Anna M.M. Vetticad wins Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Media Person of the Year
Anna M.M. Vetticad, independent journalist and member of the Network of Women in Media, India, won the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Media Person of the Year (2025).
Anna M.M. Vetticad’s citation read, “In a field where journalists often become conduits for publicity and propaganda, Ms Vetticad’s reportage on the entertainment industry breaks new ground and enables a deeper understanding of our society — since films have the power to influence millions of minds. Ms Vetticad is honoured for offering insights into the social and political climate of today’s India through the prism of its mass entertainment media. For her sharp analysis, her social commitment and skill in uncovering important truths through her diligent journalism, Anna M.M. Vetticad is the winner of the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Media Person of the Year 2025.”
Links to stories mentioned in her citation:
How A Modi-Era Ecosystem Of Official & Unofficial Censorship Is Transforming India’s Film Industries
पीके रोज़ी: दलित महिला ने जो राह बनायी, उस पर कितना चल पाया है भारत का सिनेमा
DDLJ’s dubious 30-year legacy of soft-pedalled patriarchy
The Media Foundation also presented the Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism and the Kamla Mankekar Award for Journalism on Gender at the annual event held at the India International Centre, New Delhi on 20 March 2026. The awards were given away by P. Sainath, journalist and Founder-Editor, People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).
Congratulations, Anna!
Anna M.M. Vetticad’s acceptance speech:
Modesty is not my strong suit, so believe me when I tell you, I did not expect to get this award either this year or ever. Not because I don’t deserve it. I do. But because entertainment journalism is simply not viewed with the seriousness that it deserves.
And so I’d like to thank the Media Foundation and the jury this year, because in giving me this award, you are sending out a message to every young journalist who is interested in entertainment, culture and the arts, and who is still hearing what I heard 32 years ago when I entered this profession. I was told I’m too serious for entertainment. I was told that cinema and culture is not serious enough. And as my work became increasingly political, I was asked if I was hoping to “graduate” to political journalism. But there is no graduating. Because all of us, whether we are on the cinema beat or covering BJP or the Parliament or foreign affairs, if we’re doing our job right, we are all political journalists.
I’d like to thank Madhu Jain, S. Kalidas, Maithili Rao and all the others in whose footsteps I follow. I’m so grateful to all the editors who have supported me, understood my approach to journalism and platformed me…in this year in particular, Article 14, Himal Southasian, BBC Hindi, Times of India, Economic Times, FIPRESCI-India’s E-CineIndia, editors like Samar Halarnkar, Roman Gautam, Pradeep Kumar, Saubhik Chakrabarti, Leena Reghunath, Nayantara Narayanan, Dhanya Rajendran, Premendra Mazumder, Indrajit Hazra, and so many people who I can’t name because I have been given a time limit. I’d also like to thank the Network of Women in Media, India, for teaching me the power of solidarity. And I’d like to thank my baby sister, who is my rock and my support.
Let us all, once and for all, recognise something that every terrorist, every fascist, and every despot in history has understood: that the arts have the power to reach and influence people in a way that no political speech can, and therefore, that what we as entertainment journalists do is essential and crucial.
Thank you once again, Media Foundation, friends and family who have gathered here.
And I have one last thing to say before I leave you.
I would like to leave you with an exhortation, to raise our voices and condemn the appropriation of the feminism of the women of Iran that is being used to justify the bombing of the women, children and men of Iran.
Stop this war.
End the genocide of Palestinians.
Free Palestine.
