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P. Sainath

@PSainath_org

Apr 12

1/15. This week marks the 200th anniversary of the great tradition of Indian journalism – the opposite of the petty one that has ruled our media for 30-40 years. Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the newspaper Mirat-ul-Akhbar on April 12, 1822.
#PressFreedom

2/15. He had of course launched the Bengali paper Sambad Kaumudi in November 1821, but it was not his name that appeared as publisher for a while. With Mirat ul Akhbar he explained his political and social views quite explicitly to an educated elite.
#PressFreedom

3/15. Very early in Mirat ul Akhbar (Mirror of News) Ram Mohan Roy wrote a brilliant editorial protesting the death of Pratap Narayan Das who died from a whipping ordered by the Judge of what is now Comilla in Bangladesh, John Hayes.
#PressFreedom

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P. Sainath

@PSainath_org

Feb 17

1/8. With the passing of Ramchandra Sripati Lad (underground name ‘Captain Bhau’) on Feb. 5 – India lost one of her greatest freedom fighters. On June 7, 1943, his Toofan Sena squads looted a British Raj train at Shenoli, Maharashtra. Story link at end of thread.
#FreedomFighter

2/8. The money from the Raj payroll was spent on struggling farmers and workers in a year of great hunger. “It is unjust to say we looted anything,” he complained. “What the British had looted from us Indians, we brought a small part of that back to our people.”
#FreedomFighter

3/8. Captain Bhau’s Toofan Sena was the armed wing of the prati sarkar, the underground provisional government that had declared Satara’s secession from the British Raj and which actually held sway across 600 villages or more for three years from 1943 to 1946.
#FreedomFighter

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P. Sainath

@PSainath_org

Jan 24

1/8. Another first for India: police in Amravati, Maharashtra are holding 58 camels “in detention.” They also arrested their pastoralist herders – who’ve managed bail – from Kachchh on charges of cruelty to the animals. Story link at end of thread.
#animal #camel #cattle

2/8. The 5 semi-nomadic herders were going to Rabari settlements in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to deliver camels that communities there had ordered through kin in Kachchh. They’ve been doing this for decades without anyone accusing them of cruelty.
#animal #camel #cattle

3/8. The police acted on a complaint from the Bharatiya Prani Mitra Sangh (BPMS), Hyderabad, whose leader claims the camels were being taken to slaughterhouses in Hyderabad. So the camels are now lodged in a gauraksha kendra (cattle shelter) in Amravati.
#animal #camel #cattle

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P. Sainath

@PSainath_org

Dec 23, 2021

1/7. Tweets paraphrasing my open letter to the Chief Justice of India responding to his lament that “the concept of investigative journalism is unfortunately vanishing from the media canvas.” But how and why did that come to be so. Story link at end of thread.
#CJI #mediafreedom

2/7. For about 30 years, I had argued that the Indian media are politically free but imprisoned by profit. Today, they remain imprisoned by profit, but the few independent voices amongst them are increasingly politically imprisoned. Some under the UAPA.
#CJI #mediafreedom

3/7. I do not see the judiciary stepping in to stop this mayhem, whether on governmental corruption, or the mass retrenchment of journalists, the gutting of labour rights, or the misuse of the PM’s title to raise funds free of any kind of transparent audit.
#CJI #mediafreedom

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P. Sainath

@PSainath_org

Dec 20, 2021

1/5. The People’s Archive of Rural India turned 7 today. In just these first 84 months, PARI won 42 awards – one every 59 days on average. Of these, 12 are international awards. And 16 were won for stories done during the lockdown periods. Story link at end of thread
#Anniversary

2/5. First day of last year’s lockdown, the media were declared an essential service. Good – as never had the Indian public needed journalism and journalists more. Stories needed to be told on which people’s lives and livelihoods depended. How did Big Media respond?
#Anniversary

3/5, Big media responded by sacking 2,500 journalists and over 10,000 non-journalist media workers. PARI added 11 people to its staff since April 2020, cut nobody’s pay – and 3 months later, gave promotions and increments to almost all our staffers.
#Anniversary

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P. Sainath

@PSainath_org

Nov 20, 2021

1/7. Why is it so hard for the media to admit that the farmers at Delhi’s gates represent the largest peaceful democratic protest the world has seen in years – that too, organised at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? Story link at end of thread.
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed

2/7. Prime Minister Modi ‘apologises’ to the nation not for bringing in obnoxious anti-farmer laws but because, he says, he failed to persuade ‘a section of farmers despite best efforts’ to accept them. So which sections of farmers did he persuade?
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed

3/7. Denying them entry to Delhi, blocking them with trenches, barbed wire and water cannons, converting their camps into little gulags, vilifying them daily – these were the government’s ‘best efforts’ at persuasion? I’d hate to see their worst ones.
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed

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