Bhasha Singh (Author) Bhasha Singh is a journalist, activist and writer. Born in New Delhi, she grew up in Lucknow and received her MA and LLB degrees from Lucknow University. Journalism brought her to Delhi once again in 1996, after which she has worked with Amar Ujala Karobar, Amar Ujala, Navbharat Times, Outlook weekly, Nai Duniya and then back with Outlook. She has written extnsively on the issues of manual scavenging and farmers suicides in north India. She received the Prabha Dutt Fellowship in 2005 for working on the issue of manual scavenging. She received the Ramnath Gonenka Award for best Hindi Journalist in 2007 for her story on manual - scavenging women, especially the baltiwalis of Kanpur and the dabbu-walis of WEst Bengal. In 2008 she received a fellowship from Panos for her study on the health of female manual scavengers. The National Foundation of India ( NFI0 gave her a felloship in 2006-07 for her study on farmer suicides in north India. She also writes stories and poems in Hindi, a few of which have been published. At present, she is assistant editor in Outlook ( Hindi).
In many parts of the country, the inhuman practice of manual scavenging continues to thrive in spite of a law banning it. Moreover, the people forced to carry out this degrading work remain invisible to the rest of us, pushed to the margins of society without any recourse to help or hope. Now, for the first time, award-winning journalist Bhasha Singh turns the spotlight on this ignored community. In Unseen, based on over a decade of research, she unveils the horrific plight of manual scavengers across eleven states in the country while also recording their ongoing struggle for self-empowerment. Previously published in Hindi to both critical and commercial success, this is an explosive work of reportage on a burning issue.
