Prashant Bhushan, senior Supreme Court advocate, has expressed grave concern over democratic institutions being weakened by the ruling party at the Centre.
In his valedictory address at the 12th National Sociological Conference in Kannada University, Hampi, on Saturday, Mr. Bhushan said all efforts were on to curb the independence of democratic institutions, including judiciary, Central Vigilance Commission, Right to Information, by not appointing Lok Pal, and by not implementing whistle blower’s protection Act, among others.
He took a serious note of attempts being made by the government to bring media houses under its control either by way of inducement through advertisements and threatening them with raids by the CBI and the Income Tax Department, with an intent to compromise the independence of the media.
“Farmers, who form a major chunk of the population, were unable to recover their costs leading to frustration; and over three lakh suicides have been reported in the last two decades. We are seeing a period of ‘jobless growth’, where jobs have not increased while the number of unemployed youths has been increasing resulting in youths getting frustrated,” he said.
Concern over attacks
Expressing concern over attacks on Dalits, minorities, tribal people, and marginalised people, he said attempts were on to divide the country on the basis of Hindu and non-Hindu by people in power. There are people on social media platforms 24 x 7 and creating fake and fabricated news and posting them online, he lamented.
He expressed unhappiness over trolls being created by a group of people, with each one being paid hefty sums. He also took exception over coining new words and terminologies such as “tukde tukde gang” and “urban naxals” and the recent arrest of social activists Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, among others, accusing them of having links with Maoists, though for decades they have been relentlessly fighting for the protection of human rights and being the voice of the marginalised and oppressed.
Mallika Ghanti, university Vice-Chancellor, who presided over the programme, underlined the need for intellectuals and scholars to focus on curbing superstitions that have been strongly prevailing in society.
C.A. Chandrashekarappa, president, Karnataka Sociology Association; P. Mahadevaiah, Registrar; K.M. Metry, H.D. Prashant were among others were present.
