Rohit Gandhi has won an Emmy nomination for Who Cares About Girls, a gritty documentary about child labour and prostitution, shot in India. The nomination, announced in New York last week, is in the category of Outstanding Investigative Journalism: Long Form.
Co-produced by Gandhi in collaboration with the National Geographic Film and Television, Who Cares About Girls talks about young women who broke free from their lives as maids, menial labourers and prostitutes and are now working to help others. Gandhi, a 37-year-old journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, says, “I feel the need to expose the dark layers in our society. Before we blame the politicians, we need to look at ourselves and ask if we have done anything at all to effect change.”
Who Cares About Girls zooms in on two sisters who have been rescued from middle-class homes where they were working as maids. The crew follows the girls as they get rehabilitated in a village. “Over 200 million children in India are engaged in labour, often doing the most brutal or degrading of jobs,” says Gandhi. Then there is Rinku, a Nepalese girl who was forced into prostitution at the age of nine and has now become an activist, helping others to get out of the flesh trade. The investigation takes the crew to a brothel in Delhi where a 14-year-old is caught in the trade, trying to pay the money she borrowed for her father’s kidney operation.
The film is part of Gandhi’s efforts to expose child abuse. He has also produced a film on child brides this year that has won the prestigious Edward Murrow Award. He also got the Cindy Gold Award in 2000 for investigative documentary on human organ trade. Gandhi is currently working on two documentaries. One is about the Gulabi Gang of women activists in Bundelkhand, and the other, Soldiers of Fortune, is about the rebels in Burma.
While Who Cares About Girls is yet to air in India, it has been picked up by Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen channel and telecast in the US.