Beyond Storytelling: Reclaiming Voice and Agency Through Participatory Video Among the Sahariya Tribe

Abstract

Participatory Video (PV) offers a transformative medium for reclaiming voice and agency among marginalised communities. This paper draws from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) doctoral research project with 72 Sahariya tribal youth in Rajasthan, India, which employed PV to document their lived realities of water scarcity and governance failures (https://youtu.be/AODuocliBOs). For the Sahariya, water insecurity is not only an everyday struggle marked by long hours of fetching water, seasonal depletion, and unequal distribution, but also a structural injustice shaped by neglect and exclusion. Through PV, youth were able to narrate these embodied hardships while also asserting representational control, cultivating technical and reflective capacities, and fostering intra-community dialogue. Moving beyond narrative collection, the study demonstrates how PV transformed individual testimonies of thirst into collective claims for justice. Emphasis is placed on the ethical scaffolding required for meaningful engagement— including readiness assessment, safety protocols, and context-sensitive facilitation grounded in respect, equity, and self-determination. Anchored in critical theory, anti-oppressive practice, and subaltern perspectives, the paper positions PV not merely as a method but as a praxis of resistance, relational accountability. It concludes by recommending the integration of PV with complementary participatory tools to deepen inclusivity and amplify impact in addressing water insecurity.