‘Stenography, not journalism’: P Sainath
P Sainath, India’s leading development journalist, on media coverage of agriculture
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, whose writings have 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, organized 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 Sainath raises, was proved by the thick attendance 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, 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 that 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:
- 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.
- Structural shutout of poor in media: Corporate hijack of agenda in media.
- Media today is most elitist and exclusionist segment. It reflects the narcissistic concerns of the pleased-with-itself elite.
- There is a fundamental change in the moral universe of media. Due to which many things have died — outrage and compassion. What remains is drawing room outrage over reservations.
He pointed out how the concerns of the poor had been shut out. Pointing out the beats that journalists are put on – investments, banks, fashion, futures, and even golf and even eating out — he said newspapers didn’t have not one fulltime correspondent on rural issues. “And in a country where unemployment rates are stunning, not one correspondent has labour beat.”
Pointing at the implications of this, he said, “The fastest growing media of the world is saying seventy per cent people do not make sense. The media doesn’t want to talk to them. This leads to spectacular situation, wherein problems are expanding and beats are shrinking. While for a stock market flutter experts are flown in from Mumbai, for rural crisis, which is more intricate and complicated, nobody develops expertise.”
He told the gathering that in 2006, when farmer suicides had moved the Prime Minister to make a visit to Vidarbha, he (Sainath) decided to make a comparison of the media coverage of Vidarbha and the Lakme Fashion week. In that week, only six journalists stayed for a full week in Vidarbha, out of six two stayed back because they had missed their flight. At the same time, 512 journalists were covering the Lakme fashion week. And about 100 journalists were covering it on daily passes. And there was even footage on journalists covering the event. The irony was that the models at the fashion week were displaying cotton garment, and one-hour flight away from that spot, men and women who grow that cotton were committing suicide. And the journalists who did go to Vidarbha were covering the Prime Minister touring the area.
He cited the Centre for Media Studies that state that the rural crisis and farmer suicides have got as low as 0.1, 0.6 and 0.19 per cent coverage on media channels. In one set of newspapers, the coverage has been 0.00 per cent!
Pointing out the disparity between the rich and the poor, he said that while 53 Indians account for 31 per cent of GDP, 836 million live on less than Rs 20 a day. While Mukesh Ambani is earning Rs 40 lakh a minute, he wondered whether the poor man’s wages had increased by Rs 40 in the last four decades. Rather than covering that, media is indulging in journalism of stenography to the powerful. It’s stenography at its worst. We are getting best bytes, but doing worst stories. The media is the biggest subscriber of India Shining, and is covering only top end. The media has failed Indian democracy at a time when it needed it the most. Now larger democratic processes will have to discipline media. The 2004 elections did that, when journalists made idiots of themselves.
