"Pay-to-print": How Media Corruption Undermines Indian Democracy

Palagummi Sainath, the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for journalism, literature, and creative communication arts, is an award winning Indian development journalist - a term he himself avoids, instead preferring to call himself a 'rural reporter', or simply a 'reporter' - and photojournalist focusing on social problems, rural affairs, poverty and the aftermaths of globalization in India. He spends between 270 and 300 days a year in the rural interior (in 2006, over 300 days) and has done so for the past 18 years. He is the Rural Affairs Editor for The Hindu, and the website India Together has been archiving some of his work in The Hindu daily for the past six years. His work has won praise from the likes of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen who referred him as "one of the world's great experts on famine and hunger." He is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts.


Maharaj Kaul (1940 - 2009), a UC Berkeley alum, was tireless campaigner against injustice and for peace, founder of groups such as India Relief and Education Fund, and Coalition Against Communalism, and long-time supporter of Center for South Asia Studies (CSAS) at the University of California, Berkeley, mission and activities. CSAS, together with the family of Maharaj Kaul, has established the annual Maharaj Kaul Lecture series at UC, Berkeley. On April 11, 2011, P. Sainath delivered the Inaugural lecture in this series.

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