18-month-old girl killed in suspected black magic ritual

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.

Mangaluru, May 10: A special train carrying 1,140 migrant workers stranded here in the lockdown has left Mangaluru railway station for Jharkhand.

Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel and Vedavyas Kamath, MLA, were present at the railway station on Saturday night when the train left.

Kamath said the workers who had registered on the state governments Seva Sindhu portal were brought to the railway station in Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation buses.

A health check-up was carried out before they boarded the train.

The district administration also provided food packets and water to the migrants at the station.

Three more trains will leave from Mangaluru for Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand soon, he said.

Meanwhile, in a statement, Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner Sindhu P Rupesh said train services are being arranged for migrant workers who have registered their names on the Seva Sindhu portal.

The workers will be informed when trains are arranged to their destinations and they need not throng the railway station unnecessarily, she said.

Around 20,000 workers have so far registered themselves online, including 5,000 from Jharkhand, 3,000 from Uttar Pradesh and 4,000 from Bihar.

Hundreds of migrant workers had on Friday staged a protest at the central railway station here, demanding that they be sent back home.

The workers went back to their camps only after district authorities and police gave them assurance that trains will be arranged in three days.

Shivamogga, Jul 24: The protest by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) under the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) entered its 14th day on Friday demanding personal protective equipment (PPE) kits and a salary of at least Rs 12,000 per month.

They have been protesting in different parts of Karnataka since July 10.

Staging a protest in front of the deputy commissioner's office, the ASHA workers complained of the government turning a deaf ear to their problems.

Clad in their signature pink saris, they raised slogans to demand appropriate salary for their work and the necessary equipment to protect them from the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. 

They said that they worked tirelessly during the COVID-19-induced lockdown without any safety. The department only provided them with sub-standard equipment to combat the deadly virus. All they were asking for is a basic pay of Rs 12,000 against the current pay of Rs 6,000.

Prema, an ASHA said, "The authorities are praising our work, clapping for us and showering flowers on us but are not listening to our grievances."