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
March 13,2020

New Delhi, Mar 13: Delhi's Tis Hazari Court on Friday sentenced expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar and six others to 10 years imprisonment for the death of Unnao rape survivor's father. Sengar is already serving life imprisonment for raping the minor.

While sentencing them, District Judge Dharmesh Sharma said, "There can be no denying that rule of law was broken. Sengar was a public functionary and had to maintain the rule of law. The way the crime has been committed, it does not call for leniency."

Sengar and his brother Atul has been directed to give 10 lakh compensation to family of the victim for loss of their father. "There are four minor children involved, three girls and one boy. They have also been uprooted from native place," the judge said.

Seven people, including Sengar, his brother and two police personnel, were held guilty for culpable homicide and criminal conspiracy, earlier this month.

The case pertains to the death of rape survivor's father in custody on April 9, 2018. It was alleged that he was assaulted following a quarrel with some of the accused in the case.

He was taken to the police station and then framed for allegedly possessing an illegal firearm. Pursuant to this, he was sent to custodial remand, during which he died.

The case was transferred to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh on the Supreme Court's directions in August last year. Both the death and illegal firearm case was later clubbed by the court.

During the arguments on sentencing on March 12, Sengar had told the court that he should be "hanged and acid poured into his eyes if he has done anything wrong".

The former MLA had also raped the daughter of the deceased in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district and was sent to jail for "remainder of his natural biological life", last year.

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News Network
June 24,2020

Bengaluru, Jun 24:  Karnataka on Wednesday reported 397 new coronavirus positive cases, taking the total number of positive cases to 10,118.

According to the State Health Department, with 14 more deaths today, the state's toll has reached 164. While, 6,151 people have been discharged so far.

Hundred per cent of Community Health Centres, 50 per cent of Primary Health Centres and Urban Primary Health Centres will be converted as exclusive 'fever clinics' to screen fever cases for influenza-like illness (ILI)/severe acute respiratory infections (SARI), Karnataka Health Department said.

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News Network
May 5,2020

Mangaluru, May 5: The Dakshina Kannada district administration has denotified two containment zones, Sampya in Puttur and Thumbe in Bantwal. They were declared containment zones after one coronavirus positive case was reported from each area.

All the primary and secondary contacts of the patients have completed home quarantine period, said DC Sindhu B Rupesh.

The district administration hitherto had already denotified three other such containment zones based on a report of DHO,  after no new case was reported in the area in the last 28 days.

At present, the district has six containment zones-- Shakthinagara, Boloor, First Neuro Hospital in Mangaluru city, Uppinangady in Puttur, Kasaba and Narikombu in Bantwal taluk.

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