Intolerance Brigade Terrorising Even Writers, Artists: P Sainath

The lives of the impoverished rural India need to be represented in the mainstream media and marginalised communities must find voice in media discourse, said eminent journalist, teacher and author Palagummi Sainath.

The Ramon Magsaysay award winner and author of ''Everybody Loves A Good Drought'' was in Sakshi media house on Friday to share his experience in rural journalism and sensitise Team Sakshi about his crowd-sourced effort "People's Archive of Rural India" (PARI). Quoting a Delhi-based media research organisation's report, he said: "The Delhi-based National papers give only 0.18 per cent coverage to agriculture, while Delhi news alone gets nearly 60 per cent coverage on the front page." He called for a change in this attitude.

Explaining the "People's Archive of Rural India" (PARI) digital project, he said this crowd-sourced effort is a multi-lingual volunteer-run digital journalism platform focused on rural affairs. He said this is also an online photo journalism interface that showcases India's rich diversity. He averred that it documents rural life, vocations and crises including agrarian distress.

Among the flagship initiatives of PARI are documentation of rapidly-disappearing languages, collection of grind-mill songs of Maharashtra, documentation of foot soldiers of freedom. He said that PARI has documented agrarian distress, environmental destruction and plight of rural artisans in a big way. Another important project is the recording of facial diversity of the people of India.

Commenting on the present scenario, he said the country was facing a chilling intolerance and vigilante attacks on marginalised sections. He said for the first time ever, the voices of writers and thinkers are being stifled by the present government. "This was not done even during the emergency period,"" he added. He said people like Kanhaiya Kumar and Shehla Rashid are voices of freedom.

Sakshi Editorial director K Ramachandra Murthy, Sakshi editor V Murali, Sakshi digital media head K Sudhakar Reddy, Sakshipost's Sunita Reddy and others were present.