‘We are like that only’

P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu , on Friday delivered the third T. G. Narayanan Memorial Lecture on Social Deprivation, organised by the Department of Social Sciences, IIT-M, and the Asian College of Journalism at IIT-Madras.

He opened his lecture, titled ‘Deprivation – Social and Anti-social’ by pointing to the matrimonial section in the Classifieds of a newspaper. He showed that announcements solicited by SC/ST, disabled, HIV/AIDS-affected, mangliks and second marriage/divorcees were discriminated against by placing them in a different column in the paper.

According to him this was social deprivation at its basic level. He also said this demarcation, while not consciously done by the newspaper, is “a clear capture of our mindset and social hierarchy. …As they say in Mumbai, ‘we are like that only.’ ”

With this deconstruction of the Classifieds, Sainath ventured into other forms of deprivation — from class oppression to criminalisation of dissent to the water wars in various parts of India.

Class Oppression Sainath drew attention to the way the rally held in Mumbai on December 6 to commemorate B.R. Ambedkar’s 57th death anniversary was reported.

He said the “classist and casteist mindset” of the nation and the media was evident when the media reported on the menace, the traffic jams and crowds — and not about the peaceful manner in which almost 2 million people had gathered to honour and remember Ambedkar.

Sainath also referred to other forms of deprivation, caused mainly by unrelenting privatisation and corporatisation of natural resources such as land and water, and also because of globalisation.

“In the last 20 years, the number of Indians not seeking any kind of medical attention purely because of financial conditions has doubled from 150 per 1,000 to 280 per 1,000,” he said. While, on the one hand, privatisation of healthcare has made India a sought-after destination for health tourism, on the other, more Indians cannot afford medical attention, even when necessary.

Water Woes Sainath said that displacement because of water issues was increasing and the next big war would be due to this. He gave the example of luxury homes with a swimming pool on each floor being built in Maharashtra even when the State was going through a water crisis.

“The construction workers were marginal farmers and landless labourers who had left their native villages because of the water crisis…they were building multi-storey buildings with a private swimming pool on each floor.” Sainath spoke against programmes such as the Million Farmers’ Initiative, a PPP that was, in fact, in the hands of just 20 corporates, and also about how the Government was giving out corporate freebies. “Today, you do not reap what you sow. You don’t even decide what you sow!”

Sainath said that today millions were being denied the most basic needs such as food and water, adding that every move the government was making favoured corporate control of agriculture.

“This Winter Session, the Central Government will write off Rs 21, 500 crore on three heads — direct corporate income tax, excise duties and Customs duties. In the past 20 years never has inequality been so consciously constructed, so ruthless engineered, so brutally enforced,” he said.

Sainath ended his lecture saying he was neither a cynical pessimist nor an optimist, but he did hope and believe that things would improve, “though they will get a lot worse, before they get a lot better.”

(T. G. Narayanan was a war correspondent with The Hindu and is famous for his reportage on the Bengal Famine. He also worked at the United Nations. He passed away in 1962. )

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