MANILA, Philippines -- India’s rural poor -- this has been the beat of choice for journalist Palagummi Sainath since 1993.Unlike the legions of journalists dazzled by the economic reforms begun in this South Asian giant in the early 1990s, Sainath suspected a dark side to “development, Indian style” and set out to prove it. This meant giving up a comfortable job at Blitz, a widely circulated Mumbai-based weekly where he was then deputy editor and a popular columnist, in exchange for a fellowship with the Times of India. For the next two years, Sainath traveled the breadth and depth of India’s 10 poorest districts and reported firsthand on the hunger and poverty gripping rural India since its independence in 1947 -- the consequence of disastrous development policies. There was no turning back for Sainath. His reportage on rural India would subsequently set off reforms in policies and programs affecting the poor -- farmers, tribal people, women and dalits or untouchables, among others. His bestseller, “Everybody Loves a Good Drought,” an anthology of 68 of the 84 reports he had filed as a Times of India fellow from 1993 to 1995, has become a journalism classic and required reading in universities in India, North America and Europe, along with his many other stories on poverty and development. President’s grandson The recipient of scores of national and international awards, including New York’s Harry Chapin Media Award, Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Journalism Prize and the European Commission’s Lorenzo Natali Prize, Sainath has been chosen as this year’s Ramon Magsaysay awardee for journalism, literature and creative communications arts. “His passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s consciousness, moving the nation to action” has caught the attention of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, which gives out annually Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Born in Chennai (formerly Madras) in 1957, the Jesuit-trained grandson of former Indian President Varahagiri Venkata Giri chose the life of a journalist after finishing a master’s degree in history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “I would rather be a journalist in India than anywhere else in the world,” he once said in an interview. Dissident journalism The rich legacy of Indian journalism explains Sainath’s mind-set. After all, Gandhi and other leaders in the struggle for India’s independence had doubled as journalists and contributed to the “liberation of the human being.” As Sainath puts it, “The Indian press is a child of the freedom struggle.” “Dissident journalism,” not only in India but also in the United States, greatly influenced Sainath’s philosophy of journalism. He firmly believes that “the best journalism has always come from dissidents.” In Sainath’s book, Thomas Paine, the 18th-century pamphleteer who advocated independence for the American colonies and the rights of man, was the greatest dissident journalist. “He practiced the only journalism worth practicing: Journalism based on a commitment to ordinary people, to very high democratic ideals and to bettering the living conditions of people around him,” Sainath said. Alas, by the time Sainath ventured into newspapering, Indian journalism prevailing in the early 20th century and Paine’s brand of journalism had vanished. He discovered that the Indian media in the late 20th century was no longer “journalism for people [but] journalism for stakeholders.” Disconnect: Media and reality Media ownership had shifted from family-owned businesses with a “sense of purpose” to conglomerates, even trusts, run by corporate CEOs who placed premium on revenue. It was no longer people-driven journalism. The reportorial beats reflected the bias. There were political, ministry, business, fashion, entertainment, glamour, design and even “eating out” correspondents, but no single, full-time correspondent assigned to agriculture, housing, primary education, labor or the social sector. A poverty or rural affairs beat was unthinkable. At a time when hunger-related mass migrations and deaths, including suicides among peasants, were on the rise, journalists were churning out “feel-good” stories catering to the growing middle class. Stories on weight-loss clinics, latest car models and beauty queens were crowding out serious journalism. Sainath wasn’t -- and isn’t -- one to hold back from saying what he deemed as the sorry state of Indian journalism. “The fundamental characteristic of our media is the growing disconnect between mass media and mass reality,” he has repeatedly said. The 68 accounts in “Everybody Loves a Good Drought,” nearly all told in about 800 words, supply anecdotal evidence that the crisis in India’s agriculture was more the making of bad, even absurd policies, aggravated by endemic corruption, rather than of drought and other natural calamities. The stories range from the tragicomic and heartrending to the against-all-odds and uplifting. Just some of the stories: Government castrates all local bulls in a village so they would not mate with cows that were to be cross-bred to produce the “miracle cow.” The experiment fails and the local bull becomes extinct in the village. Villagers beyond medical care rely on the Biswas brothers, a pair of quack doctors who administer the cure-all saline drip or tetracycline injection for all diseases. Needless deaths are inevitable. Members of a tribe lose their benefits after two state agencies misspell their tribe’s name. A new tribe is created in the process, with nary a member. Survival strategies Sainath’s book also offers stories of hope and courage by zeroing in on survival strategies of the poor. About 4,000 women in Tamil Nadu acquire leases to stone quarries through an antipoverty program and contribute to their village economy. Thousands of women in the same district learn to cycle, in the process acquiring independence, freedom and mobility that help them boost family incomes. It is not only through words but also through photographs that Sainath has captured the tales of India’s rural folk, especially the women. “Visible Work, Invisible Women,” his 70-piece black-and-white photo exhibition, has been mounted across India and overseas to trumpet the unrecognized contributions of poor women to the economy. He does the photography for his stories. “I could never find a photographer to accompany me to some of the places where I go,” he said. And travel a lot he continues to do to this day, spending between 270 and 300 days a year in India’s rural interior to document what he calls “basic failures” in Indian society -- land reform, social issues, caste, gender, regional development. If there is one thing Sainath is equally firm about, it is his refusal to take corporate or government funds to finance his reporting. He would rather dip into his own pocket. Sainath recently told the online publication India Together that he intends to use the prize money that will come with the Magsaysay award to pursue two dream projects: An archive of rural India and a series on the last remaining freedom fighters of India. Change for the better It is likewise Sainath’s dream to see more Indian journalists engage in the pro-people journalism he loves, and has initiated the process. The royalties from “Everybody Loves a Good Drought” have funded the Countermedia Prize of Excellence in Journalism that recognizes outstanding work in rural reporting. He has also taught journalism at universities in India and overseas, as well as run journalism workshops directly in the villages where he hopes to inspire writers to become agents of change. Will Indian journalism change for the better? Sainath is optimistic it will. In an interview after winning the Ramon Magsaysay Award, he said: “We’ve got history on our side -- 180 years of it in this country. Twenty years of trivialization is a minor period in that larger history. We’re blessed with good, young journalists, and there’s also a new phenomenon -- of people from non-journalistic backgrounds coming into media and bringing a completely different lens.” | 
