Pitara is a bi-monthly news and features magazine in simple Hindi. Read extensively across north India, Pitara has a diverse readership, which includes teachers, students, activists and newly-literate readers.
Pitara is Nirantar’s very first project! Published regularly since 1994, Pitara was started to fill a vacuum – making available informative, entertaining and simply written material for the thousands of people who learn how to read but often forget or do not read for the lack of appropriate reading material. Pitara continues to fill this need. Pitara currently has a 3,000-strong readership that covers a wide cross-section and includes individuals, government programmes and NGOs across the Hindi-speaking belt. Every year Nirantar produces six issues of Pitara.
Over the years, Pitara’s format has been modified based on readers’ feedback. Since Pitara 77, besides its regular fare each issue has explored different dimensions of a particular theme. Take for example Pitara 85 - Bhasha ke Rang aur Dhang - which looks at the different dimensions of language.
Read more about Pitara: Reading Beyond the Alphabet.PDF
An article from Reading Beyond the Alphabet: Innovations in Lifelong Literacy