 Welcome to People's Dispatch and Globetrotter. We are on the one side, a media website that is People's Dispatch, a movement-driven news outlet, which I hope you will visit. Also, Globetrotter is an international wire syndication service for reports of about a thousand word length, which can be read at, you know, well, dozens of news outlets in dozens of languages. And we have been together running a fellowship for about 23 journalists, and this fellowship runs over the course of the year 2020-2021. We're in the middle of that fellowship, and we decided to pause and call our great friend, P. Sainath, who in my, to my mind, is one of the best journalists, practicing journalists in the world. More than that, and I'm going to talk about that in a second, more than that, he is an intellectual of journalism and thinks very hard about the craft of journalism, the project of journalism, the business of journalism, how journalism is both being eroded in our time and also how journalists themselves have been doing some amazing stories. His most outstanding work was a book called Everybody Loves a Good Drought, which brought together reports from rural India and cemented his reputation as one of the key journalists of the countryside in India and of agriculture. Before that, he worked for Bombay's spectacular newspaper, The Blitz. After everybody loves a good drought, he received the Raymond Magsaysay Award, the most important award for human rights and good livelihood in Asia. He worked for many years as the rural editor at the Hindu before founding the People's Archive of rural India, Pari, which is really an interesting experiment in how to cover the rural landscape in our world today and how to archive the work of people who live in the rural areas over time. It's an incredible website and I highly recommend people go and visit Pari. Over the course of the years, Sainath has written a great deal about the craft of journalism. For Leftward Books, he wrote the preface to John Reed's 10 Days That Shook the World. It's an incredible preface because he writes there about the very great John Reed, but also about the practice of journalism. So here we are. It's 2021. There's a farmers revolt across India. Just a few days from now on the 26th of January, farmers are going to enter New Delhi on Republic Day. Sainath has been amongst the farmers right through speaking to the farmers, speaking with the farmers, learning from the farmers. This is a journalist who broke the story about the high rate of suicides in rural India. The agrarian distress in many ways in the middle of this protest has been has converted many of the farmers from deep desolation into anger. And there was nobody who's covered this better than P. Sainath. So it's with great pride that we have as our speaker for the Globetrotter People's Dispatch Series, our friend, our comrade, the best living journalist, P. Sainath. Sainath, please go ahead with a line that I've heard you say many times, and I hope everybody will have this on their lips for a long time yet, which is to talk about journalism as reporting on the great processes of our time. Thank you guys. So, to begin with Vijay by giving the event this title stole the gist of the talk. Okay, because it gives it away. I've always defined good journalism or great journalism as how the journalism we do engages with the great processes of our time. Now, that can pan out differently in different cultures, societies, continents, etc. But there are some principles, which I think you will see worldwide somewhere. Let me begin and let me begin by saying that, you know, when we talk about such serious things about all the great processes of our time. It somewhere seems to automatically switch on the very serious switch in progressives and radicals, whereas great journalism has always had a very strong element of humor. I mean, you look at look at John Reid himself, and on his Viva Mexico, there's so much humor in every page. Yeah, because humor exists in reality and you're a good reporter, you're not going to forget that you're not going to say, Oh, I'm writing on a serious subject. So I can't allow this kind of stuff. Let me begin by saying that one of my my first encounter with one of the great processes of journalism came with my first day at a news agency in Delhi, where I absolutely loved working, but which in Delhi was more famous for its canteen than for its communication. People used to come there from central secretariat from everywhere. I went to the canteen on my first day in journalism and saw a very great process which I didn't recognize at the time. It was much later that it sank in on me the the importance of what I saw, which was to journalist fueled by high spirits slugging it out. And what I saw was that the, the guy who turned out to be the business correspondent, punch the living daylights out of the labor correspondent, who that promptly thereafter went extinct, and was never heard off from in any way, because labor correspondences to exist, as they did in other countries in the United States elsewhere. And that became the job of people covering industrial relations from the business bureau. Actually, when I joined journalism in 1980, there was a labor correspondent or employment correspondent in every single newspaper. And all the major ones in Delhi had one. Okay. So, I didn't realize it at that moment that business was, you know, labor was taking the count as business just chaotic out there. And after that, that was the beginning of corporatization of media in India in a, in a fun sense. Okay. I don't think it was fun to get punched on the nose, but still, you know, I'm sure that other labor correspondent would agree with me. But in 19, I'm going to go a little into history as well. And my personal connection with this. What are the great processes? What happened? How do we distinguish between an event and a process? How do we report an event reaching the process through that event? Using that event to tell about to speak of the process. In 1991, I'd already been pretty upset about the way the media were going. In 1991, the Indian media made a great shift. You know, the, a lot of intellectuals in that time made a great shift, intelligences made a great shift with the fall of the Soviet Union. So those who had put all their eggs in one basket, you know, were suddenly not knowing what to do with the cracked shells. So you had the Indian media, which were by no means pro-Soviet, but could at least see the difference between what the Soviet Union meant to India and what the United States meant to India. But the Indian media made a gigantic shift in 1991 when India embraced the brave new world of neoliberals. From that day, we moved to the embrace of the market. I maintain that one of the great processes of our time, the last 30 years, 25 years is the rapid rise, the world over of fundamentalism in which I include market fundamentalism. It's a very religious fundamentalism. It has its own gospels. The Gospel of Saint Greed, the Gospel of Saint Choice, we can discuss that forever. It also has more televangelists than any other religious fundamentalism and they're on any night, every channel. So that embrace of neoliberalism set us on a path that transformed the face of journalism in India. And it was pretty shattering to me because the journalism I joined was the child of India's freedom struggle. And those were some of the greatest processes of all time, the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles of Asia, Africa, Latin America. Please note that the greatest journalism of that century came from the colonies. Do note that it came from the colonies and note from who it came in the colonies. Journalism was an amateur sport, not from the so-called professionals and anchors and stuff. It came in the 19th century from a Marx, it came from a Gandhi, it came from a Bhagat Singh. It came from a lot of people who in the present definitions of who is a journalist, who is a professional would be dismissed as pamphleteers and propagandists. So in the kind of corporate definitions you have today, non-Indians forgive me, a Gursharandas or a Surjit Balla is acceptable as a professional columnist. But Gandhi was a pamphleteer. I mean he established three newspapers but you never speak of him in any journalism textbook as a journalist. You never mention the revolutionary Bhagat Singh or the Filipino revolutionary Rizal as journalists. They were nationalists, they were anti-imperialists, they were people who struggled for their country's freedom and achieved it. But in the United States you would, I mean Rush Limbaugh is accepted as a journalist. Bill O'Reilly was accepted as the journalist by very large numbers of people but not a Martin Luther King and John Reid doesn't figure in the syllabus of any journalism school. So anyway in 1991 after we embraced it, for the first time in two decades, starvation, deaths and hunger began to appear in a very large way resurfaced in India. It started from the 80s, mid-80s but India had already embarked on an IMF loan in the 1980-81 with conditions that were simply terrible. And the Indian elite was looking for that pathway to the brave new world. 1991, there was a sudden breakdown, some 90 kilometers from where I'm seated in Mumbai. When that breakdown, it came in the form of one, some 10,000 indigenous people marching to Mumbai. This was after the embrace, marching to Mumbai and oddly enough they protested, where they protested was pretty close to the stock exchange on the large street. And the stock exchange on rising hunger had for the first time crossed 4,000, a mark of 4,000 points, the sensitive index of the Bombay Stock Exchange had crossed 4,000. The next time it would make a major crossing was with the tsunami which brought great profits to corporations everywhere. Now here were 10,000 people from of the indigenous group called the Warleys or what we call the Adivasis, the first dwellers living in the district of Thani. Typically these meetings in the post-embrace period were covered, at least they were covered in that time, by sending a photographer who would take pictures and they would publish a photographer saying, farmers demand remunerative prices. Actually on that occasion they were not there for that, they were not just demanding remunerative prices. They were saying, our children are dying of hunger, the public distribution system in our hilly areas has completely broken down, our children are going to die. There's going to be a very serious crisis because we are not able to access food, but all the stories appeared. Farmers demand remunerative prices. Three weeks later the city rose to headlines of 29 children die of hunger and malnourishment in that very area where they came from. They came and told the media about it, we did, zip off, those kids died, oh yeah. In those days we still had some sense of, some inkling of shame, all of us landed up in giant droves. There were more journalists than you could shake a stick at and there were still a lot of journalists who wrote with anger and passion and laid into the government and asked a lot of questions of the government. You see that in the early days of that period, journalists still used to ask questions before we were trained out of that habit. We were weaned off that culture. So some great reporting was done of the event. 29 kids had died and some very telling journalism, some very telling report, oh there were prizes all around. I got a couple of them. I never went to collect them because it was so shameful. Our performance was humiliating and shameful. Those indigenous people came to our place of work and told us there's a breakdown coming. Now 29 kids didn't rise and say, hey, we'll die this afternoon. It's a good time to go. There was a process of rapidly sharpening hunger that took their lives. It struck me as I stood amongst those ruins that had we covered the process, those kids might be alive. And that's the difference between a covering an event and covering a process or covering both together, one through the other. Had we told the story that they came and gave us, had we listened to those varlies? Had we said, okay, I'm going back with you brother or sister and I want to see that public distribution ration shop in your area. Then we went, oh my God, we saw people carrying their relatives five, six, seven kilometers to a hospital over their shoulders. Their aged mother or wife, and we saw people having to go 12 kilometers over hill and dale to reach the public distribution shops, the ration shops where food was cheap and controlled, only to find on reaching the shops that there were no supplies. All this came, could we not have done it earlier? No, because we couldn't have because the media were doing away with those beats like labor, like farming, like all those beats that the social sector beats that would have covered this. Those beats were rapidly dismantled. I remember in 93-94, the biggest focus of the media was when two young Indian women won the, again, there were hunger deaths in that period. But two young Indian women won the titles of Miss World and Miss Universe. Now, good for them, okay, I mean, but it was the period of the entry of the cosmetics majors into India in a very large way. So the way this was covered, I promise you they were on almost every page of the newspapers. They would come away, they would be on the sports page giving away trophies. They would be on the front page being welcomed by a group of admirers at the airport as they returned from another international win at a competition. They were on the business, they were on page three, of course, which is the celebrity pages. They were on the op-ed pages telling the story of their moving story of their lives. And one of the most famous lines that all of them had learned to say was asked, what do you want to do? And they would say, I want to do the same things as Mother Teresa. I dragged on to one of these panel discussions. Unfortunately, it was a recorded discussion, not a live one, so I was cut out from it. And when the anchor asked me, what do you, don't you think it's great that, you know, I mean, the beauty queens themselves were not in that panel, but we were asked as media persons, don't you think it's great that they have a cause and that they want to do the same things as Mother Teresa? And I said, I think it's wonderful. But the only way that's going to happen is for Mother Teresa to enter a beauty contest. She'd better hurry up because time is running out. That probably went off the discussion when it was telecast. Okay. That was what we were covering. And that was the point when I understood that I had, I mean, 1991 was the point when I understood. I had to get out of the event coverage business and focus. If society was, and this is what I would tell all the fellows, if society and corporate media are focused on the top 5% of society, as they are in every nation of this world, under capitalist media, then you and I, we need to focus on the bottom 5% of that society. And that becomes our duty. And cover them in process and through storytelling. I want to make this point here that if you look at the 18th, 19th and early 20 and the first half of the 20th century, great journalism was the preserve, the purview, the turf of left progressive radical writers and journalists. Can anyone name a great establishment journalist whose name lives on forever one or two, the one or two whose names will come to your mind. They earned their name as radicals, like Walter Lippman. All the great quotes are from his period, which the liberals are so fond of quoting. Or when he was a radical socialist and one of the founders of the Socialist Club of Harvard. He was one of the damn founders, let alone being a member. Later when he switches over takes on his conservative avatar. He's talking nonsense, but he has fame. The fame came from the earlier period. John Reed was an unabashed radical and what journalism he produced. Again, by the way, guys, humor. Look at it. There's a lot of it in the writing of many of these great journalists. There's a lot of writing humor in the writing of Marx and Engels on colonialism, especially Marx, you know, writing about how the idiots in London, the immediate businessman in London thought they had a great market in China for grand pianos and sent thousands of grand pianos, which did not realize the cost of their freight and which were used most of them for firewood. Okay, it's written with a great deal of humor. Anyway, so the 1918, 19th, 20th century were full. Wilfred Burchett, the amount of humor that goes into the man who broke the story of Hiroshima. The greatest reporting, I believe, ever done by a foreign correspondent without a passport. His passport was impounded by General Douglass on the direct orders of General Makata in Japan. Now, so now what many things have changed in journalism, and as I said, you have different situations in different countries, but do remember that the greatest journalism, the greatest journalism of 150 years came from the left. It came from progressives. It came from radicals. It came from people who reported the process from journalists who reported the process. And from journalists who placed people at the center of their reporting, not projects, not great leaders, but people, everyday people. And by the way, that's why our People's Archive of Rural India, our motto is the everyday lives of everyday people. That's who we report. You look at, who is John Reid talking to? He's talking to, you know, Samoa, T-Stoll guys in St. Petersburg. Yeah, he's talking to people at Smolny who are, you know, working class. He's talking to peasants coming into the city. He's talking to places, ordinary people at the center of his writing. And even if you look later, a hundred, you know, I mean, 60 years later, at mystery writers like Elmore Leonhard. Leonhard in his 10 rules of good reporting, good writing. One of the things he says is, don't go on with long passages of your own prose. It's conversation that fixes people. It's conversation, quick, rapid conversation between different people that fixes the attention of viewers and readers on your work on the, on the text. So, let me give you, I mean, for me, I'm deeply moved by the stories of Rizal in the Philippines and another person in India who most Indians don't even recognize as a journalist. They call him a martyr. He was an activist. He was a patriot. Yes, he was. But most Indians do not know Bhagat Singh as a journalist. Let me tell you something about this extraordinary man, extraordinary youngster. Bhagat Singh taught himself to write in four languages. And there are some lessons from this life for all you guys who are fellows, for all of you who want to do great journalism. He wrote in four languages and was learning a fifth and a sixth when imprisoned and hanged. In the 170 odd days that he was in prison, we find that he issued 312 books from the libraries. 312 books. Of course, he didn't read all those books. Many of those books he was using as a good journalist to reference his work. He wanted to quote them correctly. He wanted to cite the publication correctly. Something that many, many journalists including progressives don't feel obliged to do. They get into the opinion side of it without showing the rigor on this side of it. I hope you will never do that. The fellows are talking to the fellows. I mean, imagine a guy slated to be hanged and 170 days, more than 300 books he takes out. Okay guys, the books were in five languages. The books were in five languages. And he's referencing them. He's writing about them. He's using them and still writing, writing his jail diaries relentlessly. Bhagat Singh wrote in Urdu, in Hindi, in Punjabi, in English. Two articles in Bengali was learning Persian. Had written, God knows how many articles under assumed names like Mark Twain did. All this by the time he was hanged at the age of 23. Dammit, I started journalism at the age of 23. I want you to be inspired by that. What someone had done without half the facilities and capabilities that you and I have, without half the technological and other gadgets and devices that you and I have. All this was done by the age of 23 when he was hanged by British imperialism in a fake trial. Anyway, so another thing that's changed, majorly in journalism, also changes with the class character of who's working in the industry. Now at the top level, it moves from ordinary capitalists to corporate capital. At the level of journalists and workers in the industry, major class changes begin to occur from the 50s, 60s, as journalists become more and more middle class. And by the 90s, they are upper middle class in many cases in the top journals of the world. Whereas in the, and the workers are becoming, you know, a computer operators lower middle class middle class, rather than the old working class unions that dominated the print media, and which by the way, had a very radicalizing effect on the journalists. It was the print workers who led the great strikes of the late 19th century. It was the print workers who led the strikes against William Randolph Hearst. And oh yeah, there was humor. You know, when, when the Times London crushed its workers union, its print workers union, they crushed the strike. The print workers hit back with what I call guerrilla journalism, though I define it differently today. They started sabotaging the newspaper. In those days you composed each damn letter individually. Okay, so the print workers for three or two weeks they ran right across the pages of the most esteemed pompous bloody newspaper in history. Yeah, the Times, the venerable thunderer of Fleet Street. So what did they do actually on in 1885 soon after the strike was broken. Queen Victoria drove her chariot, her carriage herself, she drove it across the bridge Waterloo to inaugurate the Waterloo Bridge, and the Times had this great picture of the personage. The Empress, the Queen, the Empress became the first person to pass over the bridge. The print workers, some mischievous print worker in the caption became the first person to pass over the bridge, change the A in pass to I. So the Empress became the first person to piss over the bridge. This went on for a week and the management tried not to acknowledge it, tried to, but letters were coming in saying what is happening to the standards of the thunderer. Then the Crimean War was on. And in those days, by the way, they used to print in four point and six point and you read your newspaper with a magnifying glass, you've seen films of Sherlock Holmes, right, reading the newspaper with a magnifying glass. So they would push 4,000, 8,000 words into a page. And there you have the Home Secretary making an interminable speech about the Crimean Crimean War. And every three paragraphs, it is interrupted by applause from the benches. Suddenly after 6,000 words, I think the patience of the composer cracked. Suddenly the Home Secretary says, I think that fucking geezer in the last row is dead three years. You know, will someone just take him out and do three sentences of obscenities like this. Still there was four days silence from the times after which, after which they put a front page notice. The proprietors of this journal apologized to their readers for this outrage committed in our esteemed columns. And by the way, a lot of print workers were sacked as you would expect. They did the same with Hearst. William Randolph Hearst was very fond of putting himself on the front page. He used these guys, the big robber barons of the 19th century, used the mafia and gangs in Chicago and elsewhere to beat the unions up, to beat up the unions. Hearst was fond of putting himself on the front page with his hand pointing like this. Okay. The pen is mightier than the sword. I think he said it in every damn speech that he ever made, and his story was usually put on that front page like that. After the strike and after the sacking, one of the layout and composer guys played with the headline, the pen is mightier than the sword. They removed the gap slightly between pen and is. So you had Hearst saying penis mightier than the sword on the front page of his one million circulation newspaper. Okay. You can imagine what happened to the workers after that. Journalists themselves. There is a history of radicalism strikes resistance until you get to the 70s and 80s where corporate control is complete. The journalists unions are broken. One of the things you need to know is when you are writing and covering the great processes of our time, which I come to again. Do not be ashamed to speak to to learn from which I just told you that I'm in constant touch with the farmers in the agitation. Somehow, so many journalists of the so-called mainstream media, a name I challenge, so many of them are perfectly at ease talking to the agriculture secretary to the minister of agriculture. Actually, it's because of this farmers agitation, the country has gotten to know that we have an agriculture minister and some of us even know his name. Before that, this country was run by one and a half people who still run it, but that that was the thing. So you have, you know, reporting from there is no, there is no, no notion of balance there. In talking to the unions in reporting what the unions are saying in never have this. Okay. You are talking to representative bodies of the working class of the peasantry. They have as much a right to be heard far more than a minister of agriculture who might be looking after textiles tomorrow. Right. So don't be ashamed of that. In covering movements. Don't be ashamed to talk to them, learn from them. I keep explaining to people, for instance, I am not an expert on agriculture. If I'm an expert on some aspect of it. I'm an expert on the people who live off agriculture. I know a lot about their lives. And I learned through a lot of agriculture, something through their lives. So telling the story through the lives of ordinary people, not being ashamed to interact with their movements, their with with their leaders with them, ordinary people amongst them with their representative bodies and unions. Yeah, so in the in the latest instance, the Supreme Court has appointed a four member committee. Dead before it starts because one of the four members has reside from the committee. He is the leader of a farm union called BKU man. His name is man. So the man faction of the big Bharatiya Kisan Union. He leads and not one of these newspapers who reported his resignation tells you why he reside. They carry his letter. But they don't tell you that his own movement, his own union expelled him when he refused to leave the committee. The only newspaper in the country that reported it on the day. Understandably was the Chandigarh Punjab Tribune. The Tribune because I mean they're there where the hot seat is right they reported it. Nobody else told you that day that the guy was thrown out by his own union. If you're not talking to the movements, you're not talking to the union. You don't know this. I'm not accusing the others of having covered it up. I'm saying they didn't know. So that is yet another yet another thing of it. That don't be ashamed to stay amongst people. Do you know, do you know that New York Times correspondence and Washington Post correspondence in the 60s, 70s. When there's a couple of them in Delhi, in Delhi, based in Delhi, started trying to learn Hindi. Yeah, they started trying to learn an Indian language. It was frowned on by their superiors who advised them not to go native. Yeah, literally advise them not to go native. So you know what, you know, a reporter has to have that distance like a judge. You have to have that detachment. So not knowing the language helps you cut sick. Yeah, you please please know this that some of these correspondents have written that shit in their memoirs. That they were told by their superiors. American correspondence in India, not to go native. So you pick up a fixer or travel within who does all the work doesn't get the credit line, but may turn out to be someone who's totally with some fundamentalist organization and gives you their perspective. So don't be ashamed to live amongst people. That's my technique. Those you are going to write about stay amongst them, live amongst them, work with them. A sports correspondent is not ashamed of spending time at the sports training camps. A sports correspondent is not afraid of actually going to the bloody stadium and covering the match. Right. Why should a correspondent of farming not be spending time with farmers amongst in farming households. Please don't be queasy about this going native and shit like that. You want to tell a story. Tell it through the lives of people that gives it authenticity. That gives it vividness. It makes your story graphic and pictures. And many other things that adds to your story. Now, in the different situations. Now, what are these great processes? Let's look at some of them. I think the great processes of our time for me. One. Oh, let me let me tell you. Alexander carries summing up of the great processes of the 20th century. Alexander Kerry was a on Australian political scientist and sociologist died in 2005. But in 2003, summed up the 20th century in three processes. Now, you may not agree with it. And it's funny. But there's an incredible amount of truth in it. He said there were three great developments mark that mark the 20th century. The rise and growth of democracy. One. To the rise and growth of corporate power. And three. The rise and growth of corporate propaganda to stifle the rise and growth of democracy. Man that says it's just about says it all doesn't. You can fit in anything from the rise of fascism to anything in those three in those three processes. Now, the processes of our time in India for me, it has been the agrarian crisis, but you look out. You're looking at four or five great processes globally. The incredible growth of inequality. Hand in hand with the unbelievable consolidation of corporate power. Okay, these two are great, great processes. And the ideologies of both the mindset of inequality, the ideologies of market fundamentalism of corporate who are what all of us are facing every day. In the first three weeks of the pandemic. And I'll come to that as another great process in the first three weeks of the in the first few weeks of the pandemic. American billionaires. Added more to their wealth. Than the cumulative wealth of the world. In the first few weeks of the pandemic. American billionaires added more to their wealth. Than the cumulative wealth total of all American billionaires of 1980. The total cumulative wealth in 1980 was 243 billion. In the first few weeks of the pandemic they added 283 billion. Indian billionaires and we are number four in the Forbes list with about well over 100. Some varies between 115, 121. Added according to Oxfam 35% to their wealth in four, five months to their total wealth. They added 35% a third of their existing wealth they added in a few months. Now that money came from somewhere. Resources are finite. It did come from growth, right? Growth was collapsing. And as and as David Attenborough so picturesquely put it, you know, this idea of endless growth, infinite growth. One of the things that I love about Attenborough's sayings. Occasionally he comes up with this lovely one. Occasionally he comes up with things that really frustrate the hell out of me. But this one. If you believe in infinite growth. If you are a believer in infinite growth on a very finite planet with very finite resources. You are either an idiot or an economist. Now I keep saying I keep adding the words or both because a lot of them, a lot of the idiots are both. So inequality is one of those great processes. Now there are thousands of sub processes within it, but recognize what an incredible processes. And how deeply it's linked to human rights and how deeply it is concealed in our discussion of human rights. The United Nations Human Development Report of the 1940s. Remember the UN, every one of you, if I ask you. Name one clause from the UN Human Development Report. 999 out of 1000 people will speak of Article 19, freedom of expression, et cetera, et cetera. Fine, I'm okay with that. How many people are aware of clauses 23 to 28 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The right to strike, the right to organize, the right to a living family wage, the right to dissent, the right to strike, the right to have unions. All these are there as part of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, but were completely obscured by the human rights debate as it unfolded during the Cold War, which still remains, which still remains. Your dictator is my freedom fighter. And that logic came in and the amount of damage that was done to human rights with a lot of progressives responding defensively instead of saying, yeah, we're going to fight for human rights. And this is it. These are the human rights. Let's see what you're going to do about these. Let's have a conversation on that. Inequality is the gigantic process of our time. It has a thousand faces. The second great thing that I think we need to focus on in processes is the idea and ideal of justice. Injustice and justice. But justice because the great movements of people across the world are essentially movements for justice. The great movements of our time, the great progressive movements of our time are fighting for justice. Whether it is blacks in America, whether it is Dalits in India, whether it is the women's landless farmers of the Kurumbashree in Kerala, whether it is the MST, whoever it is, movements across the world. I think that we ought to cover this idea of justice. Let me tell you how I think we can do it. The pandemic has given us an opening. Let me also tell you how this great I view this great process called the pandemic. I think COVID-19 has given us an incredible autopsy of who we are as a society. COVID-19 shows us what capitalism and neoliberalism is. The corpses of the table and every nerve, sinew, muscle, artery, vein, organ and bone is on naked display. It was earlier too for 20 years, but we could turn away. COVID-19 doesn't allow you to turn away. So now you're having discussions about digital apartheid as children who can't afford online education. Those children were miserable anyway, but COVID-19 now shows you just how miserable they are. And that their misery has just gotten worse. Farmers were miserable anyway. They're fighting against the laws in India, three laws. If we remove those three laws, it will be a great victory. But we go back to where we were, which was not a nice place. A gigantic agrarian crisis that has seen 330,000 farmers take their own lives in a period of 20 years. I think that one of the starting points now, I want you guys to go out and write from the perspective of health justice. There are many movements, Yogesh, who might still be on this talk. To my mind, his movement really has a lot to do with health. It represents, you know, all of us, many of us of our generation grew up on the Alma Ata declaration of 1977, health for all by 2000, and health for all by 2000, and health for all by 2000, and health for all by 1977, and health for all by 1977, and health for all by 1977. It represents, you know, all of us, many of us of our generation grew up on the Alma Ata declaration of 1977, health for all by 2000, by 2000, and what we gave them was corporate hospitals for all, well, for all the elite, and those who could have fought it by 2000, by year 2000. I really think, and we are at Pari doing a series on women's health reproductive rights, which I believe is placed squarely in the health justice issue, brought out again very strongly during the pandemic. Then I'm saying, so you've got issues of justice, you've got the health issue, you've got the consolidation of corporate power. You've got the subordinate of justice. You've got the rise of fundamentalist movements and the steady consolidation of inequality and class rule. These are some of the great processes of our time. Now, I just want to show you very quickly what we are trying to do just to give you, in the People's Archive of Rural India, everything we do is about justice. It's about inequality. We don't wear a board around our neck saying so. We cover it. Yeah. And we do it as much as humanly possible, reporting it through the voices of the people in the stories. Now, I'm going to screen share and I hope you guys are able to see. I have made some changes. It doesn't look exactly as it looks on our page, but I'm going to quickly run you through a few things through four different issues we are covering from the perspectives that I've given you. Please tell me if the screen share works. Come on. Okay, I'm on screen share. Can you. It's not up yet. Yeah, no. Yeah, you're good. Now, I've taken four things here. The farmers protests. The, the issue of climate change. Our coverage of India's last living freedom fighters. Look all over the world. And I appeal to my friends from other countries. Those whose colonies became who are colonies. I keep asking my friends in South Africa. Please do this. Please record your freedom fighters. Please read the record those anti apartheid guys. They're all in and girls. They're all in their 80s and 90s. They'll be gone. Our freedom fighters will all be dead in five years. They're already in their mid 90s late 90s. Okay. So freedom fighters climate change. The farmers protest and one other one other process. I'm running you very quickly just to show you what it looks like. Now in the farmers protests, the propaganda done in the corporate media. Don't call them the mainstream media media that exclude the mainstream should not be dignified with that title mainstream media. They are called them what they are corporate media. Do the mainstream of population have a place. Do they have a voice in that media? They don't know it. Call them corporate media. The corporate media's government sponsored propaganda says these guys are, you know, subterranean terrorists. They're closet terrorists. They're this thing. They're all sorts of so we focus on not only the issues and the laws. And what people are saying about them. But we also cover who are those people in the protests and you get to see those terrorists. You get to see those session is you know and decide for yourself what kind of people they are. Now this is up. We have a section protest against farm laws full coverage. Every day we're adding a couple of stories to it. Now look at these two young girls. They're sisters. I mean that's, you know, these two sisters from a village in Mukhatsar district in Punjab, who they are farm laborers and are dying to talk to the media and us and tell us why though they are farm laborers and landless and don't own land, they are with the farmers on this issue. And just look at those two terrorists out there. And there are poets and artists and painters and people who've left what work they're doing are not earning anything for two months and doing brilliant, beautiful theater drama poetry. Here is one guy whose whole life is a tragedy, but he's come there and drawing attention to his struggle, the struggle of the farmers by wearing every day five kilograms of chains, symbolizing, and he stands with his hands raised for hours and hours. I don't know how the hell he does it. Okay, for hours and hours he's there with five kilograms of steel chains. Oh, all these by the way are stories that you can go and read. I'm, for instance, you know, you, in every one of these clips, I'll send them to you, the hyperlink to the original story, which looks very different on party. Or here of their one of the propaganda points is all these farmers are from just two states. As of those two states are not part of the Union Republic. Yeah, but the fact is here is a guy who has gone with 2000 farmers, other farmers from the state of Maharashtra, where I live, capital is Mumbai, all the way to Delhi to show solidarity. One of the interesting things that happened, 800 from Andhra Pradesh, many from Kerala, 300 from Karnataka, from the south of India, thousands of other farmers have gone there from other parts. And every day the media will ask me, how is it only farmers, you know, the Janasvasta Abhyan survey, which didn't even include it as a question. Suddenly threw up the fact that at the one camp that they did their survey, there were farmers from more than 40 districts of India. And this guy has gone from Maharashtra under the All India Kisan Sabha's leadership. This is the nightlife at the camps. It is the most moving and beautiful photo as I have a look at it. Remember that they're all supposed to be terrorists and the farmer, the Indian Javan, the soldier we call a Javan and the farmer we call a Kisan. The Indian Kisan is a Javan in uniform or a Javan, the soldier is a farmer in uniform. I met these five old blokes at retired soldiers who were amongst 50 who had fought three wars for this country, who'd lost children in wars, lost limbs in wars. And here they are, five guys with 63 medals between them, people we are calling terrorists and denying them that patriotism that is their due. And there were 40, 50 of them, I think at a conservative estimate, there were some hundreds of medals amongst the lot. Here, by the way, is the youngest protester trying to help his parents peel peas at the camp. He's all of 18 months old. So these were the farm protests. Now if you look at COVID-19, we have done 150 stories and documentations on the pandemic, on migrations. This is a story of 20 people who walked 800 kilometers home and they tell the story. This is the story of online education. A child is trying to do his attend his classes while selling vegetables. And he doesn't have a smartphone, so he's borrowed that from an uncle. He's selling vegetables and trying to say yes, miss, no miss to his teacher on the phone. This is about who are the people who bury the bodies, the over 150,000 bodies in COVID. And what happens to them? This is again about the digital partition. This is about the real frontline workers of the COVID, the Asha workers who earn 3,000 rupees a month, that's nothing in dollars. That sort of earning. And then climate change. Again, told through the lives of everyday people, I'm not even going through everything, seaweed harvesters, women who get into very rough seas to pick seaweed that pharma companies make billions of dollars from. And they make a few rupees for their living, bee collectors, honey collectors and the work they do in climate change. Or these fishermen who have started their own radio station because our journalism is not good enough to talk about climate change and want and educate their community. The pastoralists of the Eastern Himalayas, the Broke Pass, that's a baby yak following that guy. Not a dog, it's a baby yak which thinks the guy is his mother. So it's following him up the hill. They have devised 10 ways of mitigating climate change. Something that I'm yet waiting for the scientists to do in a discernible way. The soldiers of freedom, I've already told you about them. Look at these guys. He was involved in the biggest train robbery in Asia's history. And one of the most beautiful things he told me, I'll never forget. When I congratulated him on his fight for freedom, he said, we fought for independence and we fought for freedom. We achieved independence. Freedom is yet the monopoly of a few. She, nobody tells the story of women freedom fighters. They were incredible in India. Their role was incredible as I believe you will find it was everywhere. I want you, others to go back, look for those people in your societies. She crossed a giant river on a raft at midnight to buy weapons in Portuguese control, go out to come back and fight the British with which she did. This guy is going strong at age 99 and he was inspired onto the streets when Bhagat Singh was hanged. And I mean, you have to click on the links. This was one of the women who fought in Netaji Bose, Indian National Army in Burma. Living in a slum when we found her. All she was asking for was recognize that I was a freedom fighter. Get me that I don't want money. I don't want to think I want my country to recognize me. This was a guy who played the role of a courier carrying lunch to the revolutionaries hidden in the forest. And this was a old woman who led an uprising, led an uprising against the British in Odisha in the 1930s. Starving to death when I met her and still with that humor and that thing. You can make the great processes fascinating to your audiences by telling them through the lives of people, by telling them through that radio station of radio station of fishermen, which is dealing with climate change, by telling them about the story of this woman who moved me so much I couldn't write a story. I first wrote a poem because it was just I was crying after I met her and heard her story. It is what will inspire. Let us capture the great processes of our time. You can use the event like COVID-19, like the pandemic to capture those to enter the process and have an event and have a time peg and a communication peg. But remember, honor those processes, inequality, justice, corporate power. Look at them, try telling those great stories of our time. That is what the greatest journalist ever did. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Kamrat. I was going to say we might want to cut the screen sharing. Yeah. So well done. Overshot slightly, but yeah, well done. That was amazing. And it was incredible to get a little taste of the the universe that party is creating. I highly recommend people go to the People's Archive of rural India. The URL is ruralindiaonline.org. Bookmark it, return to it frequently. There are excellent stories and sign up in that pointed to some of them, but there's a whole universe including songs, archived songs from rural India, which are very captivating. Incredible talk as usual, we're open to questions. We do questions in two different ways, write them in the chat. That's one. Secondly, I suppose you could raise your hand, and we'll unmute you and you can ask the question, but, you know, in the chat is pretty good as well. So there's that is that I'd like you to read them out. Yes, yes, of course I'll read them out. Of course I'll read them out. Let's see, okay. One of the things that I think is quite fascinating what you said was how you talked about, you know, the need to always be in touch with people and to draw understanding of the world from people's lives. You know, this is something of course that, you know, gets eroded. But you go back and think about what you said earlier which is the class changes taking place inside the profession of journalism that a different class orientation is taking place. So people in their everyday lives are now, you know, in touch with a different class and the viewpoint of the middle class saturates the press. It's an act of great force for a proletarian perspective, a peasant perspective to enter the media. Can you bring those two things together a little bit and talk a little bit about how the changing class character of the professionals in the media has also contributed to breaking that link and how people must struggle to reestablish the link to push those stories through, you know, if they work in corporate media or not. So just reflect a little on the two sides of your talk. One is the changing sociological character of the media. And the other is the importance of being in touch with, you know, the majority of people, the mainstream, the workers, the peasants and so on. Yeah, that changing, the change has largely occurred. It's largely consolidated in what we used to what I used to call the mainstream media. In fact, from the late 1990s, whenever asked about the competitiveness of the media and the rat race in the media. I have always repeated one line. The rat race and the media is over the rats have one. So, yeah, so we need to get into a different we need to create our own race in more ways than one. Yeah, now, which is the thing is that from what is as the class change the change in class has, you know, still does not rule out the possibility of the radicalization of some of those upper class upper middle class journalists. You've seen that happen. I've seen it happen. It's happened to us. But that can only happen by the contact with those other classes. It cannot come out of a text. It has to come out of looking at those farmers. Like, I would say that several upper middle class journalists in Mumbai were radicalized by the greatest longest strike. Maybe in the history of anywhere, when textile workers went on strike for 19 months in the city. I saw some very elitist upper middle class journalists have their lives changed upside down. That's why that connection with people is so important. How do we throw them into that connect is something that I'm always grappling with. Second, the change in the middle upper middle class primarily immediately it has an impact on perspective. And I want to tell you that the chain is very consciously brought about. And in the scene, it's like how I'm very entertained today to watch the American media function in violation of all those principles that they made a hallowed religion objectivity. You showed objectivity for American presidents, never for a Saddam or a Gaddafi, you never gave those people right to reply. You never thought of balance. Did you get a quote from Osama bin Laden, each time the Pentagon said we're going to get that bastard, you didn't. But you've imposed this thing and this doctrine is still stupidly thought around the word in most Indian journalism schools barring to and all that kind of crap. It was created to give the last word the doctrines. There's a big difference between objectivity doctrine of objectivity, the doctrine of objectivity is bullshit objectivity is a very important thing. That's another conversation. There are two other kinds, which are not bullshit at all. But the doctrine of objectivity engineered in American journalism schools came about to protect the advertiser and the powerful and always give the last word to the authority. So on Vietnam or Salvador or whatever, people said 200 people were murdered in a village in my life, the photos were confiscated. You said that there's no independent confirmation and everything else, you know, all that stuff. But it was also consciously fostered the perspective by redefining journalism, by redefining professional. So the moment a journalist starts covering the MSP in Brazil, the moment a journalist is covering the farmers agitations from the bottom up. That journalist is going to be branded an activist, not really a journalist. Oh, by the way, let me tell you how I know we are having an impact. We are under very serious attack from trolls, especially me in my Wikipedia page that has been vandalized 1415 times in the last few months, in which they removed my identity as a journalist and made me an agitator. And repeatedly people have corrected this, but then there's a whole propaganda army of, you know, the tyranny of trolls. That's one thing. So the redefinition of who is an expert. Now, in the pre corporate period, you wanted to write about farming, even in American journalism, you spoke to the farmer. Right. In post corporate journalism, the farmer comes in as a prop, a small court here, a line there saying I did badly this season, or whatever. But you go to the experts, you go to the economist. It's what William Easterbrook coined as a very nice phrase, the tyranny of experts. And those experts increasingly, if you look at the newspapers in India today, all the op ed pages are experts from think tanks. All the right to think tanks, just like in the United States so much. So the imposition or construction of these perspectives was very consciously. Now, two things happen to break it. One is mass movements can break it by bringing reality into it's like it's in the American media did not expose Vietnam. The stories of my life, where in the French press months before they came up in the American. The Vietnamese with their struggles with the defeat of the Tet offensive in with what they did in the Tet offensive. They brought the war into the dining rooms of the American people, and they won that war, they won the propaganda. They made, they removed the credibility of that media completely. It's what something that good journalists could use the farmer struggles to do to bring that reality to your table. Every human being who's got a stomach is connected to a farmer. I think we ought to be looking at it from that way. So that is what I would say about your question of how to the, how it came up and how it's happened. Amazing, amazing, amazing. By the way, just a quick anecdote in 2013 publications in the North Atlantic covered the execution of a person supposed execution of a person in North Korea. And they said in their stories routinely all the major papers said he was eaten by ravenous dogs. Turns out that they had all plagiarized from a Chinese satire website that there was no such event in North Korea and it bore reflection for people that on some parts of the world, you know what you were saying about Saddam and Gaddafi you don't need to ask them for right to reply. Some parts of the world you don't even need to report anything when make anything up about North Korea and the New York Times will run it. So, you know, that's an object lesson in so called objectivity. We're going to get a question now from Satya Satya is a fellow who's written a very good story about nuclear waste and the Native American populations in the American Southwest. It's an excellent story. So, go ahead. I think your mic is going to be unmuted, and you can ask your question directly. Thanks comrade. Well, Mr. sign up first I want to thank you very much for taking the time today to come speak to us. I actually wanted to ask you about your own kind, your own evolution evolution as a journalist over the decades, how has your own kind of style, how has your craft kind of changed over the decades. Okay, I was pretty much a commitment. There were two sides to my character in in the, when I became a journalist, or in the first few years. One was, I was as I said, a child of the freedom struggle generation I was born 10 years after India became independent. I grew up in a household where the most frequent visitors where freedom fighters, because they were my granddad's, my grandparents colleagues, jailmates, cellmates. It took me some time. My, my first introduction to that came from my grandfather's jailer. My elderly Scotsman showed up when I was three and a half and told me behave yourself I put your granddad in prison. And he came, he just walked into our home, and he gave my granddad, my granddad didn't recognize it. He gave him a bunch of numbers on a clock. And then my granddad read the numbers and started laughing. It was his convict code code number for the his convict number in prison. And he asked that man, why did you keep it. He said, Well, I had my eye on about half a dozen of you. I thought you'd make something of your lives. Scots got jailed. And I, you know, it was quite startling to realize that my granddad was a jailbird and a convict, a criminal. Right. That's when I started learning about the freedom struggle. And I realized that we had a hell of a lot of jailbirds in them. I mean, we are really a terrible family extended families jail time goes to over 100 years maybe more. I mean, if you take all those who spent 10 years, my granddad 14 years, I grew up in the atmosphere of a freedom struggle. And that was always inspiring to my values. However, when I went to journalism, I went to the United News of India, and I was trained as a very in very conventional journalism. I was trained in the prime minister said here today. And then, you know, he says, he says, the world is spherical in shape. She says, the world is square in shape. Therefore, the truth must be that it's a triangle. It's a truth lies in between normalcy lies in between this kind of journalism jarred on me but it was the journalistic training we underwent. I remember one of India's leading editors, Mr MV Kamath in a public debate me a very young guy, thankfully he had a sense of humor, debating Chernobyl, where he said, the Soviets say only two have died, the Americans say 2000 have died. Therefore, the truth lies in the middle, because normalcy is always in the middle. I don't care who was right and who was wrong. The principle of that. So I said that, you know, if that is so I'd be glad to put this to the test. Mr Kamath if Mr Kamath placed his left hand is in fire and his right hand in ice, his body temperature should be about normal. So let's check out this normalcy lies in the middle theory. He laughed, he had the grace to laugh. Okay. Now, the thing is that journalism where finally we gave the last word to the authority. Three years of training like that. I went out to cover a great drought in nine states. The kind of the collector said here today because the collector in India is the chief executive officer of that district. It's a name going back to British days when he was the collector of taxes. But he is the chief person chief person of that district. Any reporter going to cover agriculture will make a beeline for the collector's office to get some stuff about it. The collector may be someone from another corner of the country who spent six weeks in that district and doesn't know his ass from his elbow from agriculture. The farmer who has filled the land of that for 50 years, she knows something about farming and the crisis, right? But it's the collector who is the expert we are expected to report or your editor will pull you up. So I went out and covered this. I tried doing a very good job. I won a couple of prizes again. I did not collect them because my copies tank. I have experienced such powerful stuff in the countryside and it did show in my copy because I was trying to tell the story. At every stage I was trying to tell the story and find the authenticity in the quotes that were required. I didn't put my name on most second half of the stories. I didn't use a byline. I gave it to our local correspondent who worked with me. And that was when Satya that I learned, conventional journalism is about the service of power. It was moulded that way, created that way to serve power. I was totally ashamed of, I think the best thing that I got out of that writing was two poems and a song. Because that could say things that I felt and I was very ashamed and said, I'm going to come back and I'm going to do these stories differently. And I realised what was wrong, what was missing was people at the centre of the story, you know, not long descriptions of lush green fields that have now turned to brown deserts and this kind of stereotypical shit that journalists put into copy. I went back in 93 and that's what produced the next three years produced everybody loves a good drought, done entirely different from the way I did it 10 years ago. Does that answer your question about evolution? I did it where they were telling the story and I was no longer saying, I have something to say. I was saying, hey, they're saying hello for a lot. Do you want to listen? Perfect perspective. We're going to move to another question. This is from Tings. Tings has done an excellent story on a Chinese opera called the Red Detachment of Women and it's reconstruction into a cultural episode in the contemporary period. Tings, you should be able to unmute yourself. Go ahead. Please ask your question. First of all, thank you, Kamrat Sainath. It's always a huge honour and pleasure to hear you tell stories and I would be happily spending my whole evening hearing your story. So thank you for that. And the second thing to thank you is that you helped me overcome some of my imposter syndrome that I've been suffering with in this first half of this course. Realising that it's okay to be, what did you call them, these radical amateur sport pamphleteer types, which I definitely identify with. So it's okay to do that. I just think one of the things that was very interesting, you're mapping out a trajectory that you have witnessed in your own career and journalism. And, you know, from this, you know, times of these radicals who are more amateur journalists involved in struggle that wrote with feeling towards a much more detached and personalized kind of journalism and also the class character you mentioned, the changing class character. I want to ask also about reflection on gender and how you've witnessed that shift or any shifts in these past years that you're mapping out for us. Specifically because for me as someone new entering into this space, I found myself really wanting to look for some of the women's voices. And when discovering work of like Agnes Medley or Claudia Jones, or Helen Snow, you start realizing there are even a whole layer of erased voices of women journalists that are also these radical radicals. So, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you very much. Okay, let me start with the year. Okay, the, I want, I mean, I was being caustic about the amateur stuff, but many of those people we call amateurs or dismissive fabrication very serious professionals in their own way. Now, who is a can we say that somebody who launched three newspapers set them wrote like a Gandhi deal, which were always in danger of being shut down. You were always in danger of coming and finding locks and chains on your gates. And I feel like Ambedkar, who again established three journals had the, you know, was modified to see them closed down for lack of funds, because remember he was untouchable, and was questioning, did not hesitate to question even the Gandhi's, he did not question to, he did not hesitate to question the Mahatma, which I think good journalists do, should do. And journalism is the art of the quest. We are not obliged to give life saving solutions to the human race. But if we post the damn question correctly, it might get it might help the race. So many of these people form newspapers, launched newspapers, where they didn't know where the money for the ink was going to come from. My great hero was Thomas Spain, because he participated in three revolutions. French American and the British anti-monarchist uprising. Now, nowhere is this professional journalist, the first PC rights on landing is calling for abolition of slavery, the first white abolitionist to go on record. Okay, he's a pamphlet here now. For me, he was a professional journalist, he lived off journalism. He earned his living from journalism. Mark Twain earned his living from journalism. And, you know, Mark Twain, we know him famous for his novels. He saw himself always as a reporter. He saw himself as a journalist. Vijay and I have visited and couldn't go inside his house because it was a holiday that day. But you can all go those who are in New York can go up to Connecticut and see it. Now, the definition of journalism was changed by the corporate world after the, by the business world as they took over. So you, you become branded as a pamphlet here, a propagandist as an activist. But if things, you were instead a business correspondent, who polished, you know, polished this, you know, polished your stool with the seat of your trousers for eight hours a day. Yeah, you're a professional without going anywhere, nothing. And, and you churned out news copy from yard upon yard of press releases coming in from the corporate world. From the chambers of commerce from the ministries of commerce and trade. You produce yard upon yard of flawless prose and make the rise of the of the NS NYC or the sensex. You can actually romance that stuff. Yeah, you're a professional and you do that for 30 years. You're a veteran professional. Yeah, who never went a damn place in her life to do anything called journalism. So those amateurs are amateurs by the definition of professional that we have now. John Reed was a professional Gandhi, three newspapers, I'm great. Three new three magazines in newspapers. Bagot Singh writing in God knows how many publications in four languages. They were professionals for me. There is no individual who's I mean I find the Thomas pains and the bugger things move and inspire me as as professionals. I want to be a professional like that. That's who I want to be. The gender thing. Oh, it's hilarious. The gender stuff is hilarious. Okay. It was such a preserve of. It still is largely male dominated in terms of leadership in publications and reporting. But here's how it changed in India. I had something. I was an accidental witness to the change. I had a batch mate in my university. Yeah, she was in fact an SFI students Federation of India counselor also wanted. We both joined United News of India in 1980. She joined by deceit and deception on whose part I don't know. Her name, when we all in UNI the United News of India, second biggest news agency in in in India and Asia had no women. Even at the central desk, they had no women. Newspapers had women who covered who looked after the cookery page, the horoscopes, all the womenly things, you know, that sort of shit. So that's what women were concerned to in the newspapers. Now, Ritambara sent in her application along with me on the advice of our friend, dear, unfortunately, now deceased friend up at Menon. And we all sent in our applications and Ritambara's application went in as our Shastri. Now to the good bramins of UNI, that sounded like a highly respectable male name and a nice bram in male name, our Shastri. Who would think otherwise, right? And who would think that there were these cunning little, whatever you want to call her, who would pull this deception on them. She didn't do it deliberately, but she just wrote her name on the application as our Shastri. We both got called for the interview. Actually, pleased to say that she and I topped the many God knows how many people apply. When we went there, the guy we met fell off his chair. Okay, there was no mistaking what a female person she was. Right. And he just, he just kept gaping at her and looking at me for reassurance. You know, that something is wrong here. Maybe she's just my girlfriend tagging along, something like that. But he had, they had to accept that she was our Shastri. And she had topped the exam and she was going to be taken. So she was taken on. It created chaos for the next few weeks. There were, we had a nice big oval table around which 12 of us sat. You know, the Knights of King Arthur, if Camelot were looked more like a used parking lot. Okay, so there were 12 of us seated around that and the appearance of a woman, a very pretty attractive young woman who was simply brilliant as an editor created chaos. After a while, they shifted her to a small department with two people where the other guy was about 100 years old. You know, that sort of seemed to make ensure safety. Though to this day, Ritambara says, I don't know who they were protecting me or the guys, you know, so by moving me around. By the way, two years ago, Ritambara retired as the first chief news editor of a large newspaper agency anywhere in Asia. But coming in, I mean, she just made the rest of the incompetent people look incompetent. Okay, too bad. Then two other girls came in. Now they're not by accident, but by design. And they were doing so bloody well. One of them, which I might know she's in Vermont in a communication school, Sanjupta Ghosh. Another Arthi Dixit who is also I believe in the United States. They were brilliant. Arthi became one of the first woman reporters to cover parliament for a news agency. Meanwhile, the newspaper owners, the businessmen were beginning to look at women in another way, more value for the money. You see, if you belong to newspapers, where your chief reporter had to be carried in by two puns from the press club late evening, thoroughly sozzled. Yeah. How much nicer to have an earnest, bright 22 year old woman who would sit there till 3am and work. They were much better value for the money. The money has owned the press in this country understood there. So then the number of women started growing and growing and growing. I'd like to tell you things that it still is a very bad balance. When it comes to the leadership, all other things equal, the man becomes the editor. Okay, that's still I want, I want to boast to you that in party, the trust that runs party is dominated by. Out of the editors, two of us, Siddharth Adilkar, Tech editor and I are men and the rest are women, the managing editor, the executive editor, the photo editor, you name it. The video editor, film editor, all of them. Most of our reporters are women. And I also in growing up was seeing, I came to conclude, you can disagree with it, that women make much better interviewers amongst reporters, they make much better reporters, because I suppose of their social conditioning, they listen better. They listen more. Right. So I have interviews. I always like to have them done by women reporters, they just listen more. Yeah, so that's where we are in India. That's where party is. And a lot of things have changed. And women have. Oh yeah, I think that deli's political reporter cater is filled with women. It's huge number of women out there. But there's a ceiling about which it gets difficult to go. Unless you become a leading anchor. Yeah, and things herself listed a set of names of people that you know one has to go back to and there are a range of important people of that ilk from around the world and I think it's a good idea. That's right. I was going to actually just say either table and people like that you know who broke this who wrote stories of so called muckraking. You know, there are great reporters in the Americas, who are not well known at all and not registered and I think something could be done about that. So I'm going to get a couple more questions. This is a question now from Mika Ella Air Sog Escog. Sorry Mika, keep getting all and you know the other day Mika I was at a meeting and somebody said my name and said, is this the way to pronounce it and I said you know the tragedies of internationalism is you just have to get used to your name getting butchered. There's just no, there's no scope for for going beyond that. At any rate, Mika is working on a on a part on a series of stories. She's going to ask you a question now sign up. Yeah, yeah Mika. Hi, sign it and everyone else in the call. Greetings. Mine is short. I just wanted to ask. What is maybe being a really difficult story that you've struggled to tell and why perhaps it was difficult to tell that story. Because we know that the, when I've had experiences with journalism, my initial difficulty was around the political orientation of it's not objective enough, or it's not. But maybe in your experience in terms of the kind of journalism you are trying to produce what has been a difficulty and why. You know, if I try summing up what's happened to me in 40 years of journalism. I've enjoyed everything that's happened, and but one. Okay, the thing is that I believe I believe I've had fun. Even in the difficult situation. I believe that if you haven't got the orientation that journalism can be fun, you shouldn't be in journalism. I think it's the attitude we take towards you know that that creates a lot of our difficulties and otherwise. Somehow we think that, you know, we are these incredibly lonely people carrying the weight was of the world on our shoulders. You know, because, you know, when you join a newspaper, your seniors immediately mock you. Oh, she wants to change the world right. Here's what I always say. I want you to change the world. I want you to always think that you are here to change the world. But I want you never to think that you're going to do it on your own. I want you never to think that it's all my effort. I am the one that's going to do it. I want you to think that there are thousands and millions of others like you who are fighting for change, and you are part of it. Then you will not feel lonely, and a lot of difficulties become much lighter to carry. That's one. The second thing is, what did I find difficult? Look, as I said, there's one which I'll come to separately, but I work in a multilingual society, 780 languages. I speak four of my languages equally badly. But these are difficulties you overcome. Because journalists are meant to be communicators. They're not supposed to be linguists. They're not supposed to be historians of language. They learn to communicate. I find, now I speak Tamil badly, the Tamil language. I have no excuse to speak it badly. I grew up in that state. I go to my home state and live in a village for 10 days. My Tamil comes back and improves greatly. But the first few days consist of my being laughed at constantly. In very language linguists, but I also find then that the kids in the village try speaking to be in English. Because they see, I'm making the effort. I'm making the effort to communicate. They come halfway, they come two thirds of the way. People want to talk to you, they will talk to you. If people feel that there is something useful in talking to you, they will talk to you. Winning them over, that is the most difficult part, establishing your credentials and credibility. You know how I did that? I was never arrogant enough to think that I'm this charismatic guy who walks in and everybody starts blabbing. So in the areas of agrarian distress and peasant battles with landlords, I would go with the organizer of the local peasant union. When the peasant looks at me and thinks strange animal, where is he from? He or she looks at the person with me and recognizes someone who's taken three bullets in the body for them. And they say, okay, strange as this guy looks, he must be okay. Otherwise this comrade would not have brought him here. That's why I said, never be ashamed to talk to movements, to talk to leaders. Now, in some cases, that credible person may not be the union organizer. It might be a local doctor who's worked 30 years for that public, free of charge. It might be the local teacher who's so respected because he or she has looked after the poor children, taken tuitions and classes for free. So you have to decide where you're entering, which are the good entry points which establish your credibility. Language, culture, all of that comes second, third, fourth. Your credibility in the eyes of those you seek to speak with comes first. Then the difficulty I had were usually the limitations of my own understanding. I didn't enter journalism with 40 years of experience. 40 years of experience gave me something. So did I make mistakes? I made huge mistakes. The only people who never make mistakes are those who do nothing. The point about making mistakes is to learn from them and not do them again, or not to try not to do them in creatively different ways, which I've done by the way, sometimes. So you learn from, I don't think one should be shattered and broken. I was, by the way, when I screwed up on the drought reporting, I was. It paralyzed me for a few months, but made me think. Now, for instance, the limitations of my understanding, I think the golden formula for learning is, I don't know. And then you start. I'll give you this concrete example. I believe I've written more on women farmers than almost any other. I knew zilch about women farmers. I knew shit all about the role of women in farming when I set out on my rounds. I thought I knew. You know, as Stephen Hawking said, the dangerous thing is not the lack of knowledge, but the illusion of knowledge. I had that illusion. I came from a left-wing background. I thought, ha, I know. I didn't. Living in that household, observing the woman of the household, suddenly I realized that, damn it, they do all the work. You know what it did? It radically altered who I used as a source. If I wanted to understand the expenditure patterns of any household, poor household, don't talk to the guy. Talk to the woman because she knows what money is being spent on each little thing. Who's, you know, our national sample surveys on hunger. They will go and ask head of the household, the set of questions, the head of the household is a male, typically. And he's the only guy who said two square meals a day. You should be asking the woman who in the Indian patriarchal household has fed her husband. Then the children, then the husband's parents, if they are with them. She eats last, she eats least. She knows exactly what people have eaten. You want to do any damn survey on consumer expenditure surveys on what people are eating in nutrition surveys. That's the only person to speak to, or you're an idiot. And an economist. So that, I mean, you are David Attenborough's nightmare come true, if that is the way we go about it. Another difficulty which I've never gotten over is that Village India and I have the opposite working hours. As Vijay knows, I have American working, American time working hours sitting in India. I work in the daytime also, but that those are my prime working hours. The village, if I had to learn about what work starts in the village, I had to wake up with the women. The women got up at 4 and 430 damn them and went off into the fields. And my first half hour went in, you know, various expletives that I had also learned in the trip in different languages. Because I just didn't want to get up at 430, I slept around that time. I sleep around, even in the damn villages, I sleep around too. And then you're getting up at 430 and having to get out. Those difficulties are overcome after half an hour. It's nice. It's cool because otherwise it's going to be 47 degrees. So enjoy that. I get to enjoy it. But those sort of difficulties are those you take in your stride. The difficulties of dangers, physical danger. That's another conversation altogether. But I would say that I didn't experience that in any significant measure. One of the greatest things I had was getting stuck in a bloody river with two left-wing groups shooting across the river at each other. Nobody knew who was being shot and who was shooting. I mean, that was one time that I was really scared. Because nobody had a clue of what they were doing, which I was in between two groups that you can guess. But the biggest difficulty and the one thing that I hated in journalism was covering the farmers suicides. In every other thing I covered, I had the pleasure of covering struggle. And everything that has struggled has hope. Suicide is a final abandonment of struggle. I have never recovered from going to 900 households where farmers, men and women had committed suicide. I have never recovered from that. I had perfect health when I started on the damped coverage of this thing. I never had a cold or headache in decades. And since then I've had nothing else. Tension, headaches. I'm not going to give you my medical bulletin, I'll spare you that. But I've had a lot of ill health that never leaves you. So that is the most difficult thing. The most difficult moment is leaving that farm household, looking the widow or the eldest daughter in the eye and understanding that she is also going to attempt suicide. And then all your puffed up power of the freedom of the press, the power of the pen, at that point it means bullshit. And you don't have the credibility I never did to give an assurance that all will be well and I'll take care of it because it was dishonest. You try reassurance and you know it isn't working. I have never figured out how to cope with that. I still haven't. That's the difficult. That's a very powerful answer. So we have two more questions. I think I'll just bundle them together. So Nali will ask her question first and then I'm going to introduce a question from Laotaro so so Nali can you go ahead and ask your question first and then I'll ask Laotaro's and then sign up you can wrap up and then I'll come back after you. Okay, please so Nali just unmute yourself. Yeah, thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you, comment sign up for such an informative and amazing lecture. So I have two questions. I don't know how silly the sound. So my first question is how to report about farmers and workers without me without romanticizing it. Like, even the migrant workers when they were going back to the villages during the lockdown, and now the farmers, the first thing with the farmers comes like they are the aminadas. So no farmer no food, but without making it about ourselves that what they are doing for us, just like making them humans that they have problems. And it's, it's something beyond our own existence, like, without being selfish about it, like because a lot of people, a lot of coverage is about how they are the food, they are the people who give us food. So that's why they're important, but they are important, apart from this fact that they're just growing food and same thing with workers that they were building the cities and now the cities have abandoned them during the lockdown. So then again, you are making it about yourselves and not about them. That's, and the other question is the humor part which you talked about humor and hope as well. Like I interviewed an Asha worker for my article for this fellowship and I couldn't find the humor or even hope because all I felt was anger about how how the system and the governments have completely failed. So how do we find it in such difficult times. Thank you. Yeah, so I forgot to mention that Sonali I'm glad you raised it but she has written a terrific story about a profile of an Asha worker. So the workers that you had mentioned in the, in the slideshow, it's a terrific story gets under the skin of what's going on in the pandemic in the countryside. Let me throw in Lautaro's question as well and then there's three and there's some relationship between them so you can, you know, use this as a good opportunity. Lautaro did a story on the United Nations mission in Haiti, and the role of other countries, military forces and so on. It's a pretty powerful story. I mean, look, I've introduced you in this fellowship to somebody who's written a story on nuclear waste dumping somebody's done a story on a cultural, you know, even a major cultural event in China. So now the story on profiling an Asha worker Lautaro story on Haiti. I mean the story sign up are quite incredible and I mean you will be happy when when you see the whole package together. Lautaro's question is look in Latin America, whether it's Virginia Bolton, Eduardo Galliano, Rudolfo Walsh, Roque Dalton, didn't mention but also Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The best journalists were poets, novelists, essayists, for example, and what Lautaro is asking how to distinguish between the journalistic and literary genres. This actually speaks a little to Sonali's second question about how do we make humor out of tragedy what appears to be just tragedy, you know, is this a genre question. Is this a question of the reporter becoming, you know, the, the maybe the person who puts hope on the on the table. Yeah, so that's three very rich questions for you. I would very strongly advise on one aspect of actually those within those questions, there are many questions, but I would strongly advise people to read, especially the tarot because read, read John read on Mexico. Or read him even attended the humor Sonali depends on what you've been asking them questions about. And whether you see if people are you're focused very sternly, I'm focused very sternly on Vijay, who's a worker somewhere. And I ask him questions of deathly prose. So in that mode, if I relaxed him in conversation, he's going to be himself. I believe by the way, most poor people, humor is a self defensive survival mechanism. If you don't have a sense of humor, you'll go nuts. And then there is also the humor of situational humor. John Reed, yeah, goes in the height of the revolution to a hotel. The temperature is sub zero, it's way below zero. And he's asking the he's asking the little petty bureaucrat behind the table. And the guy says, if sir, you know, if the gospel in Mr. Mr. We have very comfortable rooms. If the sir doesn't mind a little fresh air, because all the windows of the hotel have been shot out. Okay, you're going to sleep in 20 minus. Yeah, you're going to sleep at the way he puts it across. He's not trying to be funny, but there's humor in that situation, where a guy is telling you, we have very comfortable accommodations. If you don't mind a little fresh air and minus 20 is bloody fresh air. You're going to freeze to death. But that kind of thing happens all the time, all the way around me, the humor of it. Okay, this year, I mean, 2020, I have to still write about it. One of the most deadly human beings, nastiest, most dangerous people I ever met died. But you know what that guy had? He had a sense of humor. His name was Jagadishwar Jeet Singh. And he was, again, I'm trying to tell you that humor can come from many different quarters. He was a villain to the tip of his fingers. He was the most dangerous landlord of Bihar, more than 200 deaths subscribed to him. And he was to terrorize people by keeping a wild cat. Description married, whether it was a cheetah or a leopard or a tiger or whatever. And he was fierce. He came from a place called Manatu. And he was known as the Manatu Mawar, which meant the man-eater of Manatu. I met him after his prime. I mean, he was still a danger, but he was not left-wing radicals in his area. I had sort of bottled him up. But what struck me when I wrote about him, the humor with which he spoke made the story far more menacing. It made that story. It made my head stand. You know, I asked, I meet him. And he wants to put me in my place in the very beginning of the interview. And he does. I'm taking pictures of him. And he says, hey, take my right profile. Okay, it looks more evil. Your photo editor will ask for that. Yeah, I look at him, open mouth and gaping. He says, I'm trying to help you. You know, take this profile because it looks more evil. The last magazine that came here, we named the magazine Maya magazine. They took my good profile and then they ended up with a picture that they had to paint in order to make me look more evil. So make me take the correct profile. Your editor and, you know, your editor will not be satisfied with someone looking so nice and calm and old and gentle. You're making a story about a tyrannical murderer. You know, that took half the wind out of the same. Then I asked him, some of this you actually have to hear in Hindi, but I'm telling you the next great line. And I asked him, is it true that you had a tiger or other big cat, a lion or a tiger or something that terrorized your constituents, your people. He said, Janab, my Lord, I had a humble cheetah. Journalists like you gave my little cheetah a double promotion and made him a tiger and a lion. Now, how can you not have that in your copy? I mean, you are an idiot if you leave that out of your copy. And yet the humor offsetting the record made the record much more menacing than it had been straight talk. Okay, like the humor contrasting with the actual record of the person. So the humor is there. You need to look for it. The humor is there. You need to ask for it. You need to make that person believe that he or she can be open with you. Okay, I covered a riot, a caste riot in Andhra Pradesh where believe it or not, this was at the time that Michael Jackson was an international figure. And Michael Jackson had entered the villages breakdowns and moondowns and various competitions were held in the villages. Prabhu Deva comes out of that Vijay, the great choreographer. So the, I was looking at villages where there were posters, Michael Jackson dance class. Okay, that was the only English word they knew. So there were rivals between the upper caste dancers and the Dalits untouchable dancers and the untouchable dancers won the tournament. The upper caste torched the entire village. I land up there a little later, and everyone's terrified generally to speak right. So I asked the head dancer of the, of the, the winning side that had its village bird. I asked him, what happened? There was a dance tournament. He was scared. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to say because he was wondering whether he'll get anyone into trouble. He didn't know me from Adam. There was a woman older than him, standing by with a very tired exasperation on her face. After he dallyed my questions for two minutes, three minutes, she put his hand on his neck and said, in Telugu, not understanding that I knew Telugu. She said, you little shit. Are you going to tell him what really happened? Or do I have to do even that for you? And used a number of other words. I will not repeat for your innocent years. Okay, there was humor in that. She just said, you little shit in Hindu. I couldn't use those. I couldn't use the swear words, but she actually, I could say that she said something very sharp to him. So there are various times in, it's also on whether, okay, the other thing is, are you for reporting reality? Reality has a lot of humor. Sometimes grisly humor, sometimes graveyard humor, but it has humor. You can make a choice of it. I'm saying, don't think that the use of humor or the, if you're a good reporter, you have to reflect what was the conversations that people were having. And it's funny. So what's wrong in doing that? You're doing your job as a reporter by saying, this was the conversation you need have to say within brackets. It's a joke. Please laugh. You just put it down there. People will laugh. They will. And it actually sets them up for the fall in the more serious part of the story. After that, you're going to find out that that woman, the boy, all of them lost their homes over a frigging dance tournament. Tell me, was the preceding humor going to make that revelation harder or easier to take? It is going to make it harder, right? So I'm saying even in storytelling technique, it's what I would advise. And then you ask two things, right? One was about the humor. And okay, by the way, we have several Asha worker stories on party. I'm sure you did a fantastic story. But ours had quite a bit of humor. You know, I mean, and this, actually, I've come to the other problems I've experienced where you have to drop the quote or humor, because it'll get them into serious trouble. It'll get them into serious trouble if they say what they thought of their local chief medical officer or whoever it was. But the women speak like that. And Hariani women speak with a very sharp and base humor, which is where we did our Asha stories. I think that it makes the hard part of the story harder by contrast by, you know, black makes white brighter and vice versa. Now, so yeah, so the Asha and then the other thing is the orientation and the differentiation of genres. I think some of the great writers, I mean, I think a Marques or a Reid or something. Their prose reads like poetry. Why would I kill that? I would look at the writers work whether the report has got all that I need from the point of view of reporting. But if the person writes with elegance and poetry, and I told you when I covered Sally Han that old freedom fighter, here we met a woman who attacked a platoon of British soldiers with 40 other 39 other young women with wooden staffs armed to the teeth platoon and chase them out of the village. And yeah, and she did it because they had shot her father. He was lying in the street bleeding from the tie. He was a freedom fighter. Do you know what 50 years later, the state confers great freedom fighter status on her father. I'm not saying they should have, but she was the hero. The father lay there. Yeah, he took a bullet lay there. She ran from the fields leading 40 women in all with sticks. And those days you used very stout sticks in the fields because they were monkeys, baboons, leopards, big cats, you had to protect yourself. And all women knew how to do that with that stick. And they came there and took on these people on party you will find her story and you will find I was not able to tell her story for a long time. Though we saw her there her memory was going. It came back when I spoke to her about her father I said that made you angry. And she remembered everything like it was yesterday. That was the big event in her life. Then, you know, we were looking at someone who was a hero in our history. And she was there in such poverty and such penury, holding a certificate of freedom fighter in her father's name. The four of us reporters, Jack, pushotum, taco, me, Bijoy Suni, Bijoy Sahis, Jagdish Suna. In the car as we left, we are the noisiest gang imaginable. That day, there were four young guys in silence and in tears as we left her home. And the only thing I could do at that moment was to write a poem which is also there with her story. Please look it up. The power of it. I felt, yeah, I will write this point. I will publish this. It's also there is no rule that you have to be a fragment of yourself. You can do many a journalist can do many things. You can be many things. You can be a I mean, I've got journalist friends who are scientists, serious scientists. They do their science. They do their journalism. They bring the best of their science into their journalism perhaps. Yeah, these things strengthen each other and the ability to communicate with people, serious subjects. One of the very important jobs of the journalist of the good journalist is to act as a bridge between the knowledge of the social scientists of social sciences and the arts and humanities and lay readers. And pure sciences also journalist to be that bridge of knowledge between societies between lay person society and that that's a very important role. So I think one should at least if not I'm not saying please I'm not I'm not saying write a poem in every piece or anything but leave yourself open to those influences around you. There are, there are such pictures things like JD my colleague JD has done a story, I showed you on the migrants who walked it. So much of what they said the language they use was poetic. You know, ask them what do you think of that walk you made and looking at others. The guy says, it was as if the entire country was walking. What a beautiful headline that made it was as if the. So, yes, I understand that journalism is one thing poetry is another literature is another. But please believe me journalism can be excellent literature also. Each of us has to work out in our societies. How much we play with the genre. I can't give you a one size fits all, but I can recommend that you read people who have a sense of the poetic, the markets, the reads and others. Yeah. So, observe the distinctions between the fields. Don't hesitate to draw from the best of all. Thank you. Well, thank you. Sainad that was as usual a master class in journalism in ethics in how to report the great processes of our time. I know I'm speaking on behalf of Zoe and Prashant for people's dispatch and globetrotter and for all our fellows who I know appreciated your contribution immensely we've taped this lecture. Many of us will watch it again and learn again and deeper from it. So thanks a lot for that. You know, I have, you know, I've told you that I'm going to edit the best of sign art into one volume, your best writings from blitz to party. And for the introduction, which I've been composing in my head while you've been speaking, I'm going to steal from the introduction you wrote to John reads 10 days that shook the world. In that introduction, you will remember you said that John Reed didn't speak truth to power. John Reed spoke truth about power. And then you added three words, you said he did this, this speaking truth about power relentlessly, passionately, and powerfully. I'm going to steal from that when I write the introduction to the best of sign art in which I will also say that sign art didn't just speak truth to power. He spoke the truth about power relentlessly, passionately, and powerfully. So thanks a lot for a terrific lecture. And we'll see everybody again soon.