Ideally, these articles will be 1,000 words or less, on average. That’s the standard we aim for. An article can go up to 1,200-1,500 words if it is very good – in terms of content, as well as writing and photographs. If it’s a story of truly exceptional merit or on a crucial subject, we can consider a longer word limit for that article – and it can go up to 2,000 words. But if you have something that needs 2,000 words, try and break it into two standalone pieces.
The number of photos in a full-length feature ranges from 4 to 8. (A diptych or triptych is counted as one image). Too many photographs, especially large ones, can actually undermine the readability of the text.

We need brief 1-2 line captions for each photo, identifying the person/ place/ activity/ event in the image.

If the writer has more than 4-8 very good photographs, they can become a Photo album of a maximum of 8-15 photos. Each of these also requires a caption.

For example, Journey through Kumartuli

See the Photo Guidelines for more on the quality of photographs for all slots on PARI.

You can also submit very brief video clips to go with – and be embedded in – an article. See the Video Guidelines for more details.

In other words, many of the stories PARI publishes will be truly multi-media and we would like you to approach a subject in that framework.

All text articles on PARI – without exception – carry photographs. In a photo story, however, the number of photos can be more and they are sequenced as a narrative. Remember, this format is aimed at telling a visuals-enabled story.
Ideally, a photo story should have around 10-12 images. Any more can get unwieldy online.

A photo story requires an introduction – that is, a couple of opening paragraphs, of up to 150 words. In this format, because the images and text combine to tell a story, the total word length should ideally not exceed 800 words.

See When the cows come home in Parkidih

Please also send brief captions for the photos in such stories. Photo stories can also be accompanied by a photo album if you have more than 10-12 very good images.

It has less text than a photo story, primarily an introduction, captions and perhaps a winding-up paragraph. It can have 12-15 photographs, with captions not exceeding 50 words each. In a photo essay, the captions themselves are the main text. The total word length should ideally not exceed 500.
See Kynja’s day at the aanganwadi

 In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

The category Musafir on PARI refers to more than just a traveller. It suggests a worldly-wise observer. These are stories from the road. They can be light-hearted, funny or even have very serious content narrated with a light touch. And while direct quotes are still required, the author’s voice can come in a lot more than in the other formats. A Musafir story can be as short as 300 words, or as long as a full-length feature. The number of photos will vary according to the length of the article – it can even be a single picture or up to a maximum of 8.
See Biswas and the bamboos on his bike and The Potato Song

If research holds your interest, take a look at our Resources section.
The Resources section is PARI’s effort at building a library of documents, studies, reports and even books, online. To make navigation of the library easier, we summarise the report’s focus. We also give these details: the report’s origin, its authors and details of publication. And we carry 5-10 ‘factoids’ from the contents, which let readers figure out whether this is a report they wish to study in detail.

Contributors can send in full soft copy (that is, in electronic form) reports with a synopsis and factoids, or even identify such material in the public domain for us to add to the PARI Resources section. For an example of a summary/ factoids, see Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector

Please note that we carry reports that are official, or independent and non-government but credible and authentic. The bulk of what we carry will perforce be government reports because that is where officialdom places data on record. Census, NSSO, central and state ministry reports, official studies and surveys, reports of the United Nations and other established international bodies and the like. We do, though, seek to also carry independent reports that are credible and serious, as we have with the reports on the threat to journalists and human rights in Bastar.

You can send in photos for PARI’s FACES endeavour – an ambitious attempt to create a facial map of the most diverse societies on earth, those across rural India.  From every single district (and each block of every district) we aim to put up portraits of at least one adult male, one adult female and one child or adolescent. Anyone can participate, provided the photograph is good enough. It is also very important that the image you send in is hi-resolution, ideally portrait orientation, and accompanied by the details of the person in the picture.
These are the details we need:

Name: Please give the full name of the person in the photo; for example, if the name is Roshan Nalaband, use this name in full, instead of just 'Roshan'.

Occupation: For example: farmer / labourer / teacher / tailor

Parents’ occupation: Where the photo is that of a child / adolescent, please try and record the parents’ occupation. See here for an example.  If the child goes to school, say ‘Student’ next to occupation and also state the occupation of her / his parents.

Age: Where possible, give the age of the individual. This will probably work better with younger people as many older rural people may not go by our concepts and notions of age, and therefore might be uncertain about it.

Village:  As stated by the person being photographed. But do note: often, when asked the name of the village, he/she is likely to give you the name of the hamlet, basti or colony of the village that he or she lives in. Hamlet / basti / colony names are not recorded in the Census or district handbooks and cannot be located on a map.  So always check this out. If it turns out to be a hamlet, then record the name of the village of which it is a part. For example:  Sainagar is the name of a hamlet in village Sukna Pratham Khanda in Kurseong block of Darjeeling district, West Bengal.  See how it is recorded here.

Block: Or any of these: tehsil / taluka / mandal / revenue division

District:

State:

Place where photo was taken: Often, the everyday people are migrant labourers. So if a person you photograph is a migrant labourer in Lucknow city, but is actually from a village in another district of Uttar Pradesh, please record both details: where the photo was taken (in this instance, in Lucknow). And where the person is originally from (for that, see the details listed above).

Date: When the photo was taken; for example: June 26, 2016

Photographer: Your name

Camera: The model of the camera used to take the shot

Quote: Try to include a brief quote from the person. This could be about anything he /she is talking about. See this example.  It just has to be a subject the individual feels strongly about. Keep it short, please.

See Photo Guidelines for more on the quality of photographs on PARI.

PARI carries video clips, video stories and documentaries. If we get short but very effective video clips along with a text story, we try to embed it within the text.
Or even carry it by itself in Little Takes

Videos that are standalone stories are also welcome, as are documentaries.

To send us any of these, please see the more detailed Video Guidelines.

In this format, 10-14 photographs are linked by the photographer’s audio captions. These are not necessarily the same as the written captions the photographer provides, but more personalised experiences. Take a look at this Talking Album, The koilawallahs of Godda
Take care to see the audio quality of the captions is good and clear. Note that the first and last audio captions can be slightly longer – up to 40 seconds each – as those will introduce and wind up the story. The remaining captions should not exceed 20-25 seconds. In all, a Talking Album should not exceed six minutes – and can be much shorter.

The Rural in the Urban, Rural Sports, Environment: You can also take pictures for these or a host of other subjects on PARI – almost anything you'd like to contribute to – provided the quality is good and the piece falls within our mandate. Visit Categories on PARI’s website for more details and to get a better idea of these possibilities.

Use the full names of people, to the best extent possible, and especially in the first instance. For example: Meeraman Chawda instead of only Meeramanbhai.
Always fully id a new person and their location, age (if relevant) and organisation/ designation (if any). For example: Mahendra Shewala, deputy sarpanch of Uruli Devachi, has eight acres of land on which he grows vegetables and jowar, bajra and other grains.

All these details need not be clustered in one paragraph but they should be available in your article.

At times, the author may have done interviews under circumstances (for example, in a train, with a large group of people) where it was not possible to ask for and note all the full names. Sometimes, the person being quoted may not want their full name to be used. But in many instances, authors forget to ask for the full names. We will, at all times, aim to use the full names of the people featured on PARI.

Name of the village(s), block (if available), district and state the story is from. For example: Bhuri Kallu lives on her own in the village of Bharkurra, in the district of Chitrakoot in south-eastern Uttar Pradesh.

What dominates, and should be foregrounded, are the voices of everyday rural people, not those of the writers or filmmakers. The latter bring perspective, readability/viewability, and more to the material. But it’s the voices and faces of everyday rural people that tell the story. After all, it's their story. Never lose sight of this. What PARI journalists and writers do falls into the art of storytelling, something that has been declining fast in journalism.
The writer is something of a fly on the wall. At times that isn't entirely possible, but strive for it. We do not want people to scour the interior and then declaim with their own emotions rather than the stories people have to tell them.

In the video films too, as in stories, we prefer that the filmmaker is invisible. If there are questions the filmmaker asks that get recorded on the film, try editing them out so that the viewer only sees the subject of the film doing the narration. If there is something you absolutely have to say in a story or film that must be told, we urge you to use the ‘blackboard’ method. See the Video Guidelines for more on this.

We cannot emphasise strongly enough that our stories must centre on everyday people. Too many ‘rural’ stories end up being more about charismatic individuals from urban areas who have ‘sacrificed’ a lucrative career to work in the countryside. Or about NGOs that have supposedly achieved a ‘silent revolution’ in rural India. We recognise that such individuals do exist and sometimes make a valuable contribution. And that there are some NGOs that do fine work. They are part of the rural scene, they can appear in stories – but they cannot be our focus. That focus remains the everyday lives of everyday people.
We would also like to avoid conflict of interests – as can happen when an activist employed by an NGO or like organisation sends in stories extolling the institution that pays his or her salary. We’re looking for stories, not puff pieces.

These are necessary for telling a more complete story. For instance, an author states that the main character in a story is unable to make ends meet, but provides no details, though these might be in his/her notes, or can be otherwise accessed. Try getting a little more about actually making ends meet at home. What does the husband bring in? How much does the woman earn? Do the kids go to school? What do they jointly pull in, and how much of it is spent on what?
Even a paragraph would be fine: what does the writer find in the kitchen, for instance, or what does she say are the essentials they just cannot give the children.

Or, for example, the story might be of a fisherwoman struggling to survive. The article would be much richer if her personal experience could be a window to the larger world of fisherwomen in that region. This might involve talking to others from the same occupation. However, this is more desirable than mandatory – at times a standalone story can work.

Linkages: Even if a story is about a single family or individual, you can locate that against a larger canvas. For instance, if an article is about farmer suicides in Maharashtra, and looks at a particular family or farmer, it can mention that this state has seen 63,000 farmers take their own lives in the past two decades.

Likewise, even if the story is tightly focused on an individual or family, you can use a quote from others (neighbours, officials, anyone else relevant to the topic). Or use data from a larger level – for instance try bringing in malnutrition figures (district, state or national, whichever is relevant) in a story exploring a hunger death.

All numerical data cited in the article must be checked against reliable or government sources (to the extent possible). For instance, if an article mentions the year a report was published, the author must re-verify that year online.
For example: An Indian Banks Association report of 2008 states….

– Here, you can verify online for IBA reports of that year.

We will need the online sources of all the meta data/official data cited – the author can give the url at which our editors can re-verify the numbers. If the author has referred to a hardcopy, he/she should ideally give the reference details (title; author/s; date; place of publication) along with the article.

In the published article on PARI, these details will not be used as full formal references, the editor will delete them. They are required only for fact-checking by the editor. But a general reference/source can (and should) still be maintained within the text when citing data.

We expect the writer to be the first fact-checker. That is, to check the authenticity of what they cite as facts in the story. Often a lot of time is lost at the editing end – and slows down publication – because the writer has not taken care to do this.

For example: As the Socio Economic and Caste Census data show, in only 8 per cent of rural households does the highest earning member make more than Rs. 10,000 a month. See, for example, The Benz and the Banjara

We need author bios of no more than two lines. For example: Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur-based journalist working with The Telegraph, Kolkata.

Were the photos taken by the author or by someone else? Please give the names and bios of all the photographers.

If you are proposing to send a story to PARI that you have also pitched to other publications, it is important you let us know about it. Otherwise, it could give rise to needless and complicated situations.
Our approval of a pitch is not a guarantee of publication. Simply put, we may like an idea and say, yes, explore it. Whether we publish the story that emerges depends on how good it is, not on how good the idea was.

Similarly, if you have sent a story to PARI and also simultaneously sent it to another publication, let us know. We are open to carrying reprints with full attribution– but we need to be informed.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.

In addition to being embedded in a full-length feature or photo story, this ‘slideshow’ can also be a standalone album, with the number of images ranging from 3 to 15. Each photo requires a brief caption.
This one – The amazing spiderwoman – has seven.