241. The Societal Compass (with P Sainath, Sashi Kumar, Barkha Dutt & Bachi Karkaria)

Palagummi Sainath is the founder-editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI). A journalist and reporter for over four decades, Palagummi Sainath has covered rural India for over 30 years. His new book, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom, is about the last fighters in India’s struggle for Independence.

After an MA in history from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Sainath joined the United News of India in 1980. He went on to become the foreign editor of The Daily and deputy chief editor of the weekly Blitz in Mumbai. He then left Blitz to work full-time on reporting rural poverty.

Sainath has won over 60 national and international reporting awards and fellowships. These include the Fukuoka Grand Prize 2021, the World Media Summit award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, UNFAO’s Boerma Prize, Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Reporting Prize, the European Commission’s Lorenzo Natali Media Prize, and the Ramnath Goenka Journalist of the Year award. He currently teaches journalism at the Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai and the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. He was McGraw Professor of Writing in Princeton in 2012.

In December 2014, Sainath launched the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a unique online site on rural India. Publishing in 14 languages, PARI is an independent multimedia digital platform, whose reporting mandate is to cover every region and section of rural people. In 7 years, PARI has won over 50 journalism awards.

His previous book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought is now in its 60^th reprint.

Sashi Kumar is a print and broadcast journalist, filmmaker and media entrepreneur.

He founded andchairs the Media Development Foundation which administers the Asian College of Journalism.

He was among the earliest Newscasters in English on national television, Doordarshan, Middle East Correspondent of The Hindu and news anchor on Radio Bahrain in the 1980s.

He has anchored and produced numerous studio shows, documentaries and news features for national television in India.

In 1992 he founded and launched Asianet, India’s first satellite TV channel in a regional language (Malayalam), and the country’s first statewide cable TV network in Kerala.

In 2004 he scripted and directed ‘Kaya Taran’ an award winning Hindi feature film based on the 1984 anti- Sikh riots and the 2002 Gujarat riots. He has acted in a few Malayalam feature films.

His latest media venture, Asiaville Interactive launched in 2019 is a startup to “reimagine journalism” for the millennial generation and includes multimedia digital portals in Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam.

He is a regular commentator on topical issues, particularly relating to the media, and contributed a regular column titled ‘Unmediated’ in Frontline, which is also the title of the book comprising his essays and articles published by Tulika Books in 2013.

He has been conferred many awards for his work in the media.

Barkha Dutt, one of India’s most recognised broadcast journalists, with over 20 years of experience, is the Founder-Editor of digital platform Mojo Story and a columnist with the Washington Post and the Hindustan Times.

Dutt, an Emmy-nominated reporter, is the winner of over 40 national and international awards. She has been recognised twice as Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, and been honoured with the Padmashri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour. She has been chosen as an Asia Society ASIA 21 Fellow as well as a Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow at the Brown University’s Watson Institute.

Known for her ground reporting from some of the toughest hotspots in the world, Dutt most recently earned global acclaim with her relentless frontline reporting of the COVID pandemic over 16 months throughout the world’s biggest lockdown. Named by Vogue as a COVID Warrior, she won the US-based Emergent Ventures India COVID Prize for her reportage as well as eight awards at the 2021 News Broadcasters Association Awards in India.

Her latest book is To Hell and Back” Humans of Covid. She is also the author of This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines

Dutt studied at St. Stephens College, Delhi and Columbia University, New York.

Bachi Karkaria is among India’s senior most journalists and was the first Indian board member of the World Editors Forum. Her specialisations are urbanisation, gender and public health. She conceptualised the now highly regarded Times of India Litfest, Mumbai in 2011, and has continued to be its director. In the past seven years it has become a top-draw, and top-draw hub of ideas from all fields. Its participants have ranged from Thomas Piketty and Arianna Huffington to the reclusive Rohinton Mistry. It has hosted the best names from India and abroad in literature of course, but also economics, science, films, the arts, music, media and even food.

She writes two widely followed columns: the satirical `Erratica’ in the Times of India, and Giving Gyan, playing Agony Aunt; in the Mumbai Mirror. She appears regularly on television news channels and is a media trainer in India and abroad. Ms Karkaria’s books include the critically acclaimed In Hot Blood: The Nanavati Case That Shook India ( 2017), Dare to Dream, a best-selling biography of MS Oberoi; Mills, Molls And Moolah, Behind The Times, Mumbai Masti, and The Cake That Walked.