Young people do care

Young people do care:
Indian journalist P. Sainath inspires students

Robert Jensen
Department of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu

The ProgressivePopulist , February 15, 2001, pp. 20-21. Also posted on the Common Dreams News Center website.

by Robert Jensen

It is just after 9 a.m. -- still painfully early for most university students -- and about 30 students are crowded around our guest speaker after class, craning their necks to see his photographs of the poorest of India’s poor at work. They have just listened to him talk for an hour, and they won’t let him leave, peppering him with questions about the people in the photos.

The scene is at odds with what one often hears about today’s college students -- that they all are apathetic, self-interested career-seekers who have no concern about the rest of the world and no interest in social justice.

That is certainly true of some -- perhaps even the majority -- but it isnot an intrinsic state of being of today’s youth. My students’reaction to the visiting Indian journalist, P. Sainath, and his compellingwork onsocial and economic justice reminded me that young people are waitingforsomething from their elders, and that too often we don’t provideit.

What they don’t want or need are pious lectures, stories of the good old days, or marching orders, nor do they need heroes. After a decade ofuniversity teaching, I think what young people are looking for are role models-- not just one model, but different models to help them find their own placeina complex world where it is difficult to be a decent person. They don’t need people to worship, but people to learn with.

That is what Sainath offered. He walked into my large class in a big, ugly lecture hall at 8 a.m. and grabbed their attention, but not by preachingat them. He simply told the story of how he walked away from a career asa high-ranking, well-paid editor in Indian newspapers to become an under-paidfreelance writer covering the poor -- and the social, political and economicsystems that keep them poor.

“As the Indian media, much like the U.S. media, concentrated more and more of their coverage on the lives of the top 5 percent -- the rich andthe beautiful people -- I decided I would cover the bottom 5 percent, totelltheir stories that are almost never heard,” Sainath said.

Sainath’s work has garnered awards -- most recently Amnesty International’s Global Award for Human Rights Journalism -- and his book Everybody Lovesa Good Drought has sold well around the world. But my students were fascinated not just by the results of his reporting but by his passion for people and justice.

In a world that spends more time glorifying the few who are rich than asking why so many are hungry, Sainath’s commitment to reporting on the poor -- and to asking critical questions about why they are poor -- may seem out of step. In the world of dot.com billionaires, who cares about poor people half a world away?

My students came to care that morning, because they saw someone else care, and care deeply enough to act.

Sainath is not falsely modest; like most journalists, he’s proud of his work and eager to have it read widely. But his work in India’spoorest districts gives him a sense of perspective that we so often lackin the United States. He said that people always ask him how he deals withthe suffering he sees in these districts, expecting him to be depressed byit.

“What I feel when I return from those villages is a sense of hope after seeing how strong and resilient human beings can be,” he said. “I ask myself if I would have that kind of courage in the face of such conditions. I’m not sure I would.”

Whatever Sainath’s level of courage, he brought to my students a relentless honesty about how the power wielded by corporations and their elite partners in government -- in the United States and around the world -- hurts people. He also gave them a model for how one can face that power, which can look so overwhelming and unstoppable. There is courage in his work, and my students could see it. And just as Sainath returns from poor villages with hope, I think most of my students left that class with a new sense of hope.

And I left with the reminder that if at the end of a semester most of mystudents are cynical or apathetic, I should blame myself not them. If weare to expect more from our young people than the greed and indifferenceto the suffering of others that they see all around them -- including inthe university --we must start by expecting more of ourselves.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas atAustin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

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