Arthniti held its very first guest lecture on January 13, 2020 which was graced by the presence of noted journalist Parth MN. Mr. Parth eloquently expressed his views on the rural economy and how honest journalism can make a difference. Pia Barve writes on what happened at the event.
On the 13th of January, 2020, Arthniti hosted its first-ever guest lecture. Mr. Parth M.N, a former special correspondent with the Los Angeles Times and a Ramnath Goenka Excellence awardee, succeeded in leaving the audience spellbound with his subtle observations made over the course of his career in journalism.
Mr. Parth predominantly writes on politics, agrarian issues, and rural development. He has extensively traveled across the Marathwada region on a People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) Fellowship to document the prevalent agrarian crisis and his articles have appeared in reputed publications such as The Wire, Mumbai Mirror, First Post, The Quint, and Los Angeles Times to name a few.
Mr. Parth MN addressing the audience. Credits: Yash Venugopal
Mr. Parth began the talk by stating certain hard-hitting facts. The hurdle in bringing rural news to the headlines stems from the dominance of stories that originate from the National Capital. He explained that 60% of the news that reaches us comes from Delhi and that the Tier 2 and Tier 3 regions are ill-represented. The mainstream news features stories that concern a majority of the viewership/ readership and hence leave out the minority, despite their realities being worthy of attention.
The dearth of reporters in covering farmers’ issues aggravates the severity of the agricultural crisis by effectively reducing the outward flow of information from rural areas. Sir, further emphasized that this scarcity of truth-diggers has led to a very superficial coverage of farmer issues and has made the urban class blindly believe the distorted rural news that reaches them.
The on-going agricultural crisis was discussed as a major cause for the influx of labor into the informal sector along with the water crisis and poor implementation of schemes such as MGNREGA. In the case of the latter, less than 10% of the beneficiaries have been awarded what was promised to them. This reality has induced rural to urban migration. The flourishing ‘Labour Chowks’ in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh are a testament to this fact. Mr. Parth elucidated that this migration is not underpinned by some fantasy of living in a big city but borne out of compulsion - to escape the harsh economic reality of the village.
The talk was followed by an intense question-answer round which brought out certain well-formulated perspectives and made the audience put on their thinking caps! Questions were asked on varied issues such as the water crisis, dropouts in schools among kids who belong to farmer families, the underrepresentation of women and agricultural labor in the farmer suicide data, the logic of farm waivers, the evils of middlemen, and more.
The effects of climate change, the lack of research initiatives in understanding climate change, the need to revise cropping patterns, and the innovation in irrigation methods were also actively discussed. Mr. Parth carefully warned that even though he supports the practice of awarding a Minimum Support Price (MSP) to cultivators of certain crop varieties, this must be undertaken along with effective procurement practices.
(From L-R: Ira Deulgaonkar, Swastik Routray, Parth MN, Vikramsinh Patil, Uday Wadehra, and Omkar Arora.)
Towards the end, Sir implored the audience to be wary of fake news. There must be an attempt to verify every piece of information that we encounter to do away with the instability and mistrust that is engendered by falsification. The session ended on a positive note that the aim of effective journalism should be to provide a voice to the voiceless and to make the issues of the voiceless feature in dining room conversations!