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Setting the rural agenda
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The journalist who broke the anti-arrack agitation story gets his place in the sun
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R. M. Umamaheswara Rao aka Uma is gentle and low-profile figure in the Telugu press. But wherever he has worked, he has left his indelible stamp of integrity, sensitive understanding, and an unshakeable commitment for fair play and social justice. So
it was apt in many ways that Uma won the first Best Telugu Rural Journalist award instituted by P. Sainath, writer and Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu from the money he received with the Ramon Magsaysay award last year.
In a journalistic career spanning 22 years, which began as a rural desk in-charge in Sullurupeta in Nellore district, Uma has served four newspapers and a website. Currently he is the News Editor of Andhra Jyothi, and based in Tirupati. And throughout this journey, he has been all along keyed to the rural reality.
“My village Mannarupolu has been the reference point for all my understanding of the world, and my work as journalist and editor, and my short stories,” he says. The huge forced displacement of the village folk happening in the name of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) reminds Uma of the acute disturbance he felt as a boy 30 years ago listening to the troubled tales of rural workers when a cotton mill was closed near his village.
Uma was chosen for the award for the nine well-researched and moving cover reports he wrote along with his staff on the deep agony and resentment among the villagers affected by the creation of the Satyavedu and Tada SEZs in Chittoor and Nellore districts.
They were suddenly faced with the loss of their fertile and well-irrigated lands, age-old habitats and a whole way of life.
“Through very clever manipulations the protests were overcome and the villagers were brow-beaten to part with their lands. But it’s sad to see how they are struggling now!” says Uma.
The field inputs he received from his wife Vishnupriya, a bank employee were invaluable. “She stayed with the families and knew intimately how the women felt. It was heart-breaking,” says Uma.
It is not much-known but Uma was the one to break the news about the anti-arrack agitation by the rural women of Nellore in the late ’80s.
“A doctor friend called me up saying something interesting was happening. Other newspapers soon followed suit and the movement hogged media head-lines for a long time to come.” Based on that experience, Uma went on to publish Saaraa Kathalu, 15 docu-stories on the social-effects of arrack.
From scathing reports on famines, farmers and weavers’ deaths to promoting rural crafts like Kalamkari and wood-carving of Kalahasti, scientific and technological skills and innovations happening in rural areas, interviews with top Naxalite leaders in their forest hide-outs - Uma’s list of reporting breaks is impressive. He has been able to do this though his primary job has always been with the desk. Increasing responsibilities as a senior editor leave him with little time for creative writing or reporting these days: “I would though like to meet the wives of farmers who have committed suicides. The guys rest in peace but the grit with which these women have been struggling to nurture their families is astounding.
They are stories worth telling!”
SUMANASPATI
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