Rohtak, March 22
Noted social activist Medha Patkar today pleaded that people should have the freedom to decide about the use of the natural resources like water, land, jungles and subterranean wealth failing which their very existence is likely to be in jeopardy like that of the displaced and ruined fishermen suffering due to mechanised trawling.
Speaking at a symposium organised by Maharshi Dayanand University Teachers Association
(MDUTA) on ‘Development, its directions and modes’ here today, she said that in the name of so-called development, people have been marginalised to the point of committing suicide. It is seen as a conspiracy of deliberate mismanagement and usurpation of natural and human resources.
Setting the tone for the symposium, the MDUTA secretary, Dr Himmat Singh
Ratnoo, highlighted the growing authoritarian restructuring of education in the country and its implications for development. The speakers in the symposium underlined that even education is the target of the national and multinational capitalists who want to keep the people ignorant to achieve their designs.
The speakers also expressed disappointment with the role of judiciary in the state set-up as it is too ready to cooperate with the powerful and ignore their crime against people.
Advocating the inalienable control of resources by the people, the participants described the barbaric attack on Iraq by the USA and its allies as a fight for securing the oil wealth.
The speakers cautioned against the well-thought conspiracy to weaken the tradition of simple living, common heritage, tolerance as well as the unity in diversity to usher in the reign of displacement, disparity and destruction in the name of development.
The symposium evoked keen interest as manifested in the volley of questions showered at the speakers who, while fielding them, elaborated the basic premises postulated during their discourses.
The symposium was attended by teachers, students and different sections of the intelligentsia and was addressed among others by Yogendra Yadav and
Sanjay
Mangla Gopal of the National Alliance of People’s Movement and who are currently on a ‘Save the nation, Build the nation’ campaign.
