Navkiran Natt, an active participant in the 2020-21 Farmers’ Movement, and co-editor of Trolley Times, a newsletter that emerged from the struggle, was recently in Kolkata to speak at the 5th People’s Literary Festival. Sudarshana Chakraborty from GroundXero spoke to Navkiran about Trolley Times, journalism & future plans for the newsletter. 

Sudarshana: What is the present status of Trolley Times or how are you operating at present as an independent media initiative?

Navkiran: Right now we are no longer ‘publishing’ Trolley Times. Since the farmers’ movement concluded, we stopped publishing it. But we are experimenting with other forms, like documentaries, news reels and we are putting all contents on our website plus on our social media handles. The problems we were facing & why we decided not to continue publishing Trolley Times are (a) distribution became really difficult for us. When we were sitting at the protest sites on the borders it was easy to reach the people, we used to walk and distribute the newsletter among the farmers and others camping on the borders. But now when the farmers are back in Punjab to their villages & towns, we don’t have that sort of network to reach them with our newsletter (b) publishing the newsletter was very costly. We were getting a lot of financial support at that time, I guess because of the movement itself, but now it’s difficult for us to sustain the newspaper, financially as well.

Sudarshana: How did you start Trolley Times; why did you think of coming out with a newsletter?

Navkiran:  At that time, our primary focus was on the farmers sitting at the protest sites. They were mostly elderly people, who were not very tech savvy, and were not habituated to reading news on smartphones. When the movement started, initially, there was a lot of chaos. The protesters were not from one single organization, so there were multiple organizations who were leading the movement & for the same reason there were people from different organizations who were sitting at the protest sites. There was no single network to connect all of them – from the leadership to the protesters or vice-versa. That’s why we thought of coming out with a newsletter. Also for the rural elderly people news means a ‘paper’ –  a ‘newspaper’. That’s why we decided to come up with the newspaper – Trolley Times. Later we also started to circulate it on our social media handles. This helped us to reach a far wider audience as well.

Sudarshana: Trolley Times became very popular across the country. Now that you have stopped publishing the newsletter, what are your readers saying?

Navkiran: Wherever we go, people tell us not to stop it. But it was not possible for us to carry on. Also all of us who were working were doing it voluntarily. We were engaged in other jobs. Few of our team members are into full time jobs. Few of them were students. Once the movement ended, people also started giving priority to their main professions or works. Because when you are in a struggle there is a different kind of push, enthusiasm or spirit. Once the farmers left, that too after a glorious victory, I believe, the mood changed, and people also started prioritizing other things. I’m not saying there was any lack of priority towards Trolley Times, but logistically things were not in favor of us.

Yes, people want us to continue it. But we were not able to continue publishing it, but definitely we are still continuing Trolley Times in other forms. We have our own website which we have put up  during the movement. We are continuing with the website. We are still working voluntarily.

Sudarshana: Are you planning to concentrate on only the farmers’ issues or focus on other socio-political issues?

Navkiran: Now we are making small documentaries or newsreels. Our one focus area is definitely the agrarian issues but we are also focusing on Punjab in general – cultural aspects of Punjab, environment, these issues are directly or indirectly related to agriculture in Punjab. So yes, we are definitely focusing on other aspects.

Sudarshana: Do you have any revenue model to sustain?

Navkiran: We want to have one. But right now we don’t have (laughs). We want to make it self-sustained.

Sudarshana: That brings us to the next question – how do you perceive journalism? 

Navkiran: I don’t remember the exact quote at this moment, but the crux of that is – journalism is supposed to be neutral. But, that was not the case for us. Our commitment was towards the farmers’ movement. I don’t know how people who study journalism think about it, but for us definitely it was not a neutral thing. I remember a few people telling us back then to take the government’s view in consideration as well. But we were like – ‘NO’. The State has a huge infrastructure. They were, they are still propagating whatever they want to. And to counter that narrative was our primary aim. So we did not want to have that neutrality or objectivity. Moreover for us Trolley Times was a form of resistance. A newsletter was a form of resistance because we were trying to bring out the movements’ perspectives, we were trying to raise the protesting farmers’ voices. This is the main difference which I believe was there as compared to mainstream journalism. Even in mainstream journalism, they only claim to be neutral. But we know nobody is neutral (laughs). In this system you can’t afford to be neutral. If you are neutral in this system, then you have other kinds of privileges.

Sudarshana: Do any of you in Trolley Times come from a journalism background? 

Navkiran:  No, none of us have studied journalism or have a journalism background. I’m a dentist.

Sudarshana: Okay, so what kind of challenges did you face while bringing out Trolley Times? Like in terms of gathering news, writing them, editing them, publishing etc.?

Navkiran: None of us have studied journalism or have a journalism background. I’m a dentist. For us everything was new. It worked both in favor of us and threw many difficulties before us. Why in favor? Because we didn’t have any set pattern, where you are supposed to work in a certain way, we didn’t have that sort of limitation. So we were free to experiment. Secondly, as we didn’t have any training in the profession, so we were not aware of many challenges. We were learning while doing the thing. We made a lot of mistakes. Also we didn’t have that sort of infrastructure. I remember at the protest sites we were mostly operating from our phones, typing on phones. I remember in one edition, some copy-paste thing happened, in one article a paragraph was repeated. In another edition, the very first paragraph of the main article got missing! So, we did that sort of blunders (laughs). But I guess, it was a war field kind of situation. There were days when there was no internet connection, the internet was blacked out. We were not even able to send text messages. I remember at that time we used to travel 10 kilometers just to send one article to someone & then come back again and few of our friends were working remotely at that time. So yes, those kinds of difficulties were there.

Sudarshana: Did you face any kind of threats?

Navkiran: Yeah, yeah. There were arrest warrants against me, especially after the 26^th January incident [Republic Day Tractor Parade], they raided many of our friends’ places. They did their best to scare us. But they couldn’t, because we were together. Thousands of people were sitting together. The people’s strength saved us.

Sudarshana: It was the demand of the time that you people became journalist of the movement; as you have already mentioned you chose not to be ‘neutral’ but to be a voice of the movement. In the coming days what kind of journalism do you want to carry?

Navkiran: I guess, we would like to stick to our model only. Because as I’ve already mentioned, the State has a huge infrastructure and it pushes its narratives through so many mediums. But people don’t have that advantage. So, I guess, these small initiatives led by masses are the only options mass movements have. So, we would like to stick to our initial model.

Sudarshana: Would you like to call it an alternative to the mainstream model? 

Navkiran: Ummm … definitely we can call it an alternative model. But then again, it’s up to us, what we mean by alternative or what is mainstream. I would like to call us mainstream but mainstream of the masses. This sort of experiment is also not the first one of its kind. Even in the past people did this sort of activism. People started newsletters from the movement.

Sudarshana: In bringing out Trolley Times how was participation of women like?

Navkiran: It was not really good. I was the only woman in the main team of Trolley Times. But in our extended team – contributors, translators – there were a lot of women. But at the protest sites, where our core team was operating, I was the only woman.

Sudarshana: Do you see any particular reason behind this?

Navkiran: Ummm…no, actually, there was no particular reason behind that. It just happened to be like that. See, we became a team – like somebody knew someone else – he knew me & then I knew somebody else. So, basically, people who were present at the protest sites & who knew each other, that’s how this team came in shape. So there was no particular reason behind such gendered things. I remember there was another girl in the beginning but as she returned to Punjab & was not at the protest site anymore, she was not there in the core team. In that way it was more about who was present at the protest site and volunteering to do the job.

Sudarshana: Now are you planning to bring on board more women and raise women’s voices?

Navkiran: Definitely. Although in the core team there were not many women, we definitely tried to cover all the aspects of the movement, say gender, caste, religion etc. In that way we tried to make it really inclusive. And we focused on the intersectionality of the movement. That was our priority.

Sudarshana: Your website is running, you are making documentaries & also experimenting with other forms. Do you have any plan to come back with the print version of Trolley Times or do you want to continue only online in the digital format?

Navkiran: For the time being, I think, we will continue with only the digital form, because publishing requires other kinds of logistics which we can’t afford, I guess. Most of these mainstream newspapers heavily rely on advertisements. Even then many mainstream newspapers are struggling these days. In our case it was our very conscious decision that we won’t take any advertisements. So, this is another reason, I guess, that we are not able to publish it anymore.

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