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Current generation has lost touch with rural India, says P Sainath, Magsaysay award winner
The event was jointly organised by Symbiosis International University (SIU) and Pune International Centre (PIC)
PUNE The urban-rural divide in the country has grown sharper than in the past with present generation losing connection with rural India, said P Sainath, Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, and the founder-editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).
He was speaking at the third Dileep Padgaonkar Memorial Lecture, on “Telling the Stories of 833 Million-The challenge of Reporting the Indian Countryside in the Digital Age”. The event was jointly organised by Symbiosis International University (SIU) and Pune International Centre (PIC).
“Our ancestors belong to the villages, but now we have lost that connection. New generations are growing up as foreigners in our own country. Unfortunately, even in the Indian census, there is no definition of rural India. Anything which is not urban is considered as rural and it is depressing,” said Sainath.
Talking about the role which the media plays today in our country, Sainath said, “The rural population covers 69 per cent of our country, but media does not cover various issues faced by them. Their issues come to focus only during the election period.”
He further went on to add about the tragedy in print media and said, “A definition of a national daily in our country is having an office or a branch in Delhi and those who don’t are not considered as a national daily. National newspapers cover 67 per cent of the news content from Delhi, 12 per cent from Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai among others.”
During his speech, while elaborating on what is good journalism, he said that it is engaging with the great processes of time. According to him Ram Mohan Roy, Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar were the greatest journalists of all time.
He also stressed on the importance of languages and in need of promotion to keep them alive. “Each time when an Indian language dies, our culture dies, our legacy dies,” he said.
Raghunath Mashelkar praised late Dileep Padgaonkar and called him a multidimensional personality, saying that individuals come and go, but Institutions live forever and Dileep was an Institution. SB Mujumdar, president and chancellor of Symbiosis International (Deemed University), hailed P Sainath as a “one-man university”.
