Why is the media ignoring the plight of drought striken farmers?

I read my newspapers, both print and web, and watch a fair share of what passes off as news television, and it is disappointing that the media seems to think that the remarkably dry monsoon so far is only an urban concern. The shortage in reservoirs providing drinking water to cities like Mumbai engage them. There is an animated reportage on the spiralling prices, on the management or lack thereof of the supply chains, the laws the Centre wants to tweak, and the way states haven’t yet stepped in with their actions. The middle man’s role via the agricultural produce market committees also finds a place. But the bigger story of what is already happening in the rural areas is yet to find any traction, except for one-off pieces like how the dried up countryside is pushing up the migration of rural hands to urban areas in desperation. One is about how three lakh more farm hands are seeking MNREGA work as against 60,000 this time last year. Given the size of the rural population even in a rapidly urbanising country, the impact of the drought has already been felt in the Deccan and the South. A friend from Palakkad tells me that streams are sand beds, and the lakes are cakes on which even autorickshaws ply. The fact that it is past mid-July and that Delhi is yet to feel the monsoon seems to have delayed the media sensing the impact in the countryside. [caption id=“attachment_1610789” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] PTI[/caption] Long decades ago, a politician had told me how things are seen from Delhi, which is also the headquarters for most media operations. Dilli se sab door hota hai. Kahin baad toh woh kharabhi; kahin andhi toh wah hawa. Dilli ulti durbin se dekhti hai (Everything is too far for Delhi. A flood is a bit of wetness, a storm is a breeze. It sees things from the wrong end of the binoculars). How right he was, except that in the media’s case, every publishing centre seems to be afflicted with Delhi’s sense of the distant which relegates every issue to the myopic bracket of stories that do not “affect us”. With matters like drought, even if only of a moderate intensity, its impact can cascade from the farmer and farm hands to the middle class dining tables in cities who are the media’s targeted consumers. Trapped in the struggles of our cocooned urban lives, we can’t even measure rural distress in human terms. Without getting into the clutter of statistics, like the contribution of the rural sector to the GDP etc, we have to recognise that rural India is very different from urban India. Sharad Joshi, a man ahead of his times, had called it Bharat to distinguish it from the urban, but they are interconnected in ways we don’t want to understand. The media has decided in its absurdity that it doesn’t count. One does not expect breast-beating reportage from the countryside, but we are entitled to know if farmers bought their seeds even as they tried tilling their lands anticipating the monsoon in areas it hits in June. Now that a farming season is nearly lost, are they stuck with seeds they cannot use? Kinder seed dealers agree to distress buybacks at huge discounts if the seeds had been bought by cash, but what of those who borrowed? Are moneylenders active? Remember, this is not a staple only for P Sainath who may yet emerge with some insights because the agrarian crisis is his forte. But before we frown at “their” stories, remember the farm loan waiver which we dismiss as bad economics are based on such plights. Other stories that we should be doing:  Do farmers want to change their crop preference to use the likely meagre rains which seem to be at least 45 days overdue? What are the fast moving consumer durable marketers thinking about the year ahead, especially about their markets in rural India? FMCG should interest the urban readers who are shareholders in companies which may have private treaties with such outfits. I get to know about prices rising without needing the media telling me but what is happening out there, for God’s sake? I got to know about the role of the middle men which is never clearly outlined by the media without its help. Will someone tell me what is happening in clear, calm voices before the crisis gets worse in the other half of the country? To do that, would the media care to shift the focus to the boondocks but would it? Take drinking water for instance. It is already an on-going crisis in villages and we don’t even know if the authorities have started scouting for sources to fill tankers to take them to people who scramble and fight for a potful. Umesh Kumawat of ABP Mhaza had captured it last summer in Marathwada in his two-part documentary. Once you see it, you may turn off the tap in your bathroom. When I posted these concerns on Facebook, only a few responded though a couple of responses are interesting. One said, “Journalists are switching to ‘contract writing’. No farmers’ lobby with slick PR companies” to air the farmers; or even the affected peoples’ troubles. Another: “But, media is not in the villages. Media has forgotten that no matter how complex economics is, without growing food, nothing can function.” Both happen to be former journalists, one retired and tired of watching the media’s ways in dismay, and another also a former journalist who found his second calling in scuba diving. During my days on the field, in a drought like this, if I had not stomped the countryside, my editor, late G Kasturi, would not have taken it lightly. “Why are you there for?” is the question I almost hear him ask. What’s the point of reporting that cities like Delhi and Mumbai are sweltering in the humid heat after a terrible summer and make ‘breaking news’ of a shower which takes the rainwater into the drains instead of whether it rained in the catchments? Even rains, so essential to growing food, seem to be seen as a city-centric feature.