“India’s rural newspaper”, Gaon Connection, has rolled out. The 14-page weekly broadsheet was launched by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in Itaunja, a village near Lucknow, on Sunday.

“72 per cent Indians live in villages but do the villages receive 72 per cent of government funds? This newspaper will speak on such issues and many others,” said the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Dr S.B. Misra, a former geologist, who “became famous after discovering 565 million-year-old fossils in Canada, plugging a hole in Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

Dr Misra’s son, the magazine journalist turned radio storyteller, Neelesh Misra, is the brain behind Gaon Connection. A team of 20 urban and rural journalists is behind what is touted to be “India’s biggest rural media innovation”.

Photograph: courtesy Mayank Chhaya

Follow GC on Twitter: @GaonConnection

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