Harsh Mander, writer and social activist, said on Saturday that the government should increase its investment in education and healthcare so that it benefited children coming from disadvantaged sections.
He was delivering a lecture on ‘Unequal childhoods – the fatal accidents of birth’ organised by the Dr. T.M.A. Pai Chair for Indian Literature, Manipal University at MGM College, here.
Mr. Mander said that where a child was born determined whether it would survive and for how long, whether it would be protected for violence and what kind of education it would have. Though the country had progressed, inequalities had not gone down.
Children coming from disadvantaged sections faced several problems including malnourishment and homelessness.
As long as there was child labour, there would be poverty in the country. It was the duty of the state to provide good education to the children. The Union government’s decision to provide toilets to all government schools under the Swachch Bharat programme was laudable.
But it was the maintenance of these toilets, where the problem might arise. It was possible that the teachers in these schools might ask children coming from lower classes to clean the toilets. The plight of such children among other students might well be imagined.
Earlier, delivering a lecture on ‘How contemporary media can be the voice of the voiceless’ organised by the School of Communication, here Mr. Mander said that that a communicator of the future should emphasise on compassion, empathy and care for the voiceless.
The media was now preoccupied with interests the middle class and above and had largely forgotten the poor. “The overall pattern is such that it has forced the expulsion of the poor from our conscience and consciousness,” he added.
