The Hindu’s West Bengal correspondent Shiv Sahay Singh won the Ramnath Goenka award in the “Uncovering India Invisible” category for his 2019 story “Death by Digital Exclusion” which exposed how the Jharkhand government’s insistence on digitisation deprived people living on the margins of the benefits of the public distribution system (PDS).
The story detailed the Jharkhand government’s decision to plug leakages in the PDS by linking all ration cards to Aadhaar. Beneficiaries, who could not link their ration card with Aadhaar or had no Aadhaar cards, were denied ration. This led to major distress among tribal communities. While there were reports of deaths due to malnutrition, the State government not only denied them, it also did not attempt to bring the families that had alleged malnutrition deaths into the PDS. Tridip K Mandal of The Quint is the broadcast media winner under the same category.
