P Sainath : The Real Picture
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May 28 2007
EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE
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No place for single women
Once, Andhra Pradesh's top leaders queued up at Bandi Lachmamma's home with promises. The debate on farm suicides hit the headlines when her husband took his life. Years later, she works as a coolie in Anantapur earning much less than the minimum assured by the NREGP - which turns away single women, writes P Sainath.
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May 24 2007
AGRICULTURAL CRISIS
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Farming: It's what they do
The agrarian crisis has seen over a lakh of women farmers lose their husbands. But survivors like Kalavati Bandurkar - with seven daughters - still run their farms, writes P Sainath.
May 21 2007
AGRICULTURAL CRISIS
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Suicides are about the living, not the dead
In society's eyes, Kamlabai is a `widow.' In her own, she's a small farmer trying to make a living and support her family. She is also one of about one lakh women across the country who've lost their husbands to farm suicides since the 1990s, writes P Sainath.
May 05 2007
AGRICULTURE
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Jailhouse talk a fate worse than debt
After a lull of some years, farmers are being jailed for debt in Andhra Pradesh. Even those in drought-hit districts who cannot repay their loans. Farm unions see the banks as driving a dangerous and explosive process which lets off crorepati defaulters but jails bankrupt farmers owing a few thousand rupees, writes P Sainath.
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Apr 11 2007
OPINION
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And now for a commercial break
Knowing that big money is undermining the game as a whole, and pussyfooting around it, just isn't cricket, writes P Sainath.
Apr 10 2007
FARMER SUICIDES
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And meanwhile in Vidarbha
There have been some 250 farm suicides in just the first three months of this year. Things could be a lot worse after June. And, as always, the farm suicides are a symptom of the crisis, not its cause. They are its outcome, not its engine, writes P Sainath.
Mar 11 2007
OPINION / BUDGET
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Growth ideology of the cancer cell
In that the trend of falling state investment in sector after sector continues, this budget does not break with neo-liberalism. Instead, it just dolls it up. India is still on a path damaging and dangerous to the poor. The UPA has learned nothing and forgotten everything, writes P Sainath.
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Feb 12 2007
REVERSE MIGRATION
It's been a hard day's night
REVERSE MIGRATION : It's been a hard day's night
Hundreds of women in Maharashtra's Gondia district travel from small towns to the villages to earn a daily wage. Unlike most migrants, they are footloose workers from an urban setting seeking work in the villages. At stations along the way are labour contractors, waiting to pick up workers on the cheap. P Sainath reports.
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Jan 30 2007
OPINION
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When even Pax Romana seems gentler
Remember how keen so many of our national security experts were on sending our own troops into Iraq alongside those of the U.S.? Remember it was to have been such a good thing for India, asks P Sainath.
Jan 28 2007
FARMERS' SUICIDES
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Striking a note of dissent
Even as the suicides in Vidharbha go on relentlessly, a trend has strengthened these past months. More and more farmers are blaming the Government and even talking directly in their suicide notes to Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, writes P Sainath.
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Palagummi Sainath is the winner of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. (click to read India Together's interview with P Sainath)

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Over decades of reporting, he has established himself as among the pre-eminent chroniclers of rural life in our times. His stories, photo-essays, and other work record an India seldom visible to many of us. Sainath received the A.H. Boerma Award in 2001 for his contributions. In July 2004, he was awarded the Prem Bhatia Award for excellence in political reporting and analysis for 2003-04 in recognition of his 'outstanding, indeed exceptional, work on the problems of the poorest of the poor, especially in Andhra Pradesh.' He is the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu.