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.