Relentlessly making efforts to bring underprivileged, voiceless into mainstream: Siddaramaiah

Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday said that he is continuously making efforts to bring underprivileged and voiceless people of the society into mainstream.

After inaugurating a seminar on social responsibility, the chief minister said: “About 25 per cent of people in the society still have not got education. Economic inequality is even greater. I am therefore constantly making efforts to bring the underprivileged into the mainstream and to provide justice to everyone in the society.”

“I feel that there is a need for journalists to introspect whether they are working as per the ethics of journalism,” he said, adding that Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi and Father of the Constitution B. R. Ambedkar have set and example of how a journalist should be. Giving voice to the voiceless is the objective, aspiration and responsibility of the media profession.”

“Social inequality has been traditionally practiced since ages. Thus majority of the society has become a victim of economic and social inequality and discrimination,” he said.

Invoking Ambedkar, Siddarmaiah said that Baba Saheb, in his historic speech on the day before the implementation of the Constitution, had said, “If the country does not get economic and social freedom, but only administrative and political freedom, the people who are victims of inequality may destroy this building of freedom one day.”

“The attitude of those with their stomachs full, that it doesn’t matter even if the working classes go to bed hungry, but won’t allow the implementation of Annabhagya scheme is nothing but anti-social,” the chief minister said.

“The country’s economy will grow only if there is money in people’s pockets. This is why our government has given programs that put money in the pockets of working people. BJP’s attitude against this is anti-social. Therefore, those in the journalism profession should ensure that pro-poor and pro-people projects reach the people,” he said.

Chief Minister’s Media Adviser K. V. Prabhakar, senior journalist and head of E-Dina News Agency D. Umapati, Suvarna News Editor-in-Chief Ravi Heggade, Commissioner of Department of Information and Public Relations Dr. Hemant M Nimbalkar were present.

More than five senior journalists and photographers were felicitated by the Chief Minister on the occasion.

The seminar was organised by the Press Club of Bangalore and Karnataka Union of Working Journalists here.

–IANS