The Talk
Over 300,000 farmers have committed suicide in this country between 1995 and 2015. A gross underestimate, but still a terrible figure that officialdom admits to. Yet India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian and is reaching into many other layers and sectors of society. That crisis is shaped and driven by the greatest levels of inequality independent India has ever seen. An inequality cynically constructed by the policies of the past 25 years. But the chickens have come home to roost. How do we deal with the deepening distress? What are the options before us in finding a way out of the morass?
Mr P Sainath brings out the situation in the country in this talk of Manthan.
P Sainath
Palagummi Sainath is an Indian photojournalist who focuses on social & economic inequality, rural affairs, poverty and the aftermath of globalization in India. He is the Founder Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.
Sainath’s work on the agrarian crisis has produced the largest journalistic body of work ever on the Indian countryside in terms of the problems faced by farming communities. It is also a body of work that goes far beyond the realm of journalism, capturing issues and complexities that academia and policy makers have failed to. He is the recipient of a number of awards, prominent among them being the Magsaysay award and the Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights journalism prize.
