Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Dec 27:

Inaugurating the 41st All India Sociological Conference in Odisha capital today, renowned social activist Medha Patkar urged not to give away resources to few in the name of development.

KISS Medha Patkar

“Development is that in which there should be each and every one’s participation, equal distribution of natural resources and utilization of natural resources in a sustainable manner. Development should be made in a manner so that, everyone can get food, shelter, health services and livelihood,” she said.

Patkar went on the cite the example of the KIIT and KISS she said,” KIIT transfers its profit to KISS, which is giving free education, boarding, health services to 25 thousand tribal students from KG to PG with professional and technical education. This is a model which is not followed by other private institutes of the country”.

Presiding over the inaugural session Anand Sharma, renowned sociologist and activist and President of Indian Sociological Society highlighted the unequal distribution of wealth.

“Millions of people have been marginalized from development. One percent of richest people of the world have more than 40 percent of total wealth while 3.5 billion others have less than 50 percent of wealth. Development can’t be possible if we left out the marginalized. There should be equality in every sphere,” he added.

The conference on ‘Development, Marginalization and People’s Movements’ is being organized by Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) and KIIT University in association with Indian Sociological Society. More than 15 hundred delegates including foreign delegates joined the conference.

The main objective of the conference is to enable the discussion of current research results from different perspectives and representing sociology as a discipline that builds upon micro studies on development and marginalization leading to people’s movements.