Mahatma Gandhi Labor Institute orchestrated a lecture by Ishudan Gadhvi, VTV Channel head on September 13, 2019 between 11 to 1 pm chaired by Dr Punita Harne. The subject of the lecture was "Building bridge between government and labor through Media."
In his unique style of 'dayra' Mr Ishudan Gadhvi talked at length about morality, truth, unbiased stand of journalist, personal hectic experiences in journalism, Gandhi, the essence of Hindu epics: The Ramayana and The Mahabharata etc. He even drew attention to the increasing old age homes in our societies. He warned students against the corrupt means of income by their parents. But throughout his speech what missing was the subject of the lecture itself ' the media as an instrument to help labor get fair wages, good hygienic condition, insurance policy.' His overemphasis on the ethics of journalist overshadowed the issue of labor completely. Although he mentioned his personal contribution in getting some farmers government insurance aids but missed the question of village laborers which is an indispensable reality in the feudal structure of Indian village economy.
Gadhvi reiterated the role of media which according to him should be based on truth but this failed to focus on the Crux of the discussion-labor. He rather generalized the everything with ethics of media, society and religion. His unnecessary beliefs on theism and atheism failed to help understand the ground reality and problems of labor. He could have talked on the current government labor policies, the actual effect of these policies in the removal of unemployment, the lack of proper education in labor class. Moreover the present economic slowdown was completely missing from the speech. On two occasions he praised the government policies. First the controversial issue of the abrogation of the article 370, Gadhvi appreciated the step but did not utter a single word on shutdown of the press in Kashmir. Second he welcomed the appeal of Prime Minister to control the population but again the basic requirement of education to do so was missing by Gadhvi.
The next speech of Dr Punita Harne had comparatively more content. Harne interestingly brought out the question of gender inequality in labor wages. Herne also hinted at the corrupt mechanism in delivering the wages in the MGNREGA labor scheme of the government. Her speech contained rather good amount of facts but she could not build on any particular labor problem of the day. She simply preferred to touch upon the issues in light manner. Harne also did not address the weaker aspects of Gadhvi's lecture. For instance, Gadhvi talked his role as a mediator in the tug of war between Swaminarayan sect and Mr Morari Bapu, a famous kathakar which was completely irrelevant to the subject of the lecture. Dr Harne did say nothing on this subject and instead indirectly showed her dislike about the hegemony of lower caste people on the profession of sweeping by narrating an incident in which an upper caste man was beaten by the lower caste people because he had asked for work in the sweeping profession.
In short, the lectures produced nothing useful for the great number of young students of journalism whose expectation might be to get something concrete on the much concerned issue of labor, youth, educated unemployment, the conditions of real laborers in farming, the questions of labor wages as per law etc. The students were not given chance to ask their queries which at least could have fulfilled the objective of the whole program. All this led us to see the decaying state of Gujarati journalism in which content is decreasing more rapidly than the prices of agricultural produces, and a 'dayro' culture of complacency and self glorifying nature appear before us.
In his unique style of 'dayra' Mr Ishudan Gadhvi talked at length about morality, truth, unbiased stand of journalist, personal hectic experiences in journalism, Gandhi, the essence of Hindu epics: The Ramayana and The Mahabharata etc. He even drew attention to the increasing old age homes in our societies. He warned students against the corrupt means of income by their parents. But throughout his speech what missing was the subject of the lecture itself ' the media as an instrument to help labor get fair wages, good hygienic condition, insurance policy.' His overemphasis on the ethics of journalist overshadowed the issue of labor completely. Although he mentioned his personal contribution in getting some farmers government insurance aids but missed the question of village laborers which is an indispensable reality in the feudal structure of Indian village economy.
Gadhvi reiterated the role of media which according to him should be based on truth but this failed to focus on the Crux of the discussion-labor. He rather generalized the everything with ethics of media, society and religion. His unnecessary beliefs on theism and atheism failed to help understand the ground reality and problems of labor. He could have talked on the current government labor policies, the actual effect of these policies in the removal of unemployment, the lack of proper education in labor class. Moreover the present economic slowdown was completely missing from the speech. On two occasions he praised the government policies. First the controversial issue of the abrogation of the article 370, Gadhvi appreciated the step but did not utter a single word on shutdown of the press in Kashmir. Second he welcomed the appeal of Prime Minister to control the population but again the basic requirement of education to do so was missing by Gadhvi.
The next speech of Dr Punita Harne had comparatively more content. Harne interestingly brought out the question of gender inequality in labor wages. Herne also hinted at the corrupt mechanism in delivering the wages in the MGNREGA labor scheme of the government. Her speech contained rather good amount of facts but she could not build on any particular labor problem of the day. She simply preferred to touch upon the issues in light manner. Harne also did not address the weaker aspects of Gadhvi's lecture. For instance, Gadhvi talked his role as a mediator in the tug of war between Swaminarayan sect and Mr Morari Bapu, a famous kathakar which was completely irrelevant to the subject of the lecture. Dr Harne did say nothing on this subject and instead indirectly showed her dislike about the hegemony of lower caste people on the profession of sweeping by narrating an incident in which an upper caste man was beaten by the lower caste people because he had asked for work in the sweeping profession.
In short, the lectures produced nothing useful for the great number of young students of journalism whose expectation might be to get something concrete on the much concerned issue of labor, youth, educated unemployment, the conditions of real laborers in farming, the questions of labor wages as per law etc. The students were not given chance to ask their queries which at least could have fulfilled the objective of the whole program. All this led us to see the decaying state of Gujarati journalism in which content is decreasing more rapidly than the prices of agricultural produces, and a 'dayro' culture of complacency and self glorifying nature appear before us.
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