Panos South Asia - UNDP South Asia-Asia Pacific Editors’ Roundtable on:

Inequality and Hunger

Colombo was the venue where nearly twenty editors from across the South Asia-Asia Pacific region met to take part in a two day conference organised by the Panos Institute in Sri Lanka (part of Panos South Asia) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the first week of February 2009.

The objective of the discourse was to frame a better media strategy to deal with more effective coverage of Hunger-related issues; thus minimising hunger and poverty in the region.

The roundtable followed up a media research carried out by the Panos Institute in Sri Lanka to ascertain levels of coverage and importance given to issues of hunger by the English media across seven Asia Pacific countries.

Five English newspapers were selected from the following countries which had representation at the conference: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Cambodia.

A comparative analysis was carried out to examine which hunger-related issues were given most coverage in the region’s media the most.

The media audit on Hunger was presented at the Editors’ roundtable. This helped to highlight the lack of focus in almost all Asia Pacific countries on poverty and hunger issues, in both urban and rural settings.

The discussion at the Editors’ roundtable took up issues pertaining to Inequality and Hunger in the region. The main speakers were Omar Noman, Chief of Policies and Programs, UNDP Asia Regional Centre, Colombo and other UNDP officials who are part of the UNDP hunger eradication campaign.

A paper on Media trends and Challenges was presented by UNDP Communications Officer, Manisha Mishra.

The Roundtable discussions that followed also looked at issues pertaining to hunger in the region, like targeted interventions against Hunger, International food policy architecture and Media trends and challenges.

Among the points raised by the participants which included senior editors, news editors and mid-career journalists, was the lack of media focus on soaring hunger levels among the urban poor, which is closely related to migration of the rural poor.

According to a presentation by T Palanivel, a senior adviser for the UNDP Regional Centre in Colombo, Asia still has over 900 million people living in extreme poverty.

In the past decade, Asia was able to lift about 300 million people out of these conditions, but now they are at risk because of the global financial crisis. A one percent decline in growth in the developing world could push an additional 20 million people into poverty and hunger.

The deliberations were moderated by Kunda Dixit, Editor, Nepali Times, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, TV journalist and Pamela Philipose, Director, Women’s Feature Service.

The discussions resulted in sharing ideas of how the media initiatives already taken to eradicate hunger, poverty and improve leadership capacities of the public could be used as common measures in the Asia Pacific region.

Lalitha Panicker, Assistant Editor,The Hindustan Times spoke of two highly popular campaigns carried out by The Times of India, India’s largest circulating newspaper, primarily as an effort to boost sales but which also contributed significantly towards social change.

Panicker explained that while the paper achieved its primary objective with the two campaigns, Lead India and Teach India, it also created a trend in media initiatives towards development that could be replicated by newspapers in other countries.

The Times of India’s Teach India campaign called upon educated Indians to help teach underprivileged children while the “Lead India” campaign provided an opportunity for youth of all strata of life to come forward to display their leadership abilities.

Taking this as a positive indicator of initiatives the media can bring out to facilitate social change, the roundtable affirmed the fact that media holds an important role in eradicating inequality and changing the status quo of hunger in South Asia and the Pacific.

Another key thought that emerged from the discussion was emphasised by Kunda Dixit who said that the location was a primary message imparting factor when organising conferences that are held to initiate change in a country or a region.

As Pamela Philipose, Director, Women’s Feature Service in India pointed out, media should cultivate the art of telling old stories in a new way and not only be obsessed with bad news.

It was agreed that positive stories was a great empowerment of change. As Nurul Kabir, the Editor-in-chief of The New Age in Bangladesh stated, “ true journalism is when one avoids writing anything he is not convinced of and commits himself to the kind of journalism that changes mindset”.

Editors pointed out in their concluding remarks that the event should be followed up to share the long lasting impact of the roundtable.