At Jalandhar’s Lovely Professional University, alert students grilled actors, politicians and activists with sharp questions.
Jalandhar: There were several firsts at the ninth edition of ThePrint’s Democracy Wall at Lovely Professional University (LPU), Punjab. The 2,500-capacity hall at the university was jam-packed. Young students who had registered for the event queued up to grab their seat hours before the event began and not a single seat was left free inside the auditorium.
The event featured speakers such as actor-singer Ayushmann Khurrana, comedian Abhijit Ganguly, rap artist Feyago, and online expert Arnika Singh.
Democracy Wall is a monthly free speech campus initiative organised by ThePrint in collaboration with Facebook. The ninth edition was held at LPU, Jalandhar, on 17 August.
ThePrint team also managed to bring together Punjab’s two rival politicians who had in 2014 fought a do-or-die battle for Parliament from Sangrur — Bhagwant Mann and Vijay Inder Singla.
Also read: From Aadhaar to Arvind Kejriwal, Democracy Wall’s Pune edition asked it all
Hugs, trolls & a ‘third’ child
Mann, a comedian-turned-politician, is an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP from Sangrur. He defeated Singla in 2014, the sitting MP at the time, by a huge margin of more than 2.11 lakh votes.
The contest between the two was anything but pleasant. Singla went on to contest the assembly elections and won, and is now an MLA and cabinet minister.
The two met each other for the first time after the 2014 elections at Democracy Wall, and also went ahead and hugged each other.
But what really set Democracy Wall apart at LPU was the verve and enthusiasm of the students which ensured that there was never a dull moment during the show. From Khurrana’s ‘secret’ third child to hugs between rivals to the youth joining politics and trolling on social media, alert students grilled the speakers over a range of issues.
Arnika Singh, an online security expert-researcher, conducted a live exercise on stage to show what goes on inside the mind of a troller. She demonstrated how to use social media apps without jeopardising personal security. Singh said a lot of care should go into sharing and forwarding messages on Facebook and WhatsApp so as not to become party to spreading falsehoods.
Khurrana, who started off as a member of his college theatre group, was asked if one could follow their dream and make it a career. He talked about his years of struggle to become an actor, saying that true passion and hard work can make dreams work.
When a student wanted to know if he had ever been trolled, Khurrana said he was first an artist and had chosen to remain apolitical and neutral. To a question about his ‘third child’, Khurrana said he already might have one, and recalled the incident where he and his friends donated sperm in real life too, 10-12 years ago. He has two kids with his wife Tahira Kashyap. Khurrana signed off by singing a few of his hit songs.
Political section
Mann, a political satirist too, had the audience in splits. Asked about how a common man like him managed to get to the centrestage of politics, Mann said, “If you want to clean the gutter, you will have to get down into it. There is no other way. There are grassroots politicians who can only rise, and parachute politicians who can only fall.”
In response to a question on free speech on social media, Mann said debates are not cat fights. “TV channel debates in India are not debates anymore. They are only making people angry. A debate includes arguing with logic and facts and agreeing to disagree. This is the true spirit of democracy,” he said.
Cornered over his party’s stance to not comment on the assault of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid in New Delhi, Mann said that AAP was getting a lot of backlash for not publicly condemning the attack.
“I have only four minutes in Parliament to speak and sometimes you want to highlight other things,” he said.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi has no lust for power, just wants to promote youth: Punjab minister Singla
Singla, Punjab’s IT and PWD minister, answered many questions on jobs for the youth in the IT sector. He said the state was soon going to become a prominent IT hub.
“Before we came to power, no one seems to have bothered to work in this direction. Prominent companies are showing interest in setting up IT parks across the state and we are drafting an IT policy to facilitate them,” he said.
Asked about the Congress president, Singla said, “Rahul Gandhi has no lust for power. He got many opportunities to become PM but he turned them down.”
At one point when Singla was answering a question, a section of the audience started chanting ‘Modi Modi’. Singla took it in his stride and said, “Look at the work each party has done and then make your choice. Don’t follow anyone blindly.”