Bhubaneswar: Amid the talks of a five trillion dollar Indian economy, there is still an India where people struggle to arrange two square meals a day. Many strive hard for basic needs of food, health and education. Often unheard and ignored, these voiceless people mostly don’t matter to the mainstream media. The book by Development Journalist Pradeep Baisakh, “Faces of Inequality” which was released in Bhubaneswar on 24 April 2022, through various ground reports over a decade and a half, captures the stories of the most marginalised people of society.
The book discusses the evolution of the inequality debate in the global level and in India. A large percentage of population is poor because a few people are super-rich and the global economic system is designed to generate and foster such inequality. The ’Occupy Wall Street’ protest in New York in 2011 used the slogan, ’We are the 99’ signifies concentration of wealth in the top one per cent. The book goes beyond the intellectual discussion on inequality and attempts to give a human face to inequality – the “Faces of Inequality”!
The book has 44 articles, which are reproduction of author’s grassroot based write-ups published in various newspapers and journals in India and abroad in last fifteen years. The issues covered are starvation, distress migration, employment guarantee act, right to information, forest issues, self-help movement, industrialisation and violence, agrarian distress and farmers suicide, disaster etc.
The first article is on the hunger death of Jhintu Bariha’s family in 2009 from Balangir district of Odisha. All the reports should serve as a warning bell till the time another man dies of starvation in Odisha, a girl is raped in brick kilns of Andhra Pradesh and a poor child is forced to work in the cotton fields of Gujarat. These are not mere real-life stories but a chronicle of policy and governance failures. The reports analyse the systemic causes of such failures.
Attended by about 60 people, the event also organised an in-depth discussion on “Is Odisha’s Development Inclusive” where Rabi Das, Senior Journalist, Umi Daniel, Development Professional, Sharada Lahangir, Senior Journalist shred their views. Akshaya Sahoo, Senior Journalist moderated the discussion. Sandeep Patnaik, researcher facilitated the whole event and Ashok Dash, Software Professional gave the vote of thanks!
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The author is available at: [email protected]
The book is available at: https://amzn.to/3kbS2Dm
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