26 Facts About Palagummi Sainath

Palagummi Sainath was born on 13 May 1957 and is an Indian columnist and author of the acclaimed book Everybody Loves a Good Drought.

Palagummi Sainath has extensively written on rural India, his notable interests are poverty, structural inequities, caste discrimination and farmers protests.

Palagummi Sainath founded the People's Archive of Rural India in 2014, an online platform that focuses on social and economic inequality, rural affairs, poverty, and the aftermath of globalization in India.

Palagummi Sainath was a senior fellow at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and was earlier the Rural Affairs Editor at The Hindu until his resignation in 2014.

Palagummi Sainath's book Everybody Loves a Good Drought is a collection of his field reports as a journalist, and focuses on different aspects of rural deprivation in India.

Palagummi Sainath has a history degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

Palagummi Sainath started his career at the United News of India in 1980.

Palagummi Sainath then worked for the Blitz, a major Indian weekly tabloid published from Mumbai, first as foreign affairs editor and then as deputy editor, which he continued for ten years.

On 1 June 2015, Palagummi Sainath became the first ThoughtWorks Chair Professor in Rural India and Digital Knowledge at the Asian College of Journalism.

Palagummi Sainath won the inaugural World Media Summit Global Award for Excellence 2014 in Public Welfare for exemplary news professionals in developing countries.

Palagummi Sainath served as the Coady Chair in Social Justice at St Francis Xavier University.

Palagummi Sainath felt that the media's attention was moving from "news" to "entertainment" and consumerism and lifestyles of the urban elite gained prominence in the newspapers which rarely carried news of the reality of poverty in India.

Palagummi Sainath was awarded a fellowship and traveled to the ten poorest districts of five Indian states.

Palagummi Sainath's writing has provoked responses that include the revamping of the Drought Management Programs in the state of Tamil Nadu, development of a policy on indigenous medical systems in Malkangiri in Orissa, and revamping of the Area Development Program for tribal people in Madhya Pradesh state.

Palagummi Sainath clarified that the archive will not accept any direct funding by the government or corporate houses and that it will be an independent body.

Palagummi Sainath cited "Rural India is the most complex part of the planet" as the reason for launching PARI.

Writer Manu Joseph caricatures Palagummi Sainath using a character named "P Sathya" in his 2017 political thriller.

Palagummi Sainath became the first Indian reporter to win the European Commission's Lorenzo Natali Prize for journalism in 1995.

Palagummi Sainath was awarded the Harry Chapin Media Award in New York in 2006.

Palagummi Sainath was awarded the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism Literature and Creative Communications Arts.

Palagummi Sainath was given the award for his "passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India's national consciousness".

Palagummi Sainath was the 2007 winner of Ramnath Goenka 'Journalist of the Year' award from The Indian Express.

Palagummi Sainath has not accepted government awards, stating in 2009 that "Journalism should not be judged by government and journalists should not accept awards from governments they are covering or writing about".

Palagummi Sainath contributed the 5-million-yen prize money for two purposes: Rs.

Palagummi Sainath's was the first name in the journalist category for this prize that gives each winner Rs.

Canadian documentary film maker Joe Moulins made a film about Palagummi Sainath titled A Tribe of his Own.