By Meha Mathur
Good journalism or decent journalism has always been judged according to how relevant it is to great processes of the time. If we are going to apply this criteria, how relevant are we to our times,” wondered P Sainath, India’s leading development journalist, who, through his articles, has brought to the fore the rural crisis and the plight of the poor. He was delivering the keynote address at Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on April 17, organised by the Editors’ Guild of India. The theme was ‘Rural Crisis and the Role of Media’. The fact that P Sainath’s writings have truly inspired Indians and that people do take interest in serious issues which journalists like Sainath raise, was proved by the thick attendance at the event on a day when the capital had supposedly come to a standstill due to Olympic Torch Relay.

While the media has been busy covering Indian Premier League, Nano and Big Brother, the single-most important event of the times, according to Sainath, is the rural crisis. “It’s the greatest agrarian crisis since the beginning of the Green Revolution. Eight million people have quit farming between 1991 and 2001 census. Where did they go? Did we do that story? How are migrations unfolding in the country? Do we know that?” In rural India it’s stories that chase you and not you who have to chase stories.

He said the food crisis had been building up for a decade, and was a result of a “considerable effort”. Citing the farmer suicides in the last 10 years (1,66,000), he said the rates had been higher since 2002. “There is a suicide every 30 minutes. But there is no written record of a wave of suicides. These are some processes unfolding. The major process is not IT, it’s inequality. In terms of child literacy and nutrition, we are in bottom 10… Bolivia is ahead of us, Al Salvador is ahead of us. None of them has nine per cent growth rate. None of them is a software superpower or a nuclear superpower. But they have handled poverty better than us. Even Ethiopia is ahead in management of hunger.”

But then, according to Sainath, another great process is the incredible rise of corporate power. And in the light of that, some of the fundamental features of the media today, according to Sainath are:
1. Growing disparity between mass media and mass reality, the 2004 elections being an indication of that. The media had no clue of what was unfolding.

2. Structural shutout of poor in media: corporate hijack of agenda in media.

3. Media today is most elitist and exclusionist segment. It reflects the narcissistic concerns of the pleased-with-itself elite.