Everybody loves a good drought

Acclaimed across the world prescribed in over 100 universities and colleges and included in part in The Century's Greatest Reportage (Ordfront 2000) alongside the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez Studs Terkel and John Reed Everybody Loves a Good Drought is the established classic on rural poverty in India. Twenty years after publication it remains unsurpassed in the scope and depth of reportage providing an intimate view of the daily struggles of the poor and the efforts often ludicrous made to uplift them.An illuminating introduction accompanying this twentieth-anniversary edition reveals alarmingly how a large section of India continues to suffer in the name of development so that a small percentage may prosper. Besides exposing chronic misgovernance it is also a devastating comment on the media's failure to speak for the voiceless. Review Should be renamed Discovery of Poor India -- Prof. Madhu DandavateBrilliant . . . It rates comparison with Engels'Condition of the English Working Class . . . but Sainath writes better -- Robin JeffreyAustralianExemplary research a fine sensibility and much irony . . . an unquestionably fineIndian Express[Sainath] has lifted the poor from the footnote to the page and made them a significant part [of] the very discourse of the Indian republicPioneerDeserves to be read by every conscientious citizen . . . and yes by every journalistFrontline About the Author Palagummi Sainath (born 1957) is an Indian journalist and photojournalist focusing on social problems rural affairs poverty and the aftermath of globalization in India. He was the Rural Affairs Editor at The Hindu before resigning in 2014 and the website India Together has been archiving some of his work in The Hindu daily for the past six years. Amartya Sen has called him &#34one of the world's great experts on famine and hunger&#34. Since late 2011 he has been working on People's Archive of Rural India PARI for which he is the Founding Editor. In June 2011 Sainath was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (DLitt) by the University of Alberta the university's highest honor. He is one of few Indians to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award which he accepted in 2007 in the category of Journalism Literature and Creative Communication Arts.