''Everybody Loves a Good Drought'' is a book, by

P. Sainath Palagummi Sainath (born 1957) is an Indian columnist and author of the acclaimed book ''Everybody Loves a Good Drought''. He has extensively written on rural India, his notable interests are poverty, structural inequities, caste discriminatio ...

, about his research findings of poverty in the rural districts of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The book won him the

Ramon Magsaysay Award The Ramon Magsaysay Award (Filipino: ''Gawad Ramon Magsaysay'') is an annual award established to perpetuate former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay's example of integrity in governance, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic idealis ...

. Sainath wrote the book by combining 84 articles that he had written from 1990 to 1992 for the

Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the List of newspapers in India by circulation, t ...

, while residing in the poorest villages in the interiors of India, especially

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

, what today is referred to as

Telangana Telangana (; , ) is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian subcontinent, Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India b ...

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

Orissa Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of Sch ...

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

and what is today referred to as

Chhattisgarh Chhattisgarh (, ) is a landlocked state in Central India. It is the ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the seventeenth most populous. It borders seven states – Uttar Pradesh to the north, Madhya Prade ...

on a two-year Bennett and Coleman fellowship. The articles give extensive detail of how various government projects do and do not work at the ground level, and whether they actually deliver any of their promised results in reality. He wrote the stories by detailing out the projects as well as the lives of villagers living in these places, supplementing them with detailed statistics. Divided into separate sections based on the issues that the chapters deal with, the book scathingly unveils how trickle up and down theories do not work in reality in the country, and the stunningly high levels of corruption in so called development projects. The book is considered one of the most detailed, authentic, highly regarded and readable studies of 1980s rural India. To make rural stories more accessible, excerpts from the book have been also published on

People's Archive of Rural India The People's Archive of Rural India (PARI ) is a multimedia digital journalism platform in India. It was founded in December 2014 by veteran journalist Palagummi Sainath, former rural affairs editor of ''The Hindu'', author of the book Everybody ...

References

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External links

Everybody Loves a Good Drought
at

Penguin India Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

Books about India 1996 non-fiction books Social research