Journalism for people: An interview with P.

Sainath
Colleen Roach Tall and thin, P. Sainath looks like he is blessed with a rock-solid constitution. No doubt this comes in handy for travelling in what he once called the ?eyeball popping? heat of rural India, at times astride an elephant - the only way of reaching some of the villages he covers. Sainath (as he prefers to be called) is also a bit of an ascetic. He never touches alcohol, since he doesn't want to have his judgement clouded ?even for a moment.? Sobriety, along with a wicked sense of humour and an absolute commitment to his country's poor, have no doubt helped make Sainath what he is today: one of India's leading journalists. Born in Madras in 1957, Sainath studied history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, after which he began his career in journalism. For ten years he was deputy chief editor of a major South Asian weekly in Mumbai: The Blitz. In 1993, after winning a Times of India fellowship, he left his job at The Blitz and set out to travel the length and breadth of India's rural areas, reporting on the daily lives of the region's poorest villagers. His reports on ordinary people struggling against tremendous odds - including the local and national authorities - ran in The Times of India and have since been treated as a journalism classic. In 1997, Sainath's articles were published in a collected volume titled Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts (Penguin India, 1997). In 1998, Penguin UK brought out its own edition of the book, which has been widely reviewed - and praised - in the international press. Sainath has received several awards for his work, including the prestigious Jawarharlal Nehru fellowship. In the Fall of 1998, Sainath was a Distinguished Visiting Professional in International Programmes at the University of Iowa. During two visits to New York, he talked about a range of topics, including the rural press foundation he is setting up in India, his current reporting project on the Dalits, and his philosophy of journalism. After a visit to the Thomas Paine museum in New Rochelle, New York, Sainath also reflected on problems in American journalism. Q. Tell us what has happened since your book was published. To be frank, I never expected the book to do so well. It has become known as a ?journalists' book.? In Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Canada people are saying that it has relevance for their own countries. In the United Kingdom it is being used by journalists to cover local issues of poverty. Right now it is being used by more than 30 universities around the world, in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Q. What are you doing with the proceeds of the book? I am setting up a ?Counter-Media Foundation? so that the money earned from the book goes back to the rural areas where I did my reporting. The foundation will award two annual journalism prizes for rural or ?small town? reporting. The award particularly targets women journalists. In return for the prize, the recipients must write 10 articles in one year on marginalized people in India. Q. How do you view your work as a journalist? I see myself essentially as a reporter. And the book is a collection of reports. I believe that how you conduct yourself personally is very important. This is why I will not touch a cent from the royalties earned from Everybody Loves A Good Drought. Nor do I ever take any corporate or government funds to finance my reporting. Q. What is happening with the poor in India right now?

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In the current period of globalization and structural adjustment, the Indian press has betrayed the working class of India. There has been an almost total abandonment of its commitment to the poor, especially on the part of the owners and editors of newspapers -although there are still some feisty journalists left. What we have is complete consensus on an unbridled free market economy. Most of the press focuses on the middle class, but since 1991 the distress of the poor has increased dramatically. What I try to do is look at the survival strategies of the poor, which is a much more interesting journalism. I try to focus not on the ?events? but on the ?processes? of poverty. In India we have what some writers have called a situation of ?invisible hunger?. We do not have acute situations of famine (like in Somalia or the Sudan) but a more generalized distress. In the face of extreme exploitation, you see little kids who do not ?look? starving but they are very malnourished. In my reporting, I am engaged in a battle for minds and hearts. Why should I concede the readers of the press to the big press barons? I want to bring the Indian press back to its original mission. Q. What does the legacy of Indian journalism mean to you? I deeply identify with the legacy of Indian journalism. I would rather be a journalist in India than anywhere else in the world. The Indian press is a child of the freedom struggle. All of the major figures involved in this struggle were journalists at one time or another. Gandhi was the most prolific journalist of all times. He wrote more in one year than I have written in 18 years. Q. What is your current reporting project on the Dalits? I am currently doing a series on the Dalits being published in The Hindu (the biggest paper in Southern India). The Dalit stories not only cover Southern India but also several northern and central states. It is an all-India series. I also do all of the photography for my stories - I could never find a photographer to accompany me to some of the places where I go. Q. Tell us about the Dalits. The ?Dalits? are the so-called ?untouchables? in India. Gandhi referred to them as the ?harijans? - literally the ?children of God? - while the legal term is the ?scheduled castes.? There are currently about 156 million Dalits in India (approximately 17% of the population). Dalits make up 80% of the rural population. They have been very hurt by the recent politics of privatization and globalization in India. Previously, through a programme that functioned like affirmative action in the United States, Dalits were guaranteed a certain number of jobs in the public sector. There was a fair number of such slots - don't forget that government is the biggest employer in India. But now as a result of privatization these employment possibilities have decreased quite a bit. In the rural areas, there is a lot going on now. The villages are very political places. The Dalits are fighting back. There is much more turbulence and organization than even five years ago. Dalit women, in particular, are very militant. One of my articles told the story of a lower-caste woman who was elected head of her village panchayat [the village governing body]. But when she tried to raise the flag in her village - one of her official duties - she was beaten up by others who belonged to a higher caste. (See: P. Sainath, ?Workshops of the real world,? The Hindu, Sunday, June 21, 1998; Opinion Section). Q. So the caste system is still very important in India? Yes. The caste system is 2000 years old. It is still the basic unit of currency in India. It is very deeply rooted and can't be destroyed by laws - only by popular movements. All religions Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism - reinforce the caste system. Although ?untouchability? is outlawed, it is still widespread. In India caste and class are distinct but they are also closely related. The rigidity of the caste system in rural India is particularly important. The Dalit people are subject to many kinds of oppression. There is even discrimination within the Dalits. In the villages, land ownership is a key factor of poverty. About 60% of Indian farmers have less than

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one acre of land. Q. What do you hope to accomplish through your reporting on the Dalits? I want to bring before urban India the issues I report on. I want my reporting to be a wake-up call: the underprivileged are revolting. I am telling the middle classes that changes are taking place. They have to decide: should we participate or not in these changes and support social justice? Q. In the United States, historically the press was also very involved in the country's struggle for independence. Do you see any similarities between the Indian press and the American press? Historically speaking, the Indian press has been much more radical than that of the United States. When the American press spoke of freedom in the 1770s, with the exception of Thomas Paine, they were speaking of freedom for white, propertied males. (And Thomas Paine was actually an Englishman. The original title of his famous work was Rights of Man - By an Englishman). There was much more hypocrisy during the American revolutionary period than in India. Thomas Jefferson only freed his slaves in his will. As far back as the l9th century, the Indian press had a far nobler vision. During the American revolutionary period, the vision of freedom was not as inclusive - it excluded women and blacks. And Thomas Paine died in disgrace. Q. Why do you feel so strongly about Thomas Paine? I love Thomas Paine. If you were to draw up a list of the journalists who literally changed the world, his name would be at the top. He was a dissident journalist and dissident journalists are the best. During the American revolution he ordered that all of the proceeds from his writings be used to buy mittens for the revolutionary soldiers. But publishers then were like publishers today and they pocketed every cent of his royalties. And look at what he said about poverty: ?Poverty...is a thing created by that which is called civilized life ...The first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period? (from Agrarian Justice, 1797). American newspapers should have a ?poverty beat.? They need to report on poverty just as systematically as they cover business, not just in terms of statistics but in terms of human lives. Q. Who are some of the other journalism figures in the United States that you consider important? John Reed was perhaps the best foreign correspondent who ever lived. The work of Studs Turkel and Alexander Cockburn is also important. They are out there. But you have to look in the small, alternative press. Q. What about Mark Twain? Mark Twain was also in the tradition of dissident journalism. But can all of the newspapers in this country today produce one Mark Twain? If Twain were alive today, he would lose his job after his second article because he would have offended one advertiser or another. The press in the United States is controlled by Wall Street; it has the most narrow political spectrum of debate of any country in the industrialized world. The American people have to fight for their right to have their say in the media. Q. What do you think of the American media's coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? The media's obsession with this sex scandal should be seen for what it is: another example of sensational, trivialized journalism in the same vein as the coverage of the O. J. Simpson case. The question to raise is: What stories are not being reported in the media? The list is long: the farm crisis, the coming water crisis, the growing gap between the rich and poor, and the education crisis. If the media here had investigated the CNN/Time story [the so-called ?Tailgate? scandal] with the same zeal that was applied to the Monica story, what might have been

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uncovered? Why didn't they interview Laotian and Cambodian intelligence agents, and former Vietnam vets? Q. Could you summarize your philosophy of journalism? The best journalism has always come from dissidents. There's no such thing as a good establishment journalist, only good stenographers. And here I'll come back to Tom Paine. He practised the only journalism worth practising : journalism based on a commitment to ordinary people, to very high democratic ideals and to bettering the living conditions of people around him. The difference between Paine's writings and the journalism of the late 20th century is the difference between journalism for people and journalism for shareholders. I believe in the former. Sainath's articles are available on the web. Check the website of The Hindu at: www.hinduonline.com. To access the articles, you should look in the ?Opinion? section of the paper. Colleen Roach is a freelance journalist and media researcher living in New Rochelle, New York, USA. In 1994, she was a Fulbright Scholar in India. She may be reached at: carroach@aol.com

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