In 1993 in Hyderabad a group of women from different feminist organisations decided to venture into the challenging terrain of publishing a feminist magazine in Telugu and the first issue of Bhumika came out in the month of Jan1993.

Bhumika Women Collective emerged in the context of the women’s movement as a felt need to make feminist writings and analysis accessible to women who were not privileged from urban/English educational background. Women from the Bhumika collective come from diverse backgrounds, and the common felt need is one of creating awareness and disseminating ideas on women’s issues and social issues in a simple language to reach out to a wider audience. The challenge is to generate articles on relevant issues that would be understood by the masses – both men and women in rural and urban areas of Andhra Pradesh. A core group of women from the collective guide the activities in the production and distribution of the magazine.

Satyavati, Editor and Publisher of Bhumika, says one of its most important contributions was in ‘reframing the public discourse on what is a women’s issue in the context of popular women magazines that stereotype women and gender issues’. Great post, or concept note, as Satyavati calls it. Though the tone the blogger adopts is mostly impersonal, one can sense the degree of commitment and hard work that must have gone into making a niche magazine ‘relevant’ and ‘useful to everyone’, across class, caste and location, for fifteen long years.