Not an easy road for freelancers

Laasya Shekhar was a reporter for 10 years when she was abruptly laid off in December 2023 from her organisation in the middle of a wave of retrenchments. The 31-year-old was six-months pregnant at the time. “I began to doubt my competence and started pitching left, right and centre…I knew nobody was going to hire me during the pregnancy,” she said.

Her first piece as a freelancer was published the same month. After the initial shock wore off, she found that it gave her the flexibility to work in timings that suited her and create a body of stories that she enjoyed reporting on. But, the freedom of time comes with a heavy price of financial insecurity. “Freelancers can’t get a bank loan…We neither have payslips nor a steady income. I was asked for these when I tried to apply for a personal loan last year and I finally gave up on the idea,” she said. Her husband, Kenneth Hananiah, who is the primary breadwinner, is an entrepreneur owning a homestay in Chennai.

Shekhar’s payments are pending with three organisations for a period of 1.5 years, five months and two months respectively. “I have to keep following up and it is really hard to plan when I don’t know how much I will get paid every month,” she said.

Accessibility is another major challenge. “A politician who used to speak to me regularly does not attend my calls now. He tells me that if I write for other publications, it doesn’t benefit him,” she said. It’s a problem she faces with common people too. Last year, she was in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor for a report on the human-elephant conflict when a farmer whose crops were destroyed by the pachyderm refused to talk to her. “He wanted to know where the story was going to be published and I was honest that the pitch is in progress. He asked me who would even read this,” she said.

But the biggest challenge, without doubt, is one of safety – something that has forced her to work largely over the phone.“Independent journalism should also be valued,” she said.