Reporting from the Indian Hinterland and Press Freedom with Parth MN

Today my guest is Parth MN. Parth is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, India. He mainly covers rural India for multiple publications. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, People's Archive of Rural India, Times of India Digital, among other outlets. He is the recipient of the Indian Express group's Ramnath Goenka Award, as well as the European Commission's Lorenzo Natali Media Prize. Quoting the legendary P. Sainath, "National daily five-year average gives 0.67 percent of its Front Page News to news of rural origin. 69 percent of the country's population gets 0.67 percent." This pretty much sums up the state of rural reporting in India. So, in this episode I thought I will talk to Parth about his experience reporting in Vidharbha and Manipur, lessons he learned and also about the state of press freedom in India among many other things. More about Parth MN https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/authors/parth-mn/ https://x.com/parthpunter?s=20 (0:00) Introduction (01:31) Growing up and Cricket days (12:00) Shiv Sena and Press (14:55) Learning from sport (21:33) Education and early days in Journalism (27:30) Freelancing and Reporting Rural India (30:52) Deep dive into Rural Reporting (40:38) Farmer Suicide and Climate change (45:20) Mental Health programs in rural India (51:47) Reporting from Manipur (1:01:07) Freedom of the Press (1:08:00) Parth and I talk about reliable media sources (1:13:00) Conclusion