It's the news, stupid.

If you’re going to blame poverty on anyone, blame it on everyone.

That’s what Palgummi Sainath seemed to say at a talk he gave at Columbia University three weeks ago. A reporter on agriculture and poverty in India, Sainath had a lot to say – and a lot to be angry about.

For one, he didn’t hide his exasperation at the ambiguity of an already elusive definition of poverty. The ABCs of development study teach us precisely that there is no ruling definition of poverty, something to keep in mind when reading about the latest statistics on poverty. The official poverty line in India is 24 cents a day, but 77 per cent of the Indian population lives on less than 20 rupees a day. This large discrepancy between statistics and reality is exactly what drove Sainath’s animated talk. The headlines in India are not growth or a booming IT market. It’s poverty, and everything else that comes with it, such as the farmers’ suicide that have been taking over the country.

It is perhaps the limits of journalists that we can only talk, and not really implement policy. But according to Sainath, that’s all it takes to start change. As much as he is frustrated with India’s policies to alleviate poverty, his gripe is as much with journalists as with policy-makers.

“There is more energy in journalism than ever but there is also the most moral bankruptcy in leadership ever,” Sainath said. What he means is that while fashion, murder, caste, religion, and the booming economy makes for popular reading, newspapers in India have failed to provide full time beats on poverty, housing or primary education. Furthermore, no major newspaper in India has a full-time labor correspondent on board.

According to Sainath, this sends a clear message: “it says we are not interested in talking to 70 per cent of the population.”

The point finally sunk in when Sainath animatedly relayed the crux of this argument to his completely engrossed audience. While 512 journalists were covering fashion week in India last spring, only six journalists were covering farmers’ suicide a one-hour flight away. These suicides would have been creating headlines on their own – they were occurring one every six hours. But the final irony was this: the models at fashion week were showing off cotton garments.

This does not only point to a flaw in policy-making in India, but also a flaw in character. Sainath is perhaps one of the few reporters who actively criticize India for more than the growing inequality that accompanies the growing economy. Beyond the commercials of “I love India” laden in “traditional values”, mom’s never-forgotten home-cooked food, and unbreakable family bonds, lies a country that systematically and institutionally ignores 70 per cent of its population that is struggling to survive. There is, essentially, a moral vacuum when it comes to economic policies.

India is experiencing the largest sustained suicide trend, but as Sainath tells us, no system or higher order is working for these farmers. Instead, everything has become privatized. And government and aid policies help insofar as they encourage farmers to diversify their crops. The problem: globalization has raised cultivation costs. Whereas the cost of cultivating vanilla used to be $1.00/kg, it has increased to an appalling $100/kg. In India, Sainath says, “there is privatization of everything, including intellect and soul.”


Journalists wait for news to happen, for democracy to shine and people to rise up to injustice. But Sainath says this is not possible – don’t wait for a social revolution from the farmers when their primary concern is survival. News does not have to be larger than life to be written. It just has to be someone’s life, like the suicide farmers now who, probably unprecedented in India’s history, address their suicide notes to the PM and Chief Minister.

While Sainath may have had his own notions about what policies India’s government could enact to address rural poverty and the growing number of farmers’ suicides, he ultimately addressed the group that he can really influence: journalists. It is not enough to debate the trend of the journalism industry in India, or discuss how it fares compared to the rest of the world. Indian journalists have a duty to cover the biggest, and most often ignored, issue in the country. However, because this has failed to happen, Sainath says, “India has failed in democracy.”

su doku night

They flirt with each other without much concealment, but both are held back. From where each stands, such flirtation is enjoyable, curious and a way to make the passing time more interesting, but not meant to spill over outside the time allotted for meaningless conversation.

“But there is nothing wrong with it”
She is adament about the candle he is about to toss out.

“It won’t light”

“let me do it”

click click click. The orange blaze explodes from the small hole of the lighter but soon envelopes the entire cup she precariously holds. Just a bit further, a bit further, the flame moves to the bent and burnt whick, but then turns on her. She smiles defeatingly and gives it back to him.

“I told you”

He returns later with a fresh candle, holding it as a peace offering. Her tone turns giddy, but commanding as well. She leans towards him as he stands looking down at her, a hand clutching a pencil which she now points in his direction, gesturing towards the puzzle she has been laying on her lap as her purpose for sitting there.

“I’m not smart” he says, creeping towards the door.

“Of course you are, help me. Of course you’re smart.”

He turns away.

He comes back again. His visits become more and more frequent. He sits next to her now, adding in his two cents, finally, to the puzzle she insists he has brains for.

The courage in his voice strains underneath the weight of his uncertainty. “what are you doing tonight?”

“oh, I’m going to be a couple hours…”

The conversation becomes inaudible, she sips on her wine and her head looks up only once as a little girl runs by. He continues to creep into the door frame, lingering in her wake as he fingers his towel. He is about to turn away when the customer sitting nearby says, “excuse me, can I place my order?”


-- Max Cafe, Saturday night.

The Difference

Tonight, Barack Hussein Obama won the presidency of the United States of America. After spending five hours glued to the television in anticipation of results, I viewed the thousands of people standing at Grant's Park in Chicago to see their new president, the masses cheering in Harlem, in Atlanta, in Times Square - tears, screams and smiles dressing the entire country.

What surprises me most is that on the other coast, my parents were both eagerly watching the same acceptance speech. My parents - who came here in 1990 as immigrants without experiencing the "American dream", who have no U.S. citizenship and who have previously shown no political inclination - tonight they were just as joyous and excited as their four children. Obama's victory tonight, I think, was an attribute to the other side of the U.S. that they had heard about but unfortunately never experienced. That is, the other side of America that does not make one cynical about being an immigrant or minority in this country, but points to hope, optimism, and - finally, tonight - reality.

In one of my earlier blog posts, I had rambled about balancing duty with free will, and finally doubting an individual's ability to break from his own history. History goes something like this:

"We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it would because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclination, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning. In fact, you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self - the humor, the song, the behind-the-back-pass - had been freely chosen by you. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness of your own defeat. And the final irony: should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."

That was written by Barack Obama more than ten years ago. The same man, who today, tells us this:

"Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope. For that is the true genius of America - that American can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

Perhaps my parents joined me in my eager and breathless phone conversations tonight because they also recognized that it's not just a country that changes, but people as well and the destinies that are expected of them. Someone commented on Obama's speech saying, "Regardless of what you might believe, we didn't elect a black man to the Presidency tonight. Rather, I submit to you that tonight we elected a man to be President who happens to be black. The difference therein is great and we must never confuse the two." Is it? Is the difference great? Obama didn't grow up in Harlem, nor was he as underprivileged as most African-Americans in this country. But he did recognize a feeling of defeat in his life - a feeling of being black and being put into cages of labels. Tonight, a man broke from the history and future written for him. And tonight, there is no difference between the man the US elected who happens to be black and each person who believed they were destined to be trapped in cages.