A call for missionary journalism

The words of my boss still rankle, decades later. “Look, forget all this missionary journalism. Nobody likes to read about poverty.” There was a major drought going on that summer in Rajasthan. I had just returned to Delhi after over a week in the remotest corners of the state — barely a stone’s throw from the Pakistan border— on the trail of famine deaths.

The government of the day was almost going blue in the face denying famine deaths. But I had found several such incidents, mostly children who had died after successive years of malnutrition — heart-rending stories, each one of them.

Yet, nobody seemed interested. My story didn’t make the cover. Shrunk considerably at the desk, it got middling billing. I was even called in by a bureaucrat in the PMO (the Prime Minster’s Office) and gently ticked off for imagining things. There was only a little malnutrition, he told me, genially offering me a cup of overly sweet tea and some glucose biscuits.

Two things happened recently that have made me bring up such an old anecdote: a front page lead story in a daily about hungry children eating silica-laced mud to survive in Ganne village not far from Allahabad; and the massacre on Tuesday in which about 76 Central Reserve Police Force troopers were killed in an ambush by Maoists in the dense forests of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh.

I see the two issues as related. Both have to do with poverty. The children go to sleep hungry and try to stop the gnawing hunger in their swollen bellies by eating mud. The thought of children eating mud is bad enough. But it is probably worse elsewhere: I’ve seen people picking out undigested food from cow dung to satiate their hunger.

The Maoists are ostensibly fighting for the rights of the dispossessed, the poor and the hungry. I don’t for a minute condone violence and unequivocally condemn the perpetrators of the Chhattisgarh massacre. However, I have to say that many of the Maoists believe that they are engaged in a war against poverty and injustice — and hunger — that plagues large swathes of our population. Ironically, a large number of those killed in the massacre also came from similar backgrounds as the people the Maoists were fighting for.

Nothing much seems to have changed. Plus ça change… Initially the district administration, according to newspaper reports, refuted the news regarding cases of malnutrition and starvation in Ganne village. Poverty is still, apart from the occasional rhetoric about hatao-ing garibi, much below the radar for those who govern us at all levels.

Considering the abysmal conditions under which a majority of Indians live, it seems a little indecent for politicians and bureaucrats to proudly sport garlands worth thousands of rupees, push for entitlement to fly first or club class. Lately, MPs and MLAs in Delhi have been clamouring for the houses which are being built for the Commonwealth Games. Hum Mange More.

As for those at the very top: why should the nuclear deal be a do-or-die issue, or for that matter a seat on the UN Security Council? And, of course, the Commonwealth Games: who are they really going to benefit?

The real war to be waged is right here, at home, beneath our noses: poverty and inequality. The shortest route to vanquish the Maoists is to root out poverty: it might go a long way in removing their raison d’être. 

Poverty is also not a sexy issue for the media — most of the time that is. These days they are mired in the hullabaloo over Sania-and-Sohaib. They are obsessed by the IPL, Indian billionaires, the clichés of India Shining. And, of course, the Page 3 syndrome and the most trivial of pursuits of the inhabitants of Bollywood.
Perhaps, it is the time for missionary journalists.