Palagummi Sainath (Journalist)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Palagummi Sainath

• Does Palagummi Sainath smoke?: No

• Does Palagummi Sainath drink alcohol?: Yes

• P. Sainath was born into a Telugu family in Chennai, India.

• He is the grandson of the famous freedom fighter, politician and the fourth President of India, Varahagiri Venkata Giri.

• Since childhood, he was interested in world history and economics and is a history graduate of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

• He received University of Alberta’s highest honour, Doctor of Letters degree (DLitt) in 2011.

• In 1980, he started his career at the United News of India as a journalist.

• In the initial years of his career, he got the News Agency’s Highest Individual Award.

• With his excellent verbal skills, he worked as a foreign affairs editor and then deputy editor for ten years for then a popular investigative weekly tabloid newspaper, Blitz.

• He’s not just an incredible editor but a fantastic teacher too and has trained approximately 1000 media persons.

• He has taught the course “Covering Deprivation” at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai and Social Communications Media course at Sophia-Shree B.K.Somani Polytechnic.

• P. Sainath wrote a book entitled “Everybody Loves a Good Drought” based on his research in rural districts of India regarding poverty which was published in 1996. 

• Not only in India but he is also famous worldwide and is Coady Chairholder in Social Justice at St. Francis Xavier University.

• In 2000, he won Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Journalism Prize and became the first reporter in the world to achieve it.

• P. Sainath’s personal life is a mystery for everyone, but according to some online sources, he is not married.

• In 2007, he was amongst one of the few Indians to get the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s most prestigious award in the category of Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts for his book. 

• In 2009, he won the Ramnath Goenka “Journalist of the Year” from the Indian Express, an English-language Indian daily newspaper. 

• Being a development journalist, his work notably focuses on rural people especially farmers who commit suicide due to indebtedness.

• In 2012, he joined Princeton University as the McGraw Professor of writing.

• He has made two documentaries named “Nero’s Guests” and “A Tribe of His Own” which owned him around 20 globe awards. 

• P. Sainath is thinking to publish a book on his work done in The Hindu on Dalits. For this project, Sainath has covered a massive area of 150,000 km that is 10 states and his target is just 5 states farther. Moreover, when newspapers denied to provide him financial help, he funded himself from his savings, his provident fund, his gratuity for this project.

• He is the founding editor of PARI- People’s Archive Of Rural India, a digital journalism platform in India. 

• Here’s a video where Sainath himself explains what exactly journalism is:

• He is famous worldwide for his remarkable work as a journalist as well as photojournalist whose vision is on rural affairs, social and economic inequality, poverty and globalisation.

• In an interview, Sainath talked about his childhood, university years, journalism journey and many other facts of his life: