Media completing ignoring issues of rural India, says Sainath

coastaldigest.com news network
August 21, 2017

Udupi, Aug 21: Veteran journalist P Sainath has expressed frustration over Indian media’s reluctance to cover rural issues.

The Magsaysay award winner was delivering a special lecture on the topic — “The story of rural India in digital age”— here on Sunday. The lecture was organised as part of the endowment lecture series “Talluru Nudimale – 2017” by the Tallur Family Trust.

Mr. Sainath said that the front page of average national dailies dedicated space of just 0.67% to stories of rural India. This was an average of five years. This meant that 69% of the population was marginalised in the media. This also meant that there was an ill-informed society.

Rural India is incredibly complex having 833 million people speaking over 718 different languages, he said and added that six of those languages were being spoken by 50 million people and three languages were spoken by over 80 million people, while one language was spoken by 500 million people. Inequalities in India had grown faster in the last 20 years than in any other country in the world. Some of the finest skills in the country were dying.

The Skills Development Project was taking the weavers of Kanjeevaram, one of the greatest traditions in Indian history, and was making them autorickshaw drivers. The Tamil weavers had given up. Now, it was Padmashalis from Telangana who are doing the work of weaving. A giant de-skilling was taking place in rural India.

Millions of children were entering schools, where they could not own textbooks. But the newspapers, magazines and television channels were silent on it. Even the education sector was getting commercialised and privatised. The high-rung IIMs were charging Rs. 22 lakh as fees. The low-rung IIMs were charging Rs. 10 lakh and above. Though there were only a few freedom fighters living now, the media had not bothered to take their opinion on the freedom movement during the 70th Independence Day. Instead, one of the newspapers had taken the views of CEOs of big companies and Bollywood celebrities on it, he said. Mr. Sainath released “Nunnanabetta”, a collection of articles written by Rajaram Tallur.

G.N. Mohan and Nagesh Hegde, journalists, M.S. Sriram, writer and economist, Narayana A., Professor, Azim Premji University, gave their responses to Mr. Sainath’s lecture.
 

Comments

Vinod Acharya
 - 
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

The solo warrier... well said sir. Real face of media..

AR Shetty
 - 
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

I'm a big fan of you sir. 

Hari
 - 
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

Sir, Including you only few people doing true journalism

Danish
 - 
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

Smooth running of media, needed capital. so media cant neglect corperators and MNCs. without them media wont get capital and advts..

Kumar
 - 
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

I remember sir, you told once in a workshop regarding media neglected farmer issues and went for fashion show coverage

Ganesh
 - 
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

Sir, Media and media people (except you) needed more publicity, so they will do unwanted controversy issues. 

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News Network
May 16,2020

Bengaluru, May 16: At least 23 new COVID-19 positive cases have emerged in the past 19 hours, raising Karnataka''s tally to 1,079, a health official said on Saturday.

"New cases reported from Friday 5 p.m. to Saturday noon are 23," said the official.

Among the 1,079 cases, 548 are active and isolated in designated hospitals across the state, 494 patients got discharged and 36 died of the virus.

In the past 19 hours, cases spiked in Benglaluru Urban, the place hosting the highest number of coronavirus cases in the state.

Of the new cases, Bengaluru Urban reported 14 cases, followed by 3 in Hassan and Mandya, Ballari, Bagalkote, Davangere, Dharwad and Udupi, 1 each.

All the 14 cases, men, from Bengaluru Urban were secondary contacts of positive case 653.

All Hassan, Dharwad and Bagalkote cases had a history of inter-state travel to Mumbai, Maharashtra, India''s largest sufferer of Covid.

A 46-year-old man from Ballari had a travel history to Ahmedabad in Gujarat, another major COVID-19 hotspot state in India.

A 40-year-old man from Mandya had inter-district travel history to Kolar and Bengaluru.

A 1-year-old infant girl from Udupi had international travel history to Dubai.

Among the new cases, 15 are contacts of earlier cases.

Of the all cases, 20 are men and three women.

Only four of the 23 cases are above 50 and 18 below 40.

Of the 1,079 cases, 12 per cent patients were senior citizens, 66 per cent men and 34 per cent women with a discharge rate of 44 per cent.

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News Network
February 2,2020

Thrissur, Feb 2: The Kerala government on Saturday said the condition of the medical student, kept in an isolation ward in Thrissur after testing positive for the novel coronavirus is satisfactory and that three people have been arrested for spreading false information on social media about the disease.

The woman, who tested positive, is a student of Wuhan university and is undergoing treatment at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital.

"The health status of the student who tested positive for coronavirus remains satisfactory.

The hospital authorities have confirmed that the health condition of all symptomatic persons under isolation in hospitals are "stable", a bulletin said.

Health Minister K K Shailaja said Kerala has strengthened surveillance and control measures against the epidemic, which has been declared by WHO as a global emergency,

She told reporters here that three people have been arrested for spreading false information about those who had arrived in the state from coronavirusa affected countries and are under home surveillance.

Six others had forwarded the posts and the cyber cell was probing the matter, Shailaja said.

The minister had earlier warned that strong action would be taken against those putting out false news on the disease.

Police said Sabari was arrested on Friday and released on bail, while two others-- Shafi and Siraj were arrested on Saturday.

Two cases have been registered in two police stations in Thrissur in this connection, they said.

A medical bulletin said that till date, 1793 people who travelled from coronavirus affected countries have been identified and placed under surveillance.

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News Network
March 14,2020

Mangaluru, Mar 14: Following the avian flu outbreak in neighboring Kerala, authorities at Pilikula Biological Park in Moodushedde, on the outskirts of the city, have taken all precautionary measures to prevent the death of birds in the park.

Park Director H J Jayaprakash Bhandari said that "the behaviour of the birds is being monitored near open water sources on the premises'.

Though no deaths were reported in the Zoo or on lake premises, the staff continue to maintain a strict vigil on open water sources like lakes. He said the Park was being sanitized.

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