One cannot cover the farming without challenging the big landlords, just like one cannot cover the labour without challenging the big capital. Without recognizing raising extreme inequality in the country

On Sunday, July 21, dozens of students, young journalists, activists, trade union leaders, and other sympathizers of the working-class movement gathered in Vidyasagar Hall, Kotturpuram, Chennai for a day-long workshop titled “Reclaiming the Space for Labour in Journalism: Beating Capital with Labour Beat”.

The Working Class consists of more than 50 crore of the Indian population, yet the journalistic space given to the stories that reflect the objective interests of the working class is vanishingly small in today’s media landscape.

Historically, there existed a dedicated ecosystem in the media, that covered such stories of interest to the Working Class. In the journalistic lexicon, it is called “Labour Beat”.

Given that this vanishing of labour beat from the media ecosystem is symbiotically related to the weakening of labour movement itself; a group of journalists, activists, and general sympathizers of the labour movement (in itself and its role in the overall democratization of the society) felt the need to have a closer look at the situation and brainstorming the way forward to nurture a newer generation of labour journalist equipped with newer tools available due to progress of technology. Thus arose the idea of this workshop.

In this report, we have documented various sessions of this workshop such as speeches on systematic erosion of labour beat, labour economy of Tamilnadu, ethics of Labour Journalism as well as hands-on interactive sessions on how to storyboard and methodology involved in making a video story. We also look at the various questions related to the demography of participants and accessibility of the venue, praises and criticisms from various sections, and reflect on the future possibilities.

This report emerged from our continuous engagement with the organizers over the weeks leading up to the program on Sunday and with our interactions with the persons from diverse backgrounds who participated in the program.

P Sainath’s Speech on the History of Labour Beat

Sainath in his speech covered how the media landscape (in terms of its class composition and its interest in the kind of stories it deems worthy) changed over the last few decades of economic liberalization and steadily increasing corporate monopoly over the media industry. He established his points with details of various publicly available statistical data.

He emphasized greatly the point that aspiring labour journalists must understand the context of change in the political economy and the rise of extreme inequality in the country in which they will be operating.

He started with his own experience of joining journalism nearly half a century ago and how things have changed since. At that time every established newspaper had a full-time labour correspondent.

In the early liberalization era of mid 90’s not a single newspaper had a full-time labour correspondent. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the idea of dedicated labour beat itself started getting vanished and it essentially got merged into the industrial relation (IR) beat.

By 2005, there were essentially IR correspondents, who were basically communicating with the PR offices of the corporates.

It is ironic that such correspondents don’t have any actual contact with trade unions or the working class in general and they are essentially talking with industries to report about labour.

Sainath also emphasized that a number of other beats also essentially disappeared in the post-liberalization era. Around 15 years ago agricultural correspondents were basically communicating to agricultural ministers, not the people who make their livelihoods through farming.

Such agricultural ministers are so alienated from the actual farming process that they can’t even differentiate between two actual farm produce in practice. Today, such agricultural correspondents essentially talk to agribusinesses, not even govt officers in the agriculture departments.

No agricultural correspondent found it worthy to inform their readers about open official partnerships between certain agribusinesses and the Govt of India.

So, agribusinesses can now promote their products through official govt mechanisms. An aspiring journalist must understand this context and cover the stories through the lens of people.

Sainath also stressed that to cover a story genuinely from the people’s lens one needs to understand the labouring process first and need to challenge the persons holding the power positions. One cannot cover the farming without challenging the big landlords, just like one cannot cover the labour without challenging the big capital.

Sainath stressed about the rapidly rising inequality in India, especially after the liberalization in the nineties. He cited the work of the Inequality lab led by Thomas Piketty  and his team which concluded that the wealth inequality in today’s India is greater than the heyday of British colonialism. Till 1991, India didn’t have any dollar billionaires, while the first dollar billionaire arose in 1996.

Today India has 240 dollar billionaires, which consists of only 0.000015% of the country’s total population, and has an accumulated wealth nearly equal to 29% entire country’s GDP.

Their accumulated wealth is greater than the country’s agricultural budget itself. Even among them, 30% of wealth is controlled by the top 5 richest person of the country. Such a massive accumulation of wealth didn’t come from nowhere, but it came from the exploitation and pauperization of crores of ordinary toiling masses.

He told how the Covid-19 pandemic served as a clear indicator to understand the process of wealth accumulation at the top of the economic pyramid by making crores of labouring people poorer. While crores of Indians were trying to sustain the bare minimum; in the first 12 months of the pandemic, India added 42 dollar billionaires, 24 of which are from the health sector.

Rapid concentration of wealth is reflected in the expenditure of electoral campaigns and as a consequence who gets elected. The number of Crorepati MPs grew from 53% in 2009 to 93% in 2024.

Thus nearly 500 crorepati today represent crores of Indians who are on bare survival. Thus it is not hard to understand why people’s issues like poverty and unemployment are not focussed by them. Sainath gave a rather interesting analogy for visualizing the actual mammoth scale of unemployment in today’s India. He said that, if one makes a queue of unemployed persons in India, with each unemployed person covering half a meter, the resulting queue will be more than 3 times the length of the entire coastline of India (even including the coastline of the islands).

He concluded with an explanation of why all these don’t get represented in the media today. Today’s media is essentially the media and entertainment industry controlled by big monopoly capital.

There is an ownership concentration of the registered media, with most registered media owned by a handful of corporates, each owning many at a time. It is practically impossible to raise any issue that is against the interest of the owners.

Sainath also stressed the fact that how change in class composition in the journalists resulted in the change in class concerns as a result of liberalisation. Historically, in the ’60s and ’70s most journalists used to come from the working class and lower middle-class background.

They were less “educated” in the traditional sense, but had an organic link from the class they were coming from. Gradually, as journalism turned more towards corporate PR & entertainment and a profitable business model around it arose, journalism training schools started popping up like business enterprises.

This created a generation of journalists totally alienated from the labouring people. One needs more journalists from the working-class background to change this situation.

Sainath also stressed that while the emergence of newer forms of digital alternative media has enabled the possibility of bypassing the censorship of anti-establishment news in the print and Television media, one must keep in mind that there is a possibility of even worse censorship coming on these alternate media through the algorithms and modern technologies.

However, there still exists some space for pro-labour reporting in alternate media and one must utilize it.

To watch the recorded version of Sainath’s Lecture the interested reader can go to the YouTube Channel WU Live or Workers’ Unity Tamil.

A highly important question regarding the status of unionization of journalists came up during the Q & A session following the talk. Sainath replied that instead of an increase in unionization, rather there has been steady de-unionisation. It is more likely that this is related to the changing class composition of journalists.

Vidyasagar’s Speech on Labour Economy of Tamilnadu:

In his speech titled “Labour Structure & Conditions in Tamilnadu”, Vidyasagar, with the backing of various govt and non-govt data, explained the overall patterns in India’s labour economy from liberalization onwards, as well as specificities of labour economy of Tamilnadu.

He identified how the trend of growth without employment generation and Capitalism’s increasing aggressiveness to negotiate in favour of capital is worsening the already dire situation of the working class in terms of wages, social security, workplace safety, fighting strength, and organizational capacity.

Post-1991 union govt’s policies too aligned with pro-capital, anti-labour tend.

As a result of the influx of capital, there is a general trend of exodus from agriculture. However, this exodus didn’t happen to manufacture. There is a growing service sector and more rural labour are entering it.

As a general trend, over the last 30 years, both industry and agriculture is loosing the capacity to absorb labour. Construction provided around 36% of jobs between 2000 and 2015.

Even in the high-growth industries employment generation is stagnant. Nearly 50% of the workforce in India still depends on agriculture. To increase employment generation and wages in agriculture more govt intervention is needed, but capital is forcing the other way.

While both in industry and agriculture the output has increased, wages have declined. In fact, export production has seen an inverse relationship with the labour standards.

Vidyasagar emphasized about decreasing of formal/regular employment and increasing contract labour along with decentralization of industries as a general trend in the neoliberal era. In fact, contract labour is employed more in capital-intensive industries like automobiles. The percentage of contract labour in the automobile sector increased from 11.6% in 2000 to 44.7% in 2011-12 and currently, it is nearly 60%. The gap in income levels between contractual and regular workers is increasing drastically.

He also mentioned various categories of informal labour like self-earning initiatives, working in family enterprises, in establishments, etc. Surprisingly, self-earning initiatives like street vendors, hawkers, etc, have increased to cover nearly 60% of the informal labour. At present 93% are informal workers, while formal workers only account for 7%. New labour codes will only increase this trend of contractualization and informalisation, and workers will lose their existing rights.

The fighting strength and collective bargaining capacity of the working class have decreased drastically. Despite the tremendous increase in number of workers from the 1980 level, the number of days of workers’ strikes has decreased significantly. Currently, there exist around a dozen Central Trade Union Federations, with nearly 60k registered unions. However, due to causes like the reserve army of labour, and low-paid contract workers, the organizational strength of the workers has weakened significantly.

Vidyasagar then focussed on the specificities of Tamilnadu (TN). TN, with consistently ranking among the highest in the country in terms of Gross State Domestic Product (GDSP), significantly contributes towards India’s overall economic growth. In TN, there are major industrial clusters like automobile, manufacturing, textile, electronics & pharmaceuticals. Chennai, the state capital is a prominent IT & business hub further bolstering economic activity.

TN is among one of the highest-performing states in India in terms of the Human Development Index (HDI) has seen significant improvement over the years in social indicators like education and healthcare. TN also has a legacy of social reform programs & it has been pioneering in social welfare programs. Although compared to other states TN’s performance is better, there are disparities in this success story. Gender roles and expectations continue to shape societal norms, influencing labour force participation patterns. Caste dynamics, prelevant in many aspects of life, also impact economic opportunities.

He pointed out certain important facts about the TN Labour Force patterns based on various public data. Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) per thousand individual population, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) [https://microdata.gov.in/nada43/index.php/catalog/PLFS], and National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO)[https://mospi.gov.in/NSSOa] data were used to arrive at these facts. The estimated labour force (15-59 years) grew at 1.19% per annum from 44.7% in 2001 to 45.6% in 2011. The ratio at all India level during the corresponding period was lower at 39.1% and 39.8% respectively.

2023 TN estimate is 54.7%. He mentioned that between 2001-2011 the proportion of persons who are not working in the state increased from 30.30% to 31.16%. Rural LFPR for men saw a gradual decline from 897 in 1993-94 to 838 in 2021-22, while rural LFPR for women in the same period declined more sharply from 680 to 530. The general national trend of increasing unemployment holds for TN also with 1.6% in 2011-12 to 3.6% in 2018-19.

He went further about characteristics of labour in TN with an emphasis on the young people (15-35 age group) who consists 35% of the state’s population. 7 out of 8 workers in TN work in the non-farm sector, with most of them being contract workers with a ‘footloose nature’ [https://www.amazon.in/Footloose-Labour-Working-Informal-Contemporary/dp/0521568242] of labour. Many youths were compelled to join as gig workers in Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, Uber, etc. They earn a mere 400-500 Rs per day with an average work time of 12+ hours per day. There is a trend of rural to urban youth migration with migrant workers being absorbed more in certain sectors. He also pointed out that about 30% of the people in 15-18 age are out of school and an increase in adolescent labour.

He ended his talk with certain criticism about the Dravidian model, especially on urban land usage and urban poverty, despite its relative success compared to other northern Indian states in terms of HDI. Dravidian model promoted urbanization through industrialization, increased infrastructure investments, introduction of pump sets for irrigation, creation of co-op societies, and so on to change caste-based occupations & caste discrimination, supported by social justice policies. In the process, urban areas are getting overcrowded, and more & more slums and in some cases, caste-based settlements are arising in urban areas. There is a repeating trend of slum clearance by the govt which has deprived youths of livelihood opportunities. Govt is planning to create a land bank of 45k acres in the next five years to attract investments, but there is nothing for the workers even in MOUs.

Journalistic Ethics and Labour Journalism:

The speech by Vidyasagar was followed by shorter talks by two in-house journalists of Workers’ Unity, namely Vaishnavi and Sandeep. They shared their insights on certain ethical issues while covering labour struggles and also a few minute but technical aspects that need to be kept in mind.

Vaishnavi used a video footage from a mainstream media covering a particular strike of women workers. She emphasized with particular examples how the reporting of that media is actually reporting from an angle of industry that production is being stopped, and not from the perspective of workers.

That’s why they didn’t take any in-depth interviews of workers there. They also didn’t ask the question about wages and working conditions in their report and what objective causes might have created so much anger among the workers. The entire environment was very emotionally charged and Vaishnavi emphasized that covering the story from a working-class lens doesn’t mean getting carried out by the emotions of workers also. A responsible labour-journalist must independently verify the claims made by workers also.

Sandeep said that at a time when rapid changes in the economic organisation is leaving the workers perilous, the journalistic resources, human and infrastructure, is scantily deployed to cover issues of labour relations. In other words, the ‘Labour Beat’ has been missing at a time when it is dearly needed.

Young journalist should come forward and cover the untold stories burried behind factories workshops around the country.

After this, there was a lunch break and a closed session for the pre-registered participants started after lunch.

Aparna’s Speech on Making Video Stories & various ethical issues:

The session after the lunch started with an “ice-breaking session”. In this session the participants were first asked to get familiar with the space by walking through the whole space and pausing periodically. Then they were asked to form pairs with someone they don’t know already and talk in pairs for sometime. After that they were asked to take the identity of other person in the pair and introduce the other person as self. We later came to know from the organizers that such a “ice-breaking session” is common practice in theatre circles.

Following this there was a talk by Aparna Ganesan on methodology involved in making a video story. At this point a brief introduction of Aparna is required for the reader.

Aparna Ganesan is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker from India with five years of experience. She’s worked with DW News, Faultline Videos, Mongabay, and Asiaville. Aparna is a 2022 Earth Journalism Network Grantee and 2024 GRID ArendalGrantee. She’s one among ten journalists selected by the East-West Centre to do an Indian-Pakistan cross-border documentar

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The AIKS has detailed how the agrarian crisis has aggravated owing to a combination of natural calamities and corruption, and immoral politics. “Due to political instability, the problems of the people and issues of development have got completely side-lined. Since most BJP leaders are busy offering bribes to engineer splits in rival parties… it has again become imperative to hit the streets to solve people’s fundamental problems,” said an AIKS leader. The commencement of this renewed stage of the agitation was announced by AIKS leaders, Dr Ashok Dhawale, J P Gavit, Kisan Gujar Umesh Deshmukh and Dr Ajit Nawale.

Due to this crisis, an overwhelming majority of farmers in the country are bearing the steep losses in agriculture only because they have no other alternative. It is the neo-liberal and pro-corporate policies of the BJP-led central and state governments that have heaped these calamities on the farmers. The agrarian crisis can be ended only by completely giving up these pro-corporate policies and adopting people-centric alternative policies. 

“In the last two years, excessive and unseasonal rains destroyed crops in large parts of the state. The state government loudly declared that compensation would be given to farmers, but it has been given nowhere,” said the leaders speaking to Sabrangindia.

“Assurances were given time and again to vest forest land, temple land, inaam land, waqf land, pasture land, and land for housing to peasants and agricultural workers, many of whom are actually tilling that land for several generations. But instead of vesting land in their names, the police and forest departments were misused to beat up poor peasants and drive them out of their meagre land and houses. Land is being forcibly acquired for highways, corridors, ports, and airports, with very little compensation,” they added.

To draw sharp attention to these fundamental issues and given the callous disregard by the state government several dignitaries have agreed to join the march on foot of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) from Akole to Loni from April 26 to 28. They include the world-renowned rural affairs journalist P Sainath, the eminent rural economist Dr R Ramakumar, the popular peasant leader and writer from North India Badal Saroj, the young and dynamic MLA of the CPI (M) Vinod Nikole, and many others. P Sainath and most of the others will walk the entire distance for three days.

The AIKS will now organise this three day long march to Loni, the office of the Revenue Minister of Maharashtra, Shri Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil. CITU, Construction Workers Federation, AIAWU, AIDWA, DYFI, SFI, All Gurav Samaj Sanghatana and other like-minded organisations have extended active fraternal support to the march.

If the demands of this march are not conceded, an indefinite Mahapadav struggle will begin at Loni from 28 April onwards.

Related:

An AIKS Struggle Convention at Dahanu, Palghar where vows were taken to intensify struggles around land and farmer rights

Adivasi and other farmers under the AIKS bring Maharashtra govt to its feet

The post P Sainath to march with Farmers from Akole to Loni in Ahmednagar district: Maharashtra appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The central government is playing with fire by not repealing the three agriculture laws opposed by farmers, said People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) Founder P. Sainath on January 16, 2021 during a dialogue co-organised by Nation for Farmers (NFF,) Bihar Mahila Samaj (BMS) and Tatpar Foundation.

Sainath, the former editor of Rural Affairs for The Hindu, demanded a special Parliament session for hearing farmers and their demands in the context of unprecedented mobilisation of peasants on the issue of farm laws – the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance & Farm Services Act, the Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act – in Patna on Saturday.

He sought restoration of the farmers’ universe and status that collapsed because new economic reforms are not in sync with equality.

“Agriculture is a state subject under the Constitution of India. These three laws aggravate the existing agrarian crisis. APMC is to agriculture what the government school is to the education sector. APMC is like the government hospital of the health sector. Reforms must be farmer friendly, and not corporate friendly,” said Sainath.

Sainath also talked about how farmers have begun directly confronting corporate power. He said their protest is in defense of democracy and for reclaiming the republic. The renowned journalist questioned the enactment of these laws during the pandemic and talked about various aspects of the agrarian crisis. He also talked about the effect of these laws on many allied professions and the importance of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and its relation to procurement.

“This is one of a series of struggles. The nation is with farmers and this fight is ours. We need to show our solidarity with the mobilisation of farmers because it is not an ordinary event. It merits special attention from all sections of society because these laws will have adverse effects on the rights of all citizens,” said Sainath who returned to the state capital on January 17 to speak at the Kisan Sansad.

Similarly, NFF member Dr. Gopal Krishna introduced the subject and explained the backdrop in which Bihar’s APMC Act was repealed because of irrational and unconvincing reasons and made a case for its restoration.

Later, speaker Dr. Anamika Priyadarshini made a case for enactment of a law that protects women farmers. Social activist Nivedita Jha spoke about the march of women farmers which is being held on the occasion of Mahila Kisan Diwas on January 18.

Over the last 50 days or so, farmers in India have burnt copies of the three laws. On the call of the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), farmers near Delhi border are gearing up for a tractor rally on Republic Day, demanding repeal of these illegitimate unconstitutional laws.

Related:

10,000 people assemble at Azad Maidan! Mumbaikars put Centre’s claim to shame

Farmers organisations begin maintaining record of the fallen

Jai Kisan, say veteran jawans now stationed on Delhi’s borders in solidarity with farmers

BKU President Bhupinder Singh Mann quits SC-nominated Committee for farm laws

Bihar govt repression continues: 10,000 farmers lathi charged in Patna.

Do farmers’ demands benefit India’s hungry population?

Women Famers still struggling for recognition

The post Not just a farmers struggle, but a fight for democracy: P. Sainath appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Media, which is often regarded as the fourth pillar of the democracy, is today, completely devoid of a labour correspondent or an agricultural correspondent. The harrowing issues of 75% of the population rarely end up making the headlines in our mainstream media. The greatest example of this in the contemporary context is the media’s approach to the water crisis in the country. “Mainstream media is never going to cover the class and caste distinctions of water,” says Sainath

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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Senior journalist P Sainath talks about the changing face of media in the country, its evolution and ultimate takeover by the corporate world. How the “layers of conflict of interests” steered the fourth pillar of democracy into a different direction. Excerpts: 

The post The rat-race in the media is over and the rats have won appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Courtesy: Newsclick/in

The post Facebook Live, P. Sainath talks about the reality of media in the country, the ongoing crisis, and the role of alternatives appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) has published a live interaction video of P. Sainath on why our farmers are angry. He talks about the agrarian crisis in India and the present situation of agricultural economy.

The post Why are our Farmers Angry? P. Sainath on the Latest Phase of the Agrarian Crisis appeared first on SabrangIndia.

This is the fourth year of drought in Marathwada in the past five years. Each of its 8,522 villages have been affected for at two consecutive years. As many as 2,745 water tankers are being used in the region compared to 939 this time last year. 

The water crisis is so severe in some parts of the region that water is being delivered through a special “water train” filled at Miraj in western Maharashtra. 

P. Sainath speaks at “National Consultation on Drought" about the crisis the region is gripped with. According to him, the region is not just looking at drought, but a full blown water crisis. This video is the part 1 of the series.

Coutesy: Newsclick

The post Marathwada Water Crisis: What is the Way Out? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Larger Processes At Work Destroying Journalism Today: P. Sainath

The commercial interests of these (business-controlled) channels represent the commercial interests of the largest corporations of the country.

 
 “One problem with the fourth estate of democracy i.e. the media, is that of the four it’s the only one that is profit seeking. And in this city (Mumbai) it is very difficult to tell the difference between the fourth estate and real estate. India has a society that is incredibly diverse, heterogeneous and complex, reported by a media that is shrinking to narrower control.
 
The more your society is heterogeneous, the more your media is getting homogeneous. That is an incredible, irreconcilable contradiction. Look at the nature of panels and debates on Television.
 
What is their social composition? Who are the columnists in newspapers? It’s an extremely small, incestuous circle. The most sympathetic response to farmer suicides I have received, have come from institutions associated with the armed forces.
 
Why? Because many of our jawans are kisans in uniform. A senior officer at a training institute for soldiers once told me that he was worried about the boys from Maharashtra. They fear a call from village. When they call their families they are happy but not if they get a call from home. They don’t’ want to know what happened to whom. There is such a close relationship between a jawan and kisan.. they are practically the same class.
 
Where does the national vs. anti-national debate come from? From people whose ideological forebears never participated in national struggle, who gave whining apology to the British to be let out of prison while others died.
 
People who assassinated the father of the nation will now teach you nationalism. Today you have an entire generation robbed of its history. They have no clue what happened in the national struggle, who did what, who were the nationalists and who were the collaborators of British imperialism. Major changes have taken place.
 
Angry though I am at individual editors and anchors, I think there are much larger processes at work destroying journalism. Without addressing these, just changing anchors won’t help. These anchors are there because they are allowed to be there.
 
In the last 20 odd years we have reduced journalism to a revenue stream. This has happened because of the corporatisation of media. Entities controlling the media today are larger, more powerful than we have ever known.
 
In the last 25-30 years the concentration of media ownership has taken place rapidly and massively. Take the case of the largest network: Network 18. It is owned by Mukesh Ambani. All of you know the many channels of the ETV network. How many of you know that except the Telugu channel, all others are also owned by Mukesh Ambani just as he owns many other channels across the country?
 
If we all remain in journalism for five more years, we could all be owned by him. He does not know the names of all the channels he owns. Yet he could issue a fatwa stating that Aam Aadmi Party will not be covered during elections and it will be done. The commercial interests of these channels represent the commercial interests of the largest corporations of the country. So you are going to have extreme tightening and control of content.
 
In the last 20 odd years, the owners of the corporations that own and control media have been the biggest beneficiaries of neoliberalism and privatisation of public resources. Everyone seems to forget that Manmohan Singh was treated like a god for the first five years.
 
All those great anchors in 2009 had said this victory was not of the Congress party but is Manmohan Singh’s victory, that it is the victory of economic reforms. Now keep watch, the next round of privatisation is on the anvil. And who would gain from these?
 
If mining is being privatised – the Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis, Adanis all of them will be the big beneficiaries. When natural gas is privatised, Essar and Ambanis will benefit. And from the Spectrum – Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas.
 
Your media owners are poised to be the biggest beneficiaries of policies of the privatisation of public resources. They will get into the banks as well when those are privatised. Now here’s the bite.
 
They invested a few years in building up a fuehrer like figure called Narendra Modi, reducing all his rivals to dust consigned to the dustbin of Gujarat and Delhi. But he has not been able to deliver. And they don’t know what to do. He has not been able to push his land acquisition bill. He has not been able to do a lot of things you have been salivating for. They are angry with Modi but they don’t have a replacement.
 
What do they do? So finally we are seeing some amount of leeway in the media, a little bit of whining now and then. I say again that the Indian media is politically free but imprisoned by profit. That is the character of Indian media. I am not so impressed by the turnaround of the media on Kanhaiya. Remember they got millions of eyeballs by carrying his speech. Their viewership went up fabulously.
 
Despite the turn, many of them accepted the terms of debate of the BJP where they would claim that what was done to Kanhaiya was wrong but you have to begin it by saying that they are against the antinational slogans. You apologise in advance and you have accepted that framework and slotted yourself into that framework.
 
Corporatisation of media is not new though it is faster in India than in many other countries. In USA and Australia it has already reached saturation point. Look at journalism in the last 10 years. Of the three greatest expose that impacted journalism, shaken it to its core, not one has come from mainstream professional journalism.  These three are Assange and Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.
 
Why did none of them come out of the so called professional news organisation? Because they are not pro establishment or pro big business they are big business they are the establishment. They are too heavily invested in the market to tell you the truth about it.
 
Their shares will suffer in value if they start examining the share bazaar in any critical way. So don’t ever invest your money based on tips of newspapers. They have got millions of shares out there and they are never going to tell you the truth about it. Because of revenue becoming the chief criteria of journalism, you have private treaties whereby if you are a mid-sized corporation wanting to make the big leap and you come to me who is the biggest English newspaper in the planet, I will tell you to sign a private treaty. This will give me 10% shares in your company. But if I do that, there can be no negative reporting of your company in my newspaper.
 
Now when a newspaper develops shares in 200 companies, is that a newspaper or an equity firm. Good journalism is a society in conversation with itself, a nation in debate and argument with itself. It’s a public service and when we talk of monetising this sort of a public service, you pay a terrible price for it. Let me give you a glimpse into the size of rural India – 833 million people, 784 languages, 6 of them spoken by more than 50 million, 3 of them spoken by more than 80 million.
 
Now according to latest report of Delhi based Centre for Media Studies, rural India gets only 0.18% of space on the front pages of the top 6 newspapers in the country and only 0.16 percent of space on the prime time of six major news channels in the country.
 
I started the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) to try and capture some of the gigantic transitions that is on in this rural India where one third of us who live in urban India have our roots. But everywhere I go, people ask: what is your revenue model? I say I don’t have one but what work of art or literature would be in existence today if the creator had to have a revenue model.
 
What if Valmiki had to get an approval for his revenue model before writing the Ramayana, or Shakespeare before writing his plays? To those who ask for my revenue model, I say that I know one guy who had a very good revenue model and it worked for 40 years, his name was Veerappan. There were attendant risks in his work, but what is entrepreneurism without risks?
 
High risk, high reward. To this day, the media has done a very poor job of covering the fallout of the beef ban in this state with one or two great exceptions and I must say Times of India of all papers, was a fabulous exception. The beef ban has not just destroyed Muslims who it is supposed to destroy, it has destroyed the Dalits and the Kolhapur chappal industry, it has smashed the hell out of the OBCs who control the cattle markets, it has just about smashed everything in the countryside.
 
You have a bunch of urban, lower middle class or upper middle class people who know nothing about agriculture or centrality of the cow to the rural economy but have taken decisions. Has the media done any serious, hard-hitting investigation on the murder of the three rationalists – Comrade Govind Pansare or Narendra Dhabolkar or Kalburgi? The courts are scolding the police and the government for dragging their feet but there is no serious investigation. All the three were killed by the same method by the same young men in a motorcycle. By the way, Haren Pandya in Gujarat was killed the same way as well.
 
 What is the difference between this rule of BJP and the previous time? I believe this political situation is unique in our history and for the first time in our history an RSS pracharak is PM with a majority. The earlier pracharak was quite jaded and there had been 40 years of softening between him being an active pracharak and being prime minister and he did not have a majority.
 
A lot changes when you have a pracharak with a majority. And the media is negotiating space with this. I believe this country is ruled by a coalition of social-religious fundamentalist and market-economic fundamentalist and they need each other. So what are the things that you can do?
 
There is a very strong case for fighting for democratisation of media; by law, by legislation and by popular movement. Literature, journalism, storytelling, these did not come out due to investments of corporations. They have come out of communities, of people, of societies. Let’s try and take it back to them.
 
When Bal Gangadhar Tilak was imprisoned for Sedition, people came out on the street and died to defend his freedom as a journalist. That was the working class of Mumbai. Some of them were people who could not even read. But they came out to defend an Indian’s right to freedom of expression. There was once a great organic link between the Indian media and the Indian masses.
 
You need to fight for the democratisation of the media, for strengthening of the public broadcaster; you need to be able to break monopoly – monopoly se azaadi – over media ownership. You need to increase diversity in ownership of media, increase the public space in private forum that the media has become and believe me we need to fight for that space. It won’t be easy but it can be done.
 
(Video Recording by Satyen Bordoloi at the Mumbai Collective, March 5, 2016 This is a version of the speech delivered by Senior journalist P Sainath on the March 5, 2016, Mumbai Collective. The full version can be heard on the Video Below)

See also:
1. Gandhi, Ambedkar and Lenin would be dubbed as left wing loonies today: P. Sainath
2.P. Sainath's Interview in Hindi with Teesta Setalvad Part I and II

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