In episode 11 of ‘Shut Up Ya Kunal‘, the poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar tells Kunal Kamra of the abysmal coverage of farm and rural issues in Indian media.
Around the 34th minute of the episode, Akhtar says:
“In a nation where 70 per cent of the population lives in the countryside and most of them are directly or indirectly connected with agriculture, the coverage about issues relevant to them is not 7 per cent or even 0.7 per cent.”
The social scientist, psephologist and now politician Yogendra Yadav says research shows media coverage of “all rural issues” to be about 4 per cent and that is mostly in print media.
But even that coverage is mostly about accidents, natural tragedies and crime.
IJR 