nspringer11's review
5.0
A very important book to read. Sadly a lot of the material in this book is still relevant today. I highly recommend reading this!
nrajanala's review
3.0
Reading and reviewing a 20 year old book on the state of Indian affairs in the poorest of rural areas is tough. On one side, it is fascinating to see that nothing much has changed in the state of the rural poor especially in the poorest districts where the government machinery cannot reach or doesn't desire to reach. Thousands of readers and fans of the author have pushed this book to super stardom and I am one of those enthusiasts who bought this book to meet my curiosity over why the author and the book have reached a cult-like status.
I never knew the author prior to reading the book and imagined him to be a very humble, kurta clad, cloth-bag bearing typical journalist from simple origins and level-headed beliefs. For the most part, Sainath comes up as that. Except that this work of his was a fairly well-funded (by Times Of India) and well-supported (by none other than Sitaram Yechury and N.Ram to name a few) piece of classic. It is also a soft push for supporting the Communist agenda and activist mindset of Leftist groups that while the journalist doesn't imply in this book, has well showcased in the more than twenty subsequent years of his "rural reporting". He of course, is one of the cleverest of that bunch (the likes of N. Ram and other good journalists) and also calls out in the book that he and journalists of his kind may be called so. This distorts the excellent storytelling in the book, especially if you smelled the Communist curry being cooked in the kitchen in a quiet corner of an otherwise excellent feast of great lavish food to consume for the reader.
Sainath was forced to name and shame Manu Smriti at least once in a completely unwanted story line, pick a brahmin and call him one when exploitation of the really underprivileged happened while choosing to not call a brahmin by his caste when he or she did the regular good work in other chapters of the book and of course, going all guns blazing against the government at every single chance while keeping it simple when it came to certain members of the Congress party and the militant ultra-left extremists who somehow have a helpless story to tell for every rupee they charge through extortion.
Now, setting that aside, the book is a collection of rural India based articles that were published in the Times Of India back in the 90s. The reference to drought actually comes very late in the second half of the book, while it can be a metaphor for exploitation that happens in the name of development in the country. The rural India that Sainath chooses are of course the worst of the worse in terms of human development and I felt it was way too easy for someone to script a storyline there especially with the writing chops of Sainath and the geographical landscapes of remote land near good water or minerals. His reference to the "urban India" that doesn't care about the poor rural belt in more than one occasion annoys someone who has seen both sides of the coin. The author should have been able to understand the simple fact that a good portion of his book covers exploitation of water by the mafia in several stories with a poor dalit or tribal affected by it, which by the way, is one of the biggest problems affecting any person of caste, creed, skin or other diseases even in the most urban of urban India. Yes, it is true that people with money get more access to resources. Yes, it is exactly what is happening in the rural areas of India too and his stories capture them while getting intertwined in how to sieve and squeeze the caste angle from it. It is however a blatant truth that caste as a political, economic and social system still exists in India and is certainly a stark reason for how limited resources are further exploited and barely shared among sections of the rural and 'urban' societies. The author's fascination for the rural stories masks the blinders he has put for urban India and Indians overall. Kudos to the author for depicting the beautiful life of India's "tribal" societies and cultures. I was proud to know that we had such wonderful diversity of people with phenomenal connection to nature and art. The fact that they are the most suffering lot does cause pain and a sense of rage at the inability of the system getting fixed.
The book offers very few pointers on what can ail India. This of course would have been fine if he was just a reporter and was just writing an article in a newspaper to show the plight of exploitation and suffering. But, that was done and dusted in the Times of India newspaper. If it was a book, it should have at least touched on the subject of what to fix with some seriousness, even if it followed a Communist or Socialist agenda. Typical of an activist (which I didn't imagine him to be before reading the book, then suspected of so while reading the book, and then eventually realized so after checking his 'future' state), he breaks the pots but doesn't tell how to fix them or best, make them. He does have a giant passion for serving the under served and does mention the typical solutions of land reforms like in "we need land reforms". Yes, well, isn't knowing and doing the "how" one of the biggest plagues of this nation? Yes, the trader network exploits the farmer. So, what next? Shoot them all? what is their story? The trader-politician nexus touches all political parties in India. It is however, too harsh to expect the author to showcase solutions for all maladies. He knew it wasn't easy. But, he knew it was easy to talk and that he did with the pen.
I am however a fan of this author for the writing style which is riddled with sarcasms and pretty honest observations of what he is seeing on the ground. Journalists like him keep the exploiters of capitalism at bay. But, I hope he doesn't mix his political leanings with them. As, if he does so, which in fact he is doing today, he can no longer humbly pretend to be just a "rural reporter". He is just another exploiter, not of the materialistic kind, but of the mind - the fickle, emotional and angry mind of Indians.
I never knew the author prior to reading the book and imagined him to be a very humble, kurta clad, cloth-bag bearing typical journalist from simple origins and level-headed beliefs. For the most part, Sainath comes up as that. Except that this work of his was a fairly well-funded (by Times Of India) and well-supported (by none other than Sitaram Yechury and N.Ram to name a few) piece of classic. It is also a soft push for supporting the Communist agenda and activist mindset of Leftist groups that while the journalist doesn't imply in this book, has well showcased in the more than twenty subsequent years of his "rural reporting". He of course, is one of the cleverest of that bunch (the likes of N. Ram and other good journalists) and also calls out in the book that he and journalists of his kind may be called so. This distorts the excellent storytelling in the book, especially if you smelled the Communist curry being cooked in the kitchen in a quiet corner of an otherwise excellent feast of great lavish food to consume for the reader.
Sainath was forced to name and shame Manu Smriti at least once in a completely unwanted story line, pick a brahmin and call him one when exploitation of the really underprivileged happened while choosing to not call a brahmin by his caste when he or she did the regular good work in other chapters of the book and of course, going all guns blazing against the government at every single chance while keeping it simple when it came to certain members of the Congress party and the militant ultra-left extremists who somehow have a helpless story to tell for every rupee they charge through extortion.
Now, setting that aside, the book is a collection of rural India based articles that were published in the Times Of India back in the 90s. The reference to drought actually comes very late in the second half of the book, while it can be a metaphor for exploitation that happens in the name of development in the country. The rural India that Sainath chooses are of course the worst of the worse in terms of human development and I felt it was way too easy for someone to script a storyline there especially with the writing chops of Sainath and the geographical landscapes of remote land near good water or minerals. His reference to the "urban India" that doesn't care about the poor rural belt in more than one occasion annoys someone who has seen both sides of the coin. The author should have been able to understand the simple fact that a good portion of his book covers exploitation of water by the mafia in several stories with a poor dalit or tribal affected by it, which by the way, is one of the biggest problems affecting any person of caste, creed, skin or other diseases even in the most urban of urban India. Yes, it is true that people with money get more access to resources. Yes, it is exactly what is happening in the rural areas of India too and his stories capture them while getting intertwined in how to sieve and squeeze the caste angle from it. It is however a blatant truth that caste as a political, economic and social system still exists in India and is certainly a stark reason for how limited resources are further exploited and barely shared among sections of the rural and 'urban' societies. The author's fascination for the rural stories masks the blinders he has put for urban India and Indians overall. Kudos to the author for depicting the beautiful life of India's "tribal" societies and cultures. I was proud to know that we had such wonderful diversity of people with phenomenal connection to nature and art. The fact that they are the most suffering lot does cause pain and a sense of rage at the inability of the system getting fixed.
The book offers very few pointers on what can ail India. This of course would have been fine if he was just a reporter and was just writing an article in a newspaper to show the plight of exploitation and suffering. But, that was done and dusted in the Times of India newspaper. If it was a book, it should have at least touched on the subject of what to fix with some seriousness, even if it followed a Communist or Socialist agenda. Typical of an activist (which I didn't imagine him to be before reading the book, then suspected of so while reading the book, and then eventually realized so after checking his 'future' state), he breaks the pots but doesn't tell how to fix them or best, make them. He does have a giant passion for serving the under served and does mention the typical solutions of land reforms like in "we need land reforms". Yes, well, isn't knowing and doing the "how" one of the biggest plagues of this nation? Yes, the trader network exploits the farmer. So, what next? Shoot them all? what is their story? The trader-politician nexus touches all political parties in India. It is however, too harsh to expect the author to showcase solutions for all maladies. He knew it wasn't easy. But, he knew it was easy to talk and that he did with the pen.
I am however a fan of this author for the writing style which is riddled with sarcasms and pretty honest observations of what he is seeing on the ground. Journalists like him keep the exploiters of capitalism at bay. But, I hope he doesn't mix his political leanings with them. As, if he does so, which in fact he is doing today, he can no longer humbly pretend to be just a "rural reporter". He is just another exploiter, not of the materialistic kind, but of the mind - the fickle, emotional and angry mind of Indians.
khyatipriya's review
4.0
Beautifully written and easily readable, Sainath's "Everybody Loves a Good Drought" is a collection of articles that are about the miseries faced by the poorest of the poor. It puts you into the scene of 90’s rural India, and although written more than two decades ago, the stories seem to reflect the present state of the country- people are still being displaced, corruption is still common, some of the poorest people are still stuck with unending debts, and so on. Reading this book lets us dive into the lives of these people- what does it mean when your land is taken away from you, and your entire community is displaced for a government project, the benefits of which you'll never enjoy? How are some of the rural Indians trapped into debt cycles because of a one-time loan they took? What happens when a poorly designed scheme is implemented onto an entire village?
Each individual article in isolation holds the capacity to move you, however, a collection of it becomes a struggle to read halfway through the book. The same five or six districts are introduced again and again. At times, when the original story was published in the Times of India in two parts, you read both the parts as different chapters thereby going through repetitive content. In my opinion, this book would have been better as a non-fiction read had the content been re-written to suit a book. Nevertheless, I still recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.
Each individual article in isolation holds the capacity to move you, however, a collection of it becomes a struggle to read halfway through the book. The same five or six districts are introduced again and again. At times, when the original story was published in the Times of India in two parts, you read both the parts as different chapters thereby going through repetitive content. In my opinion, this book would have been better as a non-fiction read had the content been re-written to suit a book. Nevertheless, I still recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.
dvasudreddy's review
5.0
What a book it was.
It may be outdated by current day standards, but it can very well give you the right picture of rural India when poorest of the poor still lives and fights for everyday survival. It was not easy reading this book, but, it was necessary to understand from where we have come and to how far we have traveled.
Although there has been a overall improvements in living standards across the board since the book was published, there would most likely be those communities where eating three square meals a day is still a challenge. The average distance we travel to find drinking water is although reduced, it is not reduced enough to use that spare on some productive works.
Poverty is a trap which keeps poor in the state of poverty unless some external factor pushes them out of it. And, education is one such factor.
Kudos to Sainath for such a brilliant journalistic treaty, no wonder why he is so acclaimed amongst the world scholars.
I wish he/someone of his qualities visits the same communities/places to report how their lives have have turned out after these two decades of rapid growth.
It may be outdated by current day standards, but it can very well give you the right picture of rural India when poorest of the poor still lives and fights for everyday survival. It was not easy reading this book, but, it was necessary to understand from where we have come and to how far we have traveled.
Although there has been a overall improvements in living standards across the board since the book was published, there would most likely be those communities where eating three square meals a day is still a challenge. The average distance we travel to find drinking water is although reduced, it is not reduced enough to use that spare on some productive works.
Poverty is a trap which keeps poor in the state of poverty unless some external factor pushes them out of it. And, education is one such factor.
Kudos to Sainath for such a brilliant journalistic treaty, no wonder why he is so acclaimed amongst the world scholars.
I wish he/someone of his qualities visits the same communities/places to report how their lives have have turned out after these two decades of rapid growth.
surabhi_11's review
4.0
" The best it can get by way of space is when UNICEF’s annual ‘State of the World’s Children Report’ is released. Then it makes an occasional bow on the centre page. Or, in one of those anguished editorials (hastily written because the one on the stock exchange didn't turn up) asking: 'Where have we gone wrong?' After which, it can be packed away to be used in identical format the following year. If no Indian has won a beauty contest that season, it could even make the front page. This establishes that the newspaper has a caring editor, who will soon address the Rotary Club on What can be done for our children."
The stories will hold your hand and will take you to places you have never visited. It will request you to patiently hear and know about the lives of people who are very often excluded from the sincere attention of mainstream media, society and governance. The book written in 1990s about the critical social issues of underserved India holds its value of providing a reality check to India's development in current times as well.
Written in form of simple narrative, this book has made a genuine attempt to give its reader a glimpse of how many Indias live in one, silently and subdued. Every story demands the reader's attention on his/her role in making the society a better place but at the same time intimidate the reader with the complexity of issues that the society is crippled with. The author's effort in documenting these stories by being part of the lives of his protagonists is really commendable. Data, facts, conversations, reasons, questions, and most importantly, empathy - the readers of this book would have enough of everything that instigates the spirit of inquiry.
A must read for aspiring development professional or anyone who wants to understand the problems of the Indian communities.
The stories will hold your hand and will take you to places you have never visited. It will request you to patiently hear and know about the lives of people who are very often excluded from the sincere attention of mainstream media, society and governance. The book written in 1990s about the critical social issues of underserved India holds its value of providing a reality check to India's development in current times as well.
Written in form of simple narrative, this book has made a genuine attempt to give its reader a glimpse of how many Indias live in one, silently and subdued. Every story demands the reader's attention on his/her role in making the society a better place but at the same time intimidate the reader with the complexity of issues that the society is crippled with. The author's effort in documenting these stories by being part of the lives of his protagonists is really commendable. Data, facts, conversations, reasons, questions, and most importantly, empathy - the readers of this book would have enough of everything that instigates the spirit of inquiry.
A must read for aspiring development professional or anyone who wants to understand the problems of the Indian communities.
premxs's review
5.0
It's impossible to "review" a book as seminal to Indian journalism and sociology as this. It shattered preconceptions about development, revealed the face of rural India and is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand why India's success stories mean little to the majority of the country. The sad part is that little seems to have changed in the 20-odd years since the publication of this book.