Veteran journalist P. Sainath has said that the nation is in a crisis. And this crisis is not limited to just the rural area. It has become a national crisis at various areas such as agriculture, education, economy, job creation etc.
He was delivering the endowment lecture on the topic ‘Indian democracy at the post-liberalization and post-truth era’ at Media Manthan 2020 organized by the PG department of journalism and mass communication at St Aloysius College (Autonomous).
Mr Sainath said that the many policies adopted in the 90s led to India becoming unusually unequal. Referring to the speech Ambedkar had made at the Constituent Assembly while handing over the draft of the Constitution, Mr Sainath said, “Ambedkar had warned about the weakness of Indian democracy that liberty without equality allows the supremacy of a few over the multitude. Liberty, equality and fraternity must be kept together as we cannot have one without the other.”
Mr Sainath stated that the agrarian crisis was no longer about the loss of productivity, employment or about farmer suicide; it was a societal, civilizational crisis. Commenting on the lopsided policies such as cow-slaughter ban, he explained how cow slaughter ban had adversely affected many industries due to their interdependency. While Muslims who slaughtered cows were rendered helpless, the cattle traders who were mostly OBCs lost their earnings as the cattle prices crashed. An important industry like Kolhapur sandals industry in Maharashtra went bankrupt as a result of the cow slaughter ban in Maharashtra. He said the policymakers had no idea how the rural industries were interconnected. Demonetisation too devastated the rural economy as 98 percent of rural transactions happen through cash.
Mr Sainath also spoke about the crisis of inequality which affects the Dalits and the Adivasis far more than anyone else as 90 percent of the rural households take home less than Rs 10,000/- per month. “Women are yet another group whose labour is never counted in the gross domestic product. Women and girls globally do unpaid work which amounts to about 12.5 billion working hours per year. Monetarily speaking, this is worth 10.8 trillion dollars,” Mr Sainath added.
Speaking about the crisis of jobs Mr Sainath said that major companies were laying off employees just to create more profits for the investors and the adoption of artificial intelligence in the industry would further destroy millions of jobs.
Rector of St Aloysius College Institutions Fr Dionysius Vaz SJ, Principal Dr (Fr) Praveen Martis SJ, HOD of Journalism and Mass Communication department Dr (Fr) Melwyn Pinto SJ were present.
‘Veerappan and Vijay Mallya’s business models are interesting!’
Addressing the gathering during his endowment lecture on Friday, Mr Sainath made an interesting comment on the so called ‘revenue model’. “Whenever I visit IIMs and IITs for lectures on my PARI project, the students there ask me what my revenue model for my project is. I tell them that I do not have a revenue model. In fact, journalism does not begin with a revenue model. Gandhiji, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh were all great journalists. But they did not have a revenue model,” Mr Sainath said.
On a lighter note, he said that the best revenue model that he liked was that of forest brigand Veerappan and liquor baron Vijay Mallya. “Veerappan ruled the forest for forty years and from the top ministers to the villagers he could dictate terms and liver royally. Similarly, Mallya’s revenue model was to steal the banks and run away abroad and live like a king,” Mr Sainath added.
Journalism is not and can never be a business. It is a calling, he opined. While newspaper can be a business, television can be a business, journalism per se cannot be reduced to a business. “Unfortunately today, journalists are recruited on a contract basis and they have no bargaining power; and there are no unions to fight for their cause. Hence, they are at the mercy of the corporate media houses for their survival and are made to write stories that cannot be called journalism,” Mr Sainath said.
Answering a question as to the pressures he faced as a journalist, he said that external pressures from the government or others could be very well handled. It is the internal pressures from once own media house that journalists find it difficult to manage.
Comments
Hahahah... What a joke!!!
What these RSS Terrorists contributed for India? They supported British. If you search in history Muslims taught them everything. Even they were not knowing how to bath, how to wear clothes, how to cook, how to build buildings. All the food recipe they learnt from Muslims. These aryans run away from Iran and now looting our India. All the Buildings and culture they are using were built by Muslims. What did they build??? Toilets????
AS PER WIKIPEDIA,
The Mughal Empire (Urdu: مغلیہ سلطنت, translit. Mughliyah Salṭanat)[7] or Mogul Empire,[8] self-designated as Gurkani (Persian: گورکانیان, Gūrkāniyān, meaning "son-in-law"),[9] was an empire in the Indian subcontinent, founded in 1526. It was established and ruled by a Muslim dynasty with Turco-Mongol Chagatai roots from Central Asia,[10][11][12] but with significant Indian Rajput and Persian ancestry through marriage alliances;[13][14] only the first two Mughal emperors were fully Central Asian, while successive emperors were of predominantly Rajput and Persian ancestry.[15] The dynasty was Indo-Persian in culture,[16] combining Persianateculture[8][17] with local Indian cultural influences[16] visible in its traits and customs.[18]
The Mughal Empire at its peak extended over nearly all of the Indian subcontinent[5] and large parts of Afghanistan. It was the second largest empire to have existed in the Indian subcontinent, spanning four million square kilometres at its zenith,[4] after only the Maurya Empire, which spanned five million square kilometres. The Mughal Empire began a period of proto-industrialization,[19]and Mughal India became the world's largest economic power, with 24.4% of world GDP,[20] and the world leader in manufacturing,[21] producing 25% of global industrial output up until the 18th century.[22] The Mughal Empire is considered "India's last golden age"[23] and one of the three Islamic Gunpowder Empires (along with the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia).[24]
The beginning of the empire is conventionally dated to the victory by its founder Babur over Ibrahim Lodi, the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, in the First Battle of Panipat (1526). The Mughal emperors had roots in the Turco-Mongol Timurid dynasty of Central Asia, claiming direct descent from both Genghis Khan (founder of the Mongol Empire, through his son Chagatai Khan) and Timur (Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire). During the reign of Humayun, the successor of Babur, the empire was briefly interrupted by the Sur Empire. The "classic period" of the Mughal Empire started in 1556 with the ascension of Akbar the Great to the throne. Under the rule of Akbar and his son Jahangir, the region enjoyed economic progress as well as religious harmony, and the monarchs were interested in local religious and cultural traditions. Akbar was a successful warrior who also forged alliances with several Hindu Rajput kingdoms. Some Rajput kingdoms continued to pose a significant threat to the Mughal dominance of northwestern India, but most of them were subdued by Akbar. All Mughal emperors were Muslims; Akbar, however, propounded a syncretic religion in the latter part of his life called Dīn-i Ilāhī, as recorded in historical books like Ain-i-Akbari and Dabistān-i Mazāhib.[25]
The Mughal Empire did not try to intervene in the local societies during most of its existence, but rather balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices[26][27] and diverse and inclusive ruling elites,[28] leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule.[29] Traditional and newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, the Pashtuns, the Hindu Jats and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.[30][31][32][33]
The reign of Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, between 1628 and 1658 was the golden age of Mughal architecture. He erected several large monuments, the best known of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, as well as the Moti Masjid, Agra, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Delhi, and the Lahore Fort. The Mughal Empire reached the zenith of its territorial expanse during the reign of Aurangzeb and also started its terminal decline in his reign due to Maratha military resurgence under Shivaji Bhosale. During his lifetime, victories in the south expanded the Mughal Empire to its greatest extent, ruling over more than 150 million subjects, nearly one quarter of the world's population at the time, with a GDP of over $90 billion.[34][35]
By the mid-18th century, the Marathas had routed Mughal armies and won over several Mughal provinces from the Punjab to Bengal.[36] Internal dissatisfaction arose due to the weakness of the empire's administrative and economic systems, leading to its break-up and declarations of independence of its former provinces by the Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh, the Nizam of Hyderabad and other small states. In 1739, the Mughals were crushingly defeated in the Battle of Karnal by the forces of Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty in Persia, and Delhi was sacked and looted, drastically accelerating their decline. During the following century Mughal power had become severely limited, and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, had authority over only the city of Shahjahanabad. He issued a firman supporting the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and following the defeat was therefore tried by the British East India Company for treason, imprisoned and exiled to Rangoon.[37] The last remnants of the empire were formally taken over by the British, and the Government of India Act 1858 let the British Crown formally assume direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.
Aryan cowboys who invaded India, enslved the original inhabitants destroying their culture, imposed Vedic divisive foreign inhuman cast system. India is still suffering from their terror mindset. They are the people who supported the British and responsible for death of millions of Indian freedom fighters. These traitors who licked the British boots, now lecuring us about patriotism. When Mughals came to this land, there was no India, they built India and contributed richly to its history. If these anti-human gang cant digest the truth, let them NOT use any of the Mughal or Muslims contribution and jump into Sarayu or Ganga enmasse.
If Owais is committing intolerance, Oh Blind, deaf, dumb BJP chelas, puffets, what the hell is happening specially in UP, is it tolerance? Killing in the name of gow rakshaks, killing small children, is it tolerance?
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