Ramoji Excellence Award 2025: Purpose in Journalism Far More Important, Says Rural Journalist Jaideep Hardikar

Hyderabad: Senior journalist, researcher, and author Jaideep Hardikar, who has extensively covered rural India, was awarded the inaugural Ramoji Award of Excellence in Journalism on Sunday for his “unwavering commitment to truth, integrity, and the human spirit”.

Hardikar was one of the seven awardees who were felicitated at an event at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Ramoji Group founder chairman Sri Ramoji Rao, who passed away in June 2024.

Hardikar has covered rural India for the last 25 years, with his work published in reputed English newspapers and international publications. His stories on agrarian distress and farmer suicides make him one of the significant voices on rural journalism in India.

Hailing from Nagpur in Maharashtra, Hardikar has also written two books on the subject—Ramrao - The Story of India’s Farm Crisis and A Village Awaits Doomsday—and is in the process of writing a third one.

In an exclusive interview with ETV Bharat's Nisar Dharma, Hardikar spoke in detail about his work, the issues impacting rural India, what motivates him to cover them, and what the Ramoji Award of Excellence means to him.

Watch the interview here:

Excerpts from the interview

Nisar Dharma: In an era when urban journalism and literature tend to attract more attention, you have extensively reported on farmers and their challenges. What drew you toward rural India?

Jaideep Hardikar: My upbringing was in a small city called Chandrapur (in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra), where all my classmates came from rural and agrarian backgrounds. In 1996, when I was about to complete my postgraduate degree in journalism, one of my faculty members, Mr. B. Someshwar Rao, felt that I was interested in a certain kind of journalism. He gifted me a book, ‘Everyone Loves A Good Drought’ by P Sainath (acclaimed author and a foundational figure in rural reporting), which had been published the same year. I remember sitting in a small tea stall in Nagpur, reading the entire book. I sat there for five to six hours. I was just 20. I thought that was a decisive moment. Rao also told me that this was something I should be doing, as he termed it real journalism. After reading the book, I started following Sainath’s work.

My first editor, the late Mr. M.Y. Bodhankar, who was also my mentor and guru, gave me a valuable tool during my training period. He told me to always ask this question to myself whenever I approach a story: Journalism for whom and journalism for what?

A couple of years down the line, when I started reporting on the issue of displacement, I realised that the purpose in journalism is far more important than any other aspect. If you discover your purpose, the rest of the things fall into place.

The 1990s was a decade when the issue of displacement and rehabilitation was very hotly discussed and debated. It was during these times that one fine day, Sainath was touring Nagpur for a talk, and I somehow managed to catch up with him. He eventually took me under his wing. He was reporting from Andhra Pradesh around 1996-97 on farmer suicides. I was witnessing the same pattern in Vidarbha, which is a contiguous cotton region.

I started tracking the issue with whatever resources and understanding I had at that time. I spoke to farmers, experts, and economists, among several other people, just to build my understanding of why this was happening.

While this was how I began my journey, my first serious foray into rural journalism was when I bagged the KK Birla Foundation Media Fellowship (in 2000).

That one year, I travelled across the country nonstop. I was astounded to see what happened to people who are displaced by development projects. It was not some kind of romanticism I was following. I still am not. Even now, I don't go into the countryside considering it a niche area. It is 833 million plus people. It's very eclectic, very vast, with multiple states, languages, and cultures. The surprising part was that there was hardly any competition in covering this beat, as no one was really interested in it. For me, however, it was something that interested me passionately, and still does.

ND: You are currently a core member and roving reporter with the People's Archive of Rural India, or PARI. Could you throw some light on what it is?

JH: PARI is an ebullient bunch of very young, passionate, committed reporters and editors, completely driven by crowdfunding. It's kind of an alternative media that Sainath envisioned.

I've worked with four different newspapers and believe me, despite their good intentions, stories from rural India don't get the prominence they should in legacy media. When Sainath received his Magsaysay Award, I think at that point in time, he had this idea that we should build an archive of the countryside. He evolved that idea into a digital platform, which is not only an archive of rural India, but also a living journal. I have been very fortunate to be part of the journey, right from the early phase way back in 2008-09 to when PARI was launched in 2014. We believe the media has to both inform and educate people. The education part is equally important. PARI focuses on journalism where we look at the countryside in its holistic sense: the good, the bad, the professions, the vocations, the dying art forms, the culture, even crime, farm prices, caste, and gender.

ND: One of your books, ‘A Village Awaits Doomsday’, is about the personal stories of people displaced and made destitute by government and private initiatives. How do you balance empathy and objectivity while writing about people facing hardships?

JH: Three lessons are very dear to me. One came from my first editor, who asked me to always remember journalism for whom and for what. The second came from Sir Mark Tully (British journalist) when I was a fellow at a fellowship program. He told us to always keep in mind that we are merely storytellers and not the story. The third lesson was from Sainath. During our travels, I asked him why the editors do not see these stories. He responded: If you don't have a heart, your eyes can't see a story.

He was talking about empathy and compassion, the core values that make any individual good. Other things like reporting values and the craft are also important, but empathy is something that I think has always stayed with me. And I think my upbringing has a role in it. My mother is very compassionate and empathetic. I think all of that helps me better empathize with people. I don't do stories if there is no human interest.

For example, in writing Ramrao: The Story of India's Farm Crisis (his book), it took me two years to persuade Ram Rao and his daughter to permit me to write about their life. They live in a nondescript village in Vidarbha, saddled with multiple problems, economic problems, and financial difficulties. He has just come out of a very serious attempt to end his life. And here I am trying to convince him to allow me to write about him. I had to find a middle ground where I win their trust and I also tell them that I'm not doing this for myself, I don’t want name or money. I am only doing it because the story is important. After all, the world needs to understand their struggles. Society is not always just beautiful. It also has grey shades and dark shades. We've got to tell those stories as well.

ND: As an author and journalist, how does your approach to storytelling differ between a news story and a book?

JH: I think a book or a long-form story has to go way beyond the 5WH approach. Narrative writing, which I'm really, really fascinated by and I'm trying to learn the craft, requires a lot of careful observation, telling the story through scenes and sequences. You can't really deviate; you cannot fictionalize things. You have to write what is unfolding, which means that you have to try and understand the trajectory and be with the story for a very long duration.

Like in Ram Rao, I had no conclusion because it's not fiction. So one day I asked him: Do you think you'll ever be able to repay your loans? His answer became the conclusion of my book. He said: "Old loans will go away and new ones will come back. Probably, I will die in the loans".

In nonfiction, you use the skills of literary storytelling to amplify a particular journey or a particular story that is unfolding before you. In that sense, it is vastly different. Any good nonfiction longform piece needs a narrative, characters and a journey. Because narratives are usually about action or non-action. Something happens. So I think in that sense, it differs from a typical thousand-word piece. I am totally flabbergasted by the style of journalism practices by American journalist Paul Salopek, which he calls slow journalism. Sainath terms it an explanatory form of journalism, where we have to slow down to understand the context and go beyond news and explain the real reasons. That is where I think the future of digital journalism lies.

ND: What role do you think regional journalism plays in shaping conversations around national policy?

JH: If you look at Indian media, it is pretty much run from the metropolitan cities. But India is such a vast country. I can count at least 30-40 major regions that don't feature in any day's coverage. We've just had the Bihar elections. We know of the regions and the political turnouts and the final tally. But do we read stories from Simanchal? We don't. Do we read stories from northern Karnataka? We don't. Do we read stories from Marathwada regularly? We don't. Do we read stories from Rayalaseema? We don't. Are there reporters? Yes, there are reporters, but those are beat reporters. So, I think regional journalism or reporting of the regions has to be a key priority of the national media.

At PARI, within our limited resources, we report on probably every single agro-ecological zone in the country. In that sense, I am a regional journalist. By choice, I stayed in Nagpur because I am closer to the stories. I can easily reach Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and Telangana, as there are regions in these states that are highly under-reported. It's a territory full of tribal life, full of climate issues, and forest issues. I am not a subaltern voice. But my voice is important because my view is a worm's eye view. I don't see India from Delhi or Bombay. I look at India from the small places and then understand how the country is shaping up.

ND: Can you share an incident or an experience that profoundly changed your perspective on rural distress?

JH: There are several such experiences. One incident that I can recall here came from a young woman, 23-24 years old, with a six-month-old baby and a three-year-old daughter in my region. I was interviewing her, and she was crying because her husband had just died by suicide. And she said: "Look, I can't commit suicide. I can't die. Because my children are too young. I have to make sure that these children grow at least up to 18 years. After that, I can die peacefully. But it will take 15-20 years for them to grow and take the reins. So I have to live for them. And society will not allow me to live peacefully."

Agrarian distress is not just an economic issue. There are multiple structural spirals to it. I am just coming from Marathwada, where I went to a village called Kari in Dharashiv. where I thought there was only one farmer who had committed suicide. It turns out that in the last 24 months, there have been 30 suicides in the same village. I think I need to go back to that village again and again to understand why it is happening.

ND: How do you see India’s rural life evolving in the next decade?

JH: If the business-as-usual continues, I see a massive out-migration for many reasons. I don't see people, particularly young people, wanting to stick to the countryside. So there will be regions that will be draining. Unless rural India does well ecologically, economically, I don't see India prospering to the level it aspires. I think it will be a very skewed growth as it already is. If the average annual income of a farmer is, say, just 20,000-30,000 rupees, I can't foresee a country that will be a developed country in the next 50 years. We have to start thinking collectively about what is needed.

We need a generational change because, you know, every time you go into a village, you don't see young people. There is a social malaise now. All this crisis, 30 years down the line, it's been 30 years that we have seen the countryside in stagflation, particularly the rain-fed and small-holder farmer agriculture. Now their children are not able to marry. I see this turning into a major social crisis in 5 years' time. We need more reporters, we need careful policy, no sudden shocks. We need long-term policy stability and the state’s involvement beyond the usual doles, the Rs 1500 or Rs 2000 financial assistance.

ND: Your advice to those journalists who would like to pursue a career in rural reporting.

JH: Rural reporting is a highly laborious but equally educational task. I teach at a private university. I tell the students to stick to a field. To tell human stories beyond the 5W1H. Rural reporting may come more naturally to people who are from smaller towns. They can look at rural reporting as a serious beat. They can report on the economy, politics, culture, art, and many other things from the countryside.

ND: What does the Ramoji Award of Excellence mean to you…as a journalist and writer who covers rural India?

JH: Frankly, this came out of the blue. I told the person who called me to break this news that I was feeling tired and pretty low until that point. There are always difficult situations, particularly if you are in a non-metro area. There are fewer opportunities, and sometimes you have a resource crunch. But you have to persevere. This award comes at a time when I have been thinking of repurposing my journalism. I was feeling pretty low. I have no words to express my gratitude to the jury, to the group. It means a lot. It is also encouraging that the work is getting recognised. That it comes in the memory of Late Shri Ramoji Rao, who is among the pioneers of regional journalism, makes me all the more happy and proud.

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