ANDHRA PRADESH

Silver Jubilee Celebrations Of Prajasakti Conclude

 M Venugopala Rao

Teesta Setelvad addressing the meeting in Hyderabad

THE year-long silver jubilee celebrations of Prajasakti Telugu daily concluded with a valedictory function organised at Ravindra Bharati in Hyderabad on September 24. The speakers underlined the role that the media ought to play to espouse the cause of the vast majority of people. V Krishnaiah, chairman of Prajasakti Sahiti Samstha and general manager of Prajasakti presided over the meeting. Teesta Setalvad, noted social activist and editor of the magazine Communalism Combat participated as the chief guest.  She and the minister for information and public relations, Mohammed Ali Shabber garlanded the portrait of Comrade Koratala Satyanarayana, former chairman of Prajasakti Sahiti Samstha and former member of the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M)  and paid homage along with other speakers.  Addressing the meeting, Teesta Setalvad felt that the media during the last fifteen to twenty years, have not played the role which they ought to and which democracy demanded of them. The media had interests relating to advertisements and  managements and even political interests.  However, the main stream media  should ponder over as to why people were looking for alternate media, she said.  The media were less and less concerned with the issues of the vast majority of the working people and concerned only with the requirement of a small section of the people.   Both the print and electronic  media refused to understand the rights of the vast majority of the people to life and living and they were undemocratic, she said.  Referring to the agitation of the people in  Jharkhand against the multinational corporations which entered that state, treating them as detrimental to their interests, she said the media were not looking at the crucial aspects.

Finding fault with a section of the electronic media in Mumbai for reporting untruths that a section of the people had celebrated the Malegaon bomb blasts on July 11, Teesta Setalvad stressed that the media should be judicious and cautious while reporting such incidents. Referring to the report of Justice Sri Krishna commission which had  confirmed that a section of the people in Mumbai celebrated demolition of Babri masjid in 1992 and recommended prosecution of 31 police officers and 150 others for the 1993 communal holocaust in Mumbai, she said no prosecution had taken place.  She reminded that the report was published and made available to the people much against the wishes of the Shiv Sena.   The media refused to see the fallout of the tragedy, she said and asserted that it was the duty of the media to cover the course of events and the related reasons.   Relating to the genocide in Gujarat, a lot of information was available in the High Court  and the Supreme Court, thanks to the efforts of honest police officers like R B Srikumar, she said.  The information confirmed that the chief minister, Narender Modi, had issued illegal orders to officers.  Here too, the media was not weeding out the information to ascertain truth and analyse the processes leading up to the events and their fallout, Teesta Setalvad criticised.  Though the people of Gujarat had elected 12 members of the opposition parties to the parliament, the political opposition in that state had failed completely to take on Modi, she said.  Media persons were not being allowed to meet the ministers in the secretariat of Gujarat, without the permission of the office of the chief minister, she said. The media were silent on all that.

She criticised the electronic and print  media for trivialising issues concerning the vast majority of the working people and the artisans. The media should make a soul searching on the role they are playing. Communal elements were creeping into the media and making systematic and vicious propaganda, as in the local media in Gujarat and Karnataka, she said. Teesta Setalvad suggested that Prajasakti and other major newspapers should organise seminars at the national and regional levels regularly on the issues confronting the vast majority of the people and on the role of media.  

Mohammed Ali Shabber said running a newspaper for the cause of the people with honesty and integrity  was like reaching the peak of the Himalayas.  Facing a lot  of competition, Prajasakti had emerged as an important newspaper in the state, he said.  The people believed what Prajasakti published, Shabber said amidst thunderous applause from the audience. Adverting to the reference made earlier by the editor of Prajasakti, S Vinay Kumar, that Prajasakti was the first to make public a government order relating to a plan of action for privatising public sector units and retrenching thousands of their employees under the voluntary retirement scheme, Shabber said some mistakes did take place in the government and the decisions needed to be changed in tune with the wishes of the people. He recollected how Prajasakti conveyed facts to the people during the popular agitation against power tariff hike in the state. He wished Prajasakti to forge ahead as the voice of the poor people and as a fighter for secularism.  

B V Raghavulu, Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M) and state secretary said Prajasakti faced repression by the British colonial rulers and during the internal emergency of 1975-77.  Asserting that Prajasakti was being run not for profits, but for the people, he said it would continue to exist as long as there was need for achieving finer values. Prajasakti would continue to be run, highlighting the problems of the people, espousing their solutions and fighting for independence, finer values, secularism, federalism and freedom, and keeping itself away from useless and perverted values of espousing the cause of communalism and consumerism, highlighting earning of huge profits as a great virtue, and indulging in sensationalism, Raghavulu said. Referring to the new challenges being faced by the media, Raghavulu said  the move to allow private participation in the national news agency, UNI should be resisted, as also entry of foreign capital into the Indian media.  He felt that the media in the country were unanimous on this count.  Freedom of the media should be protected, without the control of the state, he said.  Referring to the attacks on the media, Raghavulu said it would have been creditable to the state government had it taken action against a senior police officer, who had attacked a cameraman of a newspaper when he was discharging his professional responsibility.

Though running a newspaper was burdensome financially and though it was important to earn revenue, the media should not confine to giving news of only those from whom they get advertisement revenue, Raghavulu said. The media should think of how to focus the issues of dalit and poor people, he said and complimented Prajasakti for discharging this responsibility.

The editors of Ganashakti, Deshabhimani and Theekkathir also spoke on the occasion  and complimented Prajasakti. Narayana Datta, editor of Ganashakti, shared the pride of Prajasakti’s association with the memory of stalwarts like Comrade P Sundarayya, who used to drop in the office of Ganashakti in the 1960’s and advise them in his inspiring manner on every minute facet of the then eveninger. Datta said that in an era of blatant inroads in the world by the US imperialism, accompanied by the aggressive policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, the tasks being enjoined upon any newspaper to protect the country’s  independence, preserve the people’s interests and pioneer the cause of democracy, withstanding the onslaught of the  evil forces like religious fundamentalism and communalism, were stupendous and onerous.  Both Ganashakti and Prajasakti were traversing that path, he said.  Referring to the successive victories of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal for the last thirty years, Narayana Datta  said the glorious achievement of the government, as well as the dauntless struggle of the people, were necessarily the staple of the constructive and critical news and views content of Ganashakti.  

V Dakshina Murthy, editor of Deshabhimani, said all the newspapers of the CPI(M) have been contributing to the widening and strengthening of its movements in their respective states. He said Andhra Pradesh was a land of glorious struggles, especially of the Telangana armed struggle which revolutionised the entire country with legendary leaders like Comrade P Sundarayya leading it. Deshabhimani, as a weekly and later as a daily, had inheritance of the Communist and anti-imperialist struggle. Deshabhimani had to face several onslaughts, he said and recollected the contribution made by Comrade E M S Namboodiripad for its development. Dakshina Murthy said a campaign was going on in Kerala to increase the circulation of the daily to five lakh copies. The CPI(M)-led LDF government in Kerala, though it inherited a serious financial crisis from the previous UDF government, was following alternate policies to globalisation, trying to solve the problems of the people and taking steps for development of agriculture, he said.  Deshabhimani has been conducting an ideological struggle against the slanders and lies being propagated against the Communist movement.  

V Parameswaran,  editor of Theekkathir said the CPI(M) dailies had played no mean part in making the Left parties a force to be reckoned with at the centre. He said both Theekkathir and Prajasakti, along with other fraternal dailies and weeklies, had stood in the forefront to protect the sovereignty and integrity of the country, facing severe onslaughts of the governments concerned with courage and determination.  He was confident that Theekkathir, now being published from Chennai and Madurai, would bring out more editions in future. Parameswaran explained that Theekkathir had played a very important role in roundly defeating the AIADMK government and thus had brought about a welcome change in Tamilnadu politics.  

Earlier, V Krishnaiah said efforts were on to keep Prajasakti within the reach of the people, with nine editions to its credit so far. He announced that a new building  - MH Bhavan - named after its former editor and former member of the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M), Comrade Moturu Hanumantha Rao was being constructed to house Prajasakti. Mohammed Ali Shabber released a souvenir published on the occasion. Mementoes were presented to the speakers. Telakapally Ravi, editor of Prajasakti Book House, welcomed the gathering and M V S Sarma, managing editor of Prajasakti, proposed a vote of thanks.