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Interviews | P Sainath, rural reporter, interviewed by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
P Sainath, rural reporter, interviewed by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies

P Sainath, rural reporter, interviewed by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies

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published Published on Apr 4, 2015   modified Modified on Apr 4, 2015
-Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies

World-renowned journalist P. Sainath has returned to Princeton to teach two courses, beginning this week, in the Program for South Asian Studies. The former rural affairs editor of The Hindu and award-winning "reporter" - he prefers the term to journalist - has devoted his career to telling the stories of India, uncovering the truth of social problems, rural affairs, poverty and the aftermath of India's globalization. His work focuses on rural India and the plight of its farmers and their astronomical rate of suicide.

Sainath has been recognized worldwide with numerous awards and accolades. Most recently, he was awarded the "Public Welfare Award for Exemplary News Professionals in Developing Countries" by the World Media Summit Global Awards for Excellence.

In December, Sainath launched one of his proudest works, PARI, "The People's Archive of Rural India," a new website devoted to the "everyday lives of everyday people." Sainath describes the site as both a living journal and an archive of the people of India.

SAS Director Isabelle Clark-Deces is delighted that Sainath has agreed to teach two courses this spring: Reporting Inequality and Development and Dissent.

"We asked him to teach for SAS because we learned so much from him when he was here in 2012-2013 as the McGraw Professorship of Writing in the Council of the Humanities," Deces-Clark explains. "He energized us with his talks on farmers' suicides in India, the founding of his People's Archive of Rural India, among other subjects. He brought guest lecturers to his classroom and our program and was always willing to engage with our students, faculty and visitors. He is a fantastic speaker and his students will learn a lot about the principles and practices that define the work of journalism, in particular the obligation to tell the truth, provide news without fear or favor and report on the concerns and problems of all citizens, not merely those who have money, fame and power."

The Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies had the opportunity to interview the affable Sainath about his passion for telling stories, his latest project and his endless pursuit of the truth.

* What prompted you to pursue journalism?

Journalism in India, particularly the Indian Press, was the child of the country's freedom struggle. Every leader and activist in our battle for independence from the British Empire also doubled up as a journalist. It was their way of connecting with and mobilizing society. I was born into a freedom struggle family. My granddad [V.V. Giri, the fourth president of the Republic of India] spent 14 years in British prisons before India became free. Our values were those of the struggle for independence. As a student of history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, I also studied that fight for independence at many levels. And like the people of the generation that preceded me, I associated the press with the struggle for freedom. There was no great plan or profound blueprint for becoming a journalist. It happened most naturally.

* What kinds of stories are the most rewarding for you to write?

In six words: The everyday lives of everyday people. The diversity, complexity, creativity - and the tragedies, too - of everyday life in rural India. We're talking of the world's most complex region, with 833 million people (some two and a half times the population of the entire United States), with 780 plus languages and unrivaled occupational and cultural diversity. Covering these can be most rewarding, inspiring - and often infuriating.

* Your book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought, is in its 43rd printing and translated in numerous languages. When you set out to write it, did you think it would have such wide appeal?

I did not set out to write a book when I began writing those 84 stories for the Times of India. I was completely focused on reporting - and I still see myself as a reporter, much more than an author - from those regions. The dark humor in the title was indeed conscious. But the credit goes to a peasant in Bihar who told me that all the officials had gone out to ‘harvest the third crop.' ‘What third crop,' I asked, mystified. ‘Drought relief money,' he replied sagely. ‘They love a good drought here.'

People's lives, even in the midst of tragedy, have their moments, sometimes, many moments, of humor. Reporting and writing should reflect those, too. Not delete them to keep the ‘seriousness' of the narrative. Humor is often a human defense against overwhelming situations and helps people tide over those. To ignore it would be to rob the stories of context.

Yes, the book is past its 43rd printing and is used in over 100 universities and colleges as teaching material. I'm happy. I think it does well because it is very simply written and it tells stories (a dying art in journalism) and very young people can read and make sense of it. But to be honest, I hadn't a clue it would do so well.

* You have written and spoken extensively about the plight of the farmer in rural India. Why does this subject captivate you?

I am as captivated by the lives of landless laborers. But since 1995, official data tell us, 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide. In the latter half of that period, that was at the rate of one every half hour. That is the largest wave of suicides in one occupational group in recorded human history. This remains the most hurting reporting I've ever had to do, having been to 850 households where suicides have occurred. It destroys you, but it has to be done.

What is compelling is not just the individual tragedies - but that these people, most of them, need not have died. The suicides were and are driven not by natural calamity, but by man-made agrarian policies we've adopted as a nation these past 20 years. Small farms are the biggest employers in the world and the producers of most of its food. Small farms are also a civilizational phenomenon in the world we live in. By the way, the farmers of the U.S. Midwest - on a very different scale, context and level - have had and still have more than their share of tragedy and distress. This remains one of the most under-reported stories in your own media. Here, too, it is driven by policy.

* It is widely reported that you give many of your prizes to fund other journalists. Why?

It is quite selfish, actually. I am a very tribal person in the occupational sense. I enjoy being a reporter and take to others in the field pretty easily. I know how hard it was for me in the early '90s struggling to get rural stories published, trying to expand the space for reporting on deprivation. I see so many younger journalists in that situation now - only their battle is more difficult, with the media far more corporatized and profit-driven today. I do not consider it generosity to intervene this way. It's a fight for the survival of the greater legacies and traditions of a humane and relevant journalism. A lot of the awards money has also gone to those I write about. I think that's only fair, not generous. It's their stories I'm writing.

* You have won many awards in your career thus far, which have been the most meaningful to you and why?

When you are a non-corporate journalist, i.e. one who neither accepts nor practices the values of corporate-led media - every award is important in many ways. As a young journalist in the early 1990s, each award opened up more space for me in a media fundamentally dismissive of the greater traditions of Indian journalism, a media that reduced and continues to reduce journalism to just one more business revenue stream. I also found and still find that the prizes open up spaces for other journalists as well in their publications and channels, especially the much younger journos. That is special.

I guess you could say The Times of India fellowship was a key turning point. It allowed me to pursue a wackily ambitious venture - to live, work with and report on the most marginalized in 10 of the country's poorest districts. Also, The Times of India is the largest English-language daily newspaper in the world. That proved a terrific platform for the stories that came out of it and eventually went to make the book Everybody Loves A Good Drought.

The prizes proved critical when covering those 10 poorest districts, some of them bigger than European nations. I was a freelancer and went broke after just completing two! The fellowship money had run out. That's when the prizes started coming in (at that time, some 10-12 of them) and helped me complete that effort. Again, ‘The Ramon Magsaysay' award was special - it came at a time when I was trying desperately to draw attention to the fast-spreading farmers' suicides. Let me also say that being named the McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton in fall 2012 - that was special because it helped in many ways to launch this latest venture - the People's Archive of Rural India (PARI): www.ruralindiaonline.org

* Congratulations on your new website! What's the content, and why did you decide to do it?

The media here have no beat reporters to cover what is probably the fascinating regional journalistically speaking and certainly the most complex in terms of linguistic and cultural and occupational diversity. They have no interest in the lives of everyday people. But that gigantic entity demands coverage, recording, documentation. Some of the finest schools of weaving and pottery and art are in collapse. Over 225 languages have died in the past 50 years, according to the People's Linguistic Survey of India. The largest migrations - often driven by distress - in our history as an independent nation have taken place in the past ten years and are still occurring. Capturing this is the greatest challenge before reporters in India today. It is not going to happen from the dominant media. The Indian media are politically free, but imprisoned by profit. What they see no revenue in, won't get seriously covered.

This is an effort to create what is both a living journal and an archive. It combines video, audio, still photo and text article platforms and is even building an online research library. We hope to let rural India have its many voices heard. We hope to re-connect one third of this nation to the other two-thirds amongst whom they have their increasingly forgotten roots. It is also an attempt at the biggest journalism exercise ever undertaken in India, perhaps most places. The aim is to have one PARI fellow in each of India's 50 to 70 regions and sub-regions, generating content, documenting a giant country, at one time, for 3 to 6 months, across a two-year period. A journalistic exercise on that scale has never happened, at least in India.

* Can you tell me a little bit about the classes you are teaching at Princeton? Why did you choose these subjects? What are you hoping students will get out of the courses?

One is ‘Reporting Inequality.' While both courses have a South Asia-India focus, the one on Inequality will look at that phenomenon in other parts of the world. To my mind, Inequality is the foremost issue facing most societies. It has grown rapidly in the last 15 to 20 years and with devastating effects.

The other is: ‘Development & Dissent,' a burning issue in the poorer nations. Millions of people have been and are being evicted forcibly as states acquire land for projects aimed at development. That is, for mining, special economic zones and the like. There is a huge conflict over resources raising questions over what constitutes development? Who pays the price for it for it? Why is it the poor and marginalized who lose their land and resources for the ‘development of the nation?' What are the environmental implications of such models of development?

These courses are aimed at getting students to engage with some of the greatest problems of our time from ground up and not top down.

* This is a return visit to Princeton. What did you like most about the students and the town? Are Princeton students any different than others you've taught at other universities?

It was a great place for me to visit. I found many people, amongst both students and faculty engaging with the issues that interest me. Are the students different? Yes and no. They're certainly great students, really smart, work very hard and are pretty disciplined. The desire to excel is probably higher here than in most universities. But the young everywhere else also share certain characteristics of idealism and aspiration and passion.

* How does teaching benefit you personally? Do you learn from your students?

Always. The reason you keep going back to teaching - I am, after all a working journalist - is because you learn so much from the students. Probably we learn more. A student comes there for one course, one year. We experience generation after generation of students. Keeps you intellectually alert and alive and always re-thinking or re-examining your basics.

* Will you be offering any talks in the South Asian Studies program?

I have a talk scheduled on March 9, sponsored by PIIRS, entitled 'Twenty Years After: Inequality, Agrarian Distress and Farm Suicides.' I also plan to bring in a couple of good outside speakers. The talks will cover farm crisis issues, the many conflicts driven by inequality, media and the digital transformation.

 

Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, 3 February, 2015, Click here to access

Image Courtesy: Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies


Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, 3 February, 2015, http://www.princeton.edu/piirs/news-events/psainath/?utm_source=PIIRS+Master&utm_campaign=eb8685f550-Newsletter_Februa


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