Newslaundry’s Basant Kumar has won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award in the 'Uncovering India Invisible' category for his ground report exposing the Central government's claim that the income of 75,000 farmers had doubled.

The report, published in 2024, scrutinised an assertion by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) that a government scheme had successfully doubled farmer incomes. Newslaundry travelled to villages in Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, and Gurugram, Haryana, and spoke directly to 20 farmers listed as beneficiaries.

Several farmers named in official records were themselves unaware that their incomes had supposedly doubled. In many cases, the land attributed to them in government documents did not match reality: some farmers no longer owned the land, some had sold it years earlier, and others had left farming altogether for other livelihoods. 

Most said that Krishi Vigyan Kendras, the agricultural extension centres credited with driving the improvement, had played no role in their lives. Several had never even been contacted for data collection.

The report did more than poke holes in a single claim. It laid bare the distance between official policy narratives and conditions on the ground in rural India – the kind of accountability journalism that is only possible when reporters leave the press conference and go looking for the people the numbers are supposed to represent. It is precisely this work that Newslaundry’s subscribers make possible.

The investigation went on to trigger a four-part series in collaboration with The News Minute, which conducted a similar reality check of ICAR’s claims across other states.

The Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards are organised annually by the Indian Express Group in honour of its founder. This year, awards for 2024 were presented across 13 categories, with Vice President C P Radhakrishnan presenting the honours.

'Unanimous agreement on what is false'

In his trademark style, Indian Express editor-in-chief Raj Kamal Jha started his speech with a reference to the Galgotia University staffer who had infamously said “your six can be my nine” amid the Chinese robodog controversy. 

Jha said that was the first time there was a “working definition of what is false”. “We all had a unanimous agreement on what is false…that is what we celebrate this evening. That when everything is contested. When a leader says in a time of war that a war is coming to an end, and in the same sentence he says we are going to hit them very hard. We need to find a way to seek the truth. That’s what these stories do.”

“We are all very unsure of what good journalism is and we need to use a moment like this to say what is good journalism, given the so many forms of journalism that we see. The billionaire getting an interview which we wanted to do. The six-hour podcast. The six-second reel. The social media name with a million followers who posts a screenshot of a screenshot. And then there is a TV anchor who bends everyday but one fine night he decides to stand up.” 

“It became clear that the national interest and good journalism are not just compatible, they are the same thing. And yet we are told every day other wise. We are given certificates for journalism. We are given certificates for nationalism. We are given one by the politician who is trying to play the editor. And we are given one by the journalist who is trying to be the politician. The noise is relentless. And sometimes we begin to believe that these are the measures that matter. They do not matter.”

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