Everybody Loves a Good Drought by Palagummi Sainath

His latest project, the People’s Archive of Rural India launched on Dec. A lmost the entire amount from his awards goes towards prizes for other journalists or to support other projects aimed at improving journalism. His awards include the 2009 ‘Journalist of the Year’ (Ramnath Goenka Prize for Excellence in Journalism). W hich he declined because, in his view, journalists should not be receiving awards from governments they cover and critique). In a 3 4 -year career as a journalist, Sainath has won over 40 global and national awards for his reporting ( though h e has turned down several, including one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan. Apart from the 40 plus print media awards, two documentary films on his work, ‘Nero’s Guests’ and A Tribe of his Own ,’ have between them picked up over 20 awards across the globe.

He was also the first Indian reporter to win the European Commission’s Lorenzo Natali P rize for journalism in 1995.

His other awards include: the United Nation’s Food & Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Boerma Prize (the foremost award for development journalism) in 2000 the Harry Chapin Media Award in New York, 2006 and was the first and only pri nt media journalist until now to win the Inspiration Award at the Global Visions Film Festival in Edmonton, Canada in 2002. Sainath, who was awarded a Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) honoris causa by the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 2011 - UAlberta’s highest award - was also McGraw Professor of Writing during the Fall Semester (2012-13) at the University of Princeton. He continues to have his home and base in Mumbai while working most of the year in rural India. He is also the holder of the Coady Chair in Social Justice at the University of St. On June 1, 2015, Sainath became the first ThoughtWorks Chair Professor in Rural India and Digital Knowledge at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. He won its Public Welfare award for exemplary news professionals in developing countries, taking the WMS prize in its inaugural year. His latest award, which he received this January 27th, is the World Media Summit Global Award for Excellence 2014. He was also the first reporter in the world to win Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Journalism Prize in its inaugura l year in 2000. He was given the award for his “passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s national consciousness.” He was the first Indian to win the Magsaysay in that category in nearly 25 years (after R.K. Sainath, former Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s most prestigious prize (and often referred to as the ‘Asian Nobel’), for Journalism Literature and Creative Communications Arts. Former Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu, India P.

Everybody Loves a Good Drought by Palagummi Sainath