Karnataka - Bidar   

`Ekalavya' of Bidar journalism

Staff Correspondent

BIDAR: Vishwanath Baburao Patil quit the post of District Information and Publicity Officer as it "did not allow him to speak the truth."

"The Government kept claiming that it has ended poverty, increased literacy, provided food and water to the poor and eradicated many diseases. But I could see that all these were lies. I wanted to get out of this suffocating situation. I first quit the post in 1966 three years after I joined the service. But my resignation was not accepted. I pulled on for four more years and resigned again in 1970," he says.

So immense has been Mr. Patil's contribution to journalism that the State Government has selected him for the Lifetime Contribution to Development Journalism Award for 2003.

Mr. Patil, who was a Correspondent of The Hindu and even worked as a journalist in Hyderabad for some time, started Daman, a Hindi newspaper to enable him to speak the truth.

Mr. Patil retired from journalism in 2002. He lives in his native village of Hakyal in Aurad taluk where he is busy building a swimming pool, sports complex, an auditorium and a library in memory of his parents. Popularly known as "Daman Patil," Mr. Patil has been a social activist first and then a journalist. He spearheaded the five-year struggle against polluting industries in the Naubad-Kolar industrial area in Bidar. A strong sense of humour is what keeps Mr. Patil ticking. His finger got crushed while he was working in the printing press in the Seventies. "I am the Ekalavya of Bidar journalism. I learnt the art of printing on my own. And the printing press took away my finger as Gurudakshina," he says.

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