When Raju Jangid came across open-collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia in 2011, he realised that the platform had very few articles in Hindi — the language spoken by half-a-billion people in India. Ten years later, he has written about 1,800 articles on the platform and edited around 57,000.

However, for Jangid, who hails from Thadiya village in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur district, the journey wasn’t easy. 

Initially, “I couldn’t understand anything, what is Wikipedia, what type of content is written on it,” he told Opoyi. Also, he didn’t own a mobile phone, so it took a lot of time to learn, he said.

On January 22, 2015, he uploaded his first article, which he wrote not on a laptop or smartphone, but a Samsung keypad mobile. Although he doesn’t remember what the article was about, he told Opoyi, it was about some nearby village.

“I wanted to write in Hindi and Wikipedia is a good platform,” Jangid said, when asked what prompted him in the first place to take up this task. “At that time, there were very few articles in Hindi. So I thought, if I write, it’ll fulfill my interest and the language will also get a boost,” he added.

But creating articles on keypad mobile wasn’t easy for him. “I couldn’t create longer articles. Just 100 to 150 words long. If I created longer than that, either the mobile used to hang or the text used to get deleted,” he said.

Jangid had to drop out of school after Class 10 due to his family’s financial situation. He went to Pune in Maharashtra to work with his brother, as a carpenter. “I worked from 9 in the morning to 9 in the night and used to write articles on Wikipedia, after that,” he told Opoyi. 

While working in Pune, he completed his schooling and did Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Hindi literature.

On what kept him motivated to write on the platform, given one isn’t paid by Wikipedia, Jangid said, “Wikipedia is among the top five websites in the world. When one searches on Google, a Wikipedia page generally comes at the top. It felt good to know that my article was being read by millions of people.”

Also, “it doesn’t take that long to write an article. One generally spends that much time on social media websites, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it’s better to spend that much time on Wikipedia. Our knowledge gets enhanced and so does our readers’,” Jangid said.

Recognising his work, Wikipedia, in 2016, gave him a laptop and an internet connection.

‘Bharat mein coronavirus (coronavirus in India)’ was one of his articles, which according to Jangid might have been read the most.

Cricket, however, is his favourite topic. As part of his ‘WikiProject Cricket’ about 700 new pages were created. 

‘Wiki Swastha’ is another project in which Jangid is involved. The project covers 10 regional Indian languages and creates health-related content. For that, they approach and cross-check with doctors and health experts. 

However, Jangid expressed disappointment over the fact that very few people want to write in regional languages on the platform. “Today’s youth is largely involved in social media,” he says.

For the budding writers, he says, “there is no better platform than Wikipedia.” It’s read by millions and helps one enrich his/her knowledge.