Hyderabad: Shortly after Prof. Gopal Guru's speech, P. Sainath took over with Media and Communalism — although he made it clear his speech would touch upon many topics.
“For example, we are still a nation of manual scavengers. An estimate earlier revealed that it would take nearly Rs 9,000 crore to rehabilitate manual scavengers - to put them into other jobs. But that’s the exact amount Vijay Mallya owes the banks. We could have used that money,” Sainath said.
The award-winning journalist also slammed Union minister Giriraj Singh’s comments on Thursday. The minister said India must strictly enforce a two-child norm on all religions.
“Population is such a serious problem here. Our fertility replacement rate is now below 2 — in parts of the country and we’re looking at a nation of old people in just 30 years. And this is a Union minister saying all this, for heaven’s sake! But the media streams these statements coupled with inane, vapid, moronic panel discussions. Everybody just shouts, goes home and we have a ‘controversy’ the next day,” said Mr Sainath.
“What’s going on is perfectly described by a line from American comedian George Carlin. He said, ‘never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups’,” Mr Sainath added. About the incessant coverage and focus on national security, Mr Sainath said, “Any nation that imposes upon its majority of people infinite insecurity, that nation can never know national security.”
Sainath also attacked TV anchors. “The quality of debates shows how little the anchors know about history. Who is being promoted as leader of the freedom struggle by Hindutva right? Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
Read the letters Savarkar wrote pleading for mercy from the Raj and then, read what Bhagat Singh had to write while facing death. Let us then talk about patriotism” About the process of re-writing textbooks, Sainath gave out the example of Rajasthan.
“They are taking out classical stories and poems — Shelly, Yeats... all are gone. They say we must promote local writers. Which is why we have Geeta the Brave Girl from Jaipur. Nobody knows who Geeta is, and nobody knows the author. We’re destroying the future of those students. They will go on and face students from other states who’ve had a better education, and just lose.”
