Our journey began with Freelance Writers India through which we provide resources to marginalized writers. We are now a publishing cooperative that creates meaningful and radical material. This cooperative is composed of writers, editors, designers, researchers, lawyers, and more. We have no bosses. We reject the employe(e/r) relationship. Our sister project is Angarey.
<aside> ✊🏼 Welcome to Syaahi! We want to build a horizontal cooperative that grows radical publishing.
Questions? Here’s how to reach us:
A cooperative is a horizontally operated worker-owned collective that shares responsibilities and benefits. We sow and we reap: together. While making efforts to grow the cooperative, co-owners receive access to exclusive offerings. This can include but is not limited to equal voice in decision-making, equitable share in monetary gains, and skill development opportunities. A detailed plan of action will be made available for co-owners.
Our cooperative seeks to position itself as unapologetically radical. A publication that subverts dominant and repressive arms of the state, capital, and mainstream media; arms that stretch across South Asia. We reject liberal and fascist perspectives alike. We also reject the crumbs currently offered to writers (and others involved in publishing processes) in the form of non-pay, low-pay, and late-pay. We recognise the harm this slaps on to writers in conditions of poverty, and/or from minoritised castes, tribes, ethnicities, religions, genders, sexualities, and/or people who may experience disabilities. Despite the media landscape suggesting otherwise, we are the majority. Our approach to publication is, thus, majority-first. While present situations force us to live in a world ruled by money, we imagine an alternative today that at the very least reduces people’s financial struggles with fair compensation. Even though we were a volunteer-run collective, we have ensured remuneration to contributors (depending on word count) ranging from INR 5,000 to INR 10,000. Our cooperative will continue its unwavering commitment to this principle, and work towards growing these compensatory practices.
Syaahi prioritises marginalised and oppressed lives. We aim to amplify contributors who, through their writing, resist and refuse structural oppression. We publish against violent realities, and for our dreams of freedom.
We do not have a specific location, but we cater to the South Asian peoples and their global diasporas.
Reach out to [email protected] to know more about the next steps on joining our cooperative vision! Take the meaningful leap into radical publishing.
The authors of this book do not wish to make any apology for it. They are not afraid of the consequences of having launched it. We appeal to all those who are interested in this idea to get in touch with us.
Mahmud-uz-Zafar (1933, ‘In Defence of Angare: Shall We Submit to Gagging?’)
The Means Cooperative is a worker-owned mass media service located in the United States of America. Check out their vision and cooperative structure. New Internationalist is a multi-stakeholder cooperative publication based in the United Kingdom. Read more about them here. Find a global list of media cooperatives here.
<aside> 💡 Worker-owned publications and digital news models are taking the scene by storm.
“We’ve lived through enough rounds of layoffs, billionaires, and union-busting that we know the answer isn’t someone else owning it,”
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Its time to shift what ‘news’ means in South Asia. We want to drive that change. Do you?