A Day with Mr. P.Sainath

Sobriety, along with a wicked sense of humour and an absolute commitment to his country's poor, have no doubt helped make Sainath what he is today: one of India's leading development journalists. Vivekananda Institute of Social Work and Social Sciences (VISWASS) was very fortunate and proud to have his gracious presence on Tuesday, March 6, 2007. Tall and thin, P. Sainath looks like he is blessed with a rock-solid constitution . A small programme was organized in honor of him to share his scholarly observations and ethnographic descriptions of India's rural poor which was published in his ground-breaking book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought, and the same was translated in various languages, Oriya is of them which was formally inaugurated by him on the occasion. Mr. Abhoy Singh who made the arduous effort in translating his work in Oriya was also present on the occasion. Mr. P.Gharai, Secretary welcomes the guests. 
Sainath beautifully elucidated the situation of the Indian poor though his discourse. " Forty per cent are landless agricultural laborers. Forty-five per cent are small or marginal farmers. Thus for 85 per cent, the problem is linked directly to land. Another 7.5 per cent of the poor are rural artisans. And the rest, including the urban poor, make up the 'Others'. These poor Indians are mostly concentrated in seven or eight major states. The largest numbers of those landless labourers are women. The dalits, the adivasis (tribes or indigenous peoples) and some lower caste groups are disproportionately represented in the numbers of poor in India. So poverty has a class face, but also a gender face, a regional and a caste face. 
There's no solution to the problem of food insecurity without a more equitable distribution of resources. And you're going to have to start with land and with the abolition of semi-feudal relations in land. But land reform is not merely about land redistribution. It's about democratizing relations in the countryside as well ".
Dr.S.C. Kumar, Co-ordinator (Hony) felicitated him with a memento. The program concludes with a vote of thanks from the Principal of VISWASS, Dr Anupriyo Mallick