In September, INMA awarded 30 young professionals around the world with its fifth “30 Under 30” award as part of its Young Professionals Initiative. This is the 24th in a series of 30 features about the impressive rising media stars who are shaping our industry.

As an independent journalist and documentary photographer from a small town in Maharashtra, India, Sanket Jain has dedicated himself to covering aspects of climate change that mostly go ignored.

“I spend over 300 days a year in India’s countryside, often in challenging conditions, reporting on climate change and how it erodes common people’s lives,” he said.

His work has highlighted issues such as the impact of climate change on menopausal women, the rise in soil salinity, the mental health of women athletes, and substance abuse — all through the lived experiences of everyday people.

“No newsroom in India currently has a full-time rural correspondent,” Sanket said. “This means that 833 million rural Indians aren’t [considered] newsworthy, which I feel is wrong.”

To change that, Sanket started pitching stories about India’s remote villages to global publications, and they have been warmly received. His articles and photographs have appeared in MIT Technology Review, Science Magazine, Yale Climate Connections, Health Policy Watch, Wired, USA Today, and more, allowing him to reach a massive and diverse audience.

Along the way, he has earned nearly 20 journalism awards, three prestigious fellowships, and — most importantly to him — his work has inspired hundreds of other journalists to do the same.

“[This has] brought tremendous change to the mainstream media,” Sanket said. “My stories from India’s remote villages have found readers in the USA, UK, Colombia, South Africa, Kenya, Australia, and several European countries.”

This year, Jain was honoured with the Forbes 30 Under 30 for his consistent coverage of climate change and its impact on India’s marginalised communities. He is eager to continue his work and change the future.

He pointed to some of the events of 2024, including the extreme heat wave in several parts of India, where temperatures were near or exceeded 50 degrees Celsius, flooding in the United States, and rampant wildfires around the world.

To make sense of these events, he said, it is crucial to report on how they impact people and open conversations about what needs to be done.

“In the next five years, my major goal is to ensure a rising coverage of climate change through the lived experiences of everyday people,” Sanket said. “Climate change is the biggest and most underreported story of the century, and I want to change this in my work.”

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