The 8th edition of Prabhash Prasang, a platform for eminent journalists to speak on an prevalent issues, in memory of popular Hindi journalist and writer Prabhash Joshi was held on July 8 in New Delhi. After delivering his address which touched upon the state of journalism today, veteran journalist Ram Bahadur Rai introduced agricultural expert and Magsaysay Award winner P Sainath to speak.
It has been a month since the Maharashtra government announced farm loan waivers, and Sainath had many things to say not just about the agrarian crisis in the country, but the role of the media in reporting it.
In his 80 odd minute long speech, he spoke about the apathy of the media in covering issues relating to agriculture. “Journalism and media have changed so much that it can’t explain the agrarian crisis to you,” Sainath said to a crowd of about 200 people at Gandhi Smriti in New Delhi. “Those who we call agriculture correspondents cover the agricultural ministry, not the farmer,” and this was partly, he explained, why the media continues to fail in explaining the reasons and the important of the agrarian crisis to the janata.
He pointed out that when he began his career, there was an agriculture and a labour correspondent but today that “designation doesn’t even exist”. This, meant, he said that as far as the media was concerned, “75 per cent of the population [those that are involved in the agrarian industry] does not matter”.
Newslaundry and this writer in particular, had earlier reported on the coverage (or lack thereof) of the crisis on a channel solely dedicated to agriculture-related issues– DD Kisan. Though the channel hosts farmer-related talk shows and runs bulletins, it ostensibly paints a rosy picture of the agrarian economy.
According to the Centre for Media Studies, Delhi, in the last five years, the national dailies have dedicated a scant 0.67 per cent of their front pages to rural India. Prime times doesn’t fare any better with 0.82 per cent. “67 per cent of news is of Delhi, south Delhi and Lutyens Delhi mostly,” Sainath said. He reiterated that rural coverage in the mainstream media never went beyond 1 per cent in the last five years. Sainath stressed that he wasn’t blaming journalists per se, there is no one left with expertise in the field today.
“NITI Aayog’s Aravind Panagariya [Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog] doesn’t know who is a farmer,” he said, stressing that it wasn’t just the media but even governments—present and past—that have not paid attention to farmers or the spate of farmer suicides. “In his book, Aravind Panagariya and Jagdish Bhagwati, they are mocking the farmer suicides. They say that the ratio of farmer suicides is so low that we should bring the level of suicides across the rest of society to that of farmers.” Panagariya and Jagdish Bhagwati had argued that 300,000 suicides is a small number, considering the size of India’s farming base, a statement that Sainath vehemently disagreed with, “This is what your NITI Aayog chairman has written”.
Finally, he quoted instances from the Hindustan Times, the Telegraph and others, where journalists had lost their jobs because the “media lost its independence” due to the concentration of ownership. Journalism, he said, had simply become an additional revenue stream.
But Sainath was not without optimism. He made a poignant appeal to the audience at the venue. “I have one demand and I want every one of you to support it. The Parliament should hold a 10-day special session to discuss only the agrarian crisis,” he said as the audience broke into applause.
Listen to the entire lecture here:
Credits- Podcast Producer: Kartik Nijhawan
Editor: Shubham Mishra
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