P. Sainath

Palagummi Sainath is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist. He took an M.A. in History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and joined the United News of India in 1980. Later he became foreign editor of The Daily and deputy chief editor of the weekly Blitz in Mumbai. In early 1993 he left Blitz to work full-time on rural poverty, after winning a Times of India fellowship that enabled him to pursue the subject. His work in that area won him a further twelve awards and fellowships over the next two years, including the prestigious European Commission’s journalism award, the Lorenzo Natali Prize.
Sainath has been a visiting lecturer in journalism, development and politics at universities in India, Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. He has been directly involved in training journalists and has also been on the faculty of the Social Communications Media department of the Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, for the past ten years. A regular contributor to The Telegraph in Calcutta, he also writes for the fortnightly Frontline and the daily Business Line in Madras.