After a long career as one of India’s leading newspaper reporters, P. Sainath is building an online archive of the diversity of rural India. In this talk, Sainath will explain how the recently launched People’s Archive of Rural India is documenting the culture and politics of a countryside that is too often ignored.

In a 35-year career as a journalist, Sainath has won dozens of global and national awards and been called “the conscience of the Indian nation” by other journalists. In 2007, he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award—Asia’s most prestigious prize, often referred to as the “Asian Nobel”—for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communications Arts for his “passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s national consciousness.” Sainath’s recent reporting on the epidemic of farmers committing suicide in India as a result of the collapse of the rural economy forced other journalists to cover the story and government officials to act.

The event is sponsored by the School of Journalism and the South Asia Institute. For more information contact Robert Jensen, rjensen@austin.utexas.edu, and see “Sainath’s Challenge.”

Location: Belo Center for New Media Auditorium (BMC 2.106), 300 W. Dean Keeton, Austin