to gift us so much time and labour. They are too many in number to list here. There may be a few names we’ve missed out for which we seek pardon. There are also some whom we cannot name because, alas, of where they are working.


P. Sainath

Founder Editor, PARI