New Delhi: ThePrint journalists Sagrika Kissu and Manasi Phadke have been honoured at the Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2025. The awards were formally announced at a function held in Mumbai Wednesday.
Sagrika Kissu, an Assistant Editor at ThePrint, won both the regional and national prizes in the web-feature category, for a story on the precarious lives of women orchestra dancers in UP and Bihar. Having spent several days with the dancers who perform at weddings, birthdays and even funerals, she gathered their testimonies of harassment, unstable earnings and stigma that follows them home. The feature shows how these male preserves have gradually overshadowed traditional family celebrations. Men book performers to deliver bawdy routines, and villagers treat a dancer’s name as a status symbol.
The story documents how guns are brandished as props, how requests for sexual favours are made, and how spouses and children are kept away. These findings form the heart of a report that traces social, technological and economic forces, from Bhojpuri music’s reach to smartphones and social media, that have pushed these spaces centre-stage.
Manasi Phadke, a Deputy Editor for ThePrint in Mumbai, received a jury appreciation citation for a ground report on how Goan women entrepreneurs, forming a third of the state’s startups, are recasting the state’s image from party capital to start-up hub.
Phadke profiled founders building companies in technology, sustainable retail, arts education, marketing and artisanal products. They speak of Goa’s unusual mix: quick administrative clearances, incubators such as a state-backed start-up promotion cell, a strong creative culture and a work-life balance impossible in India’s metros.
She also explored the challenges: erratic power supply, dependence on tourism cycles and limited industrial infrastructure. Yet, these women founders have turned these constraints into opportunities by building niche, design-forward, high-value ventures.