A Teacher In Parliament
Sudha Murthy: Sir, when I have to start, I don't know. Shri Rajeev Shukla: No, you start. Sudha Murthy: Respected Vice Chairman. Now starting. This is my first speech.
It may not be maiden. How much time do I have, sir? Shri Rajeev Shukla: Five minutes. Five minutes.
Okay. Five minutes, madam. Sudha Murthy: I am not a politician, and I do not know how to English. For or against none, neither of them.
I have been chosen by the nominated by President of India. I'm really grateful to her and of course, our Prime Minister who announced my name on eighth of March, which is a Women's Day as a Nari Shakti. I always work for poor and I'm always on the field, so my experience is entirely different than both sides of the house.
I have given only five minutes and being a teacher, for me, five minutes is extremely small slot. However, I'll try to do only two things. I'm also an author, so I always like to give analogy from Sudarshana Sloka and describe.
It may not be possible. Maybe sometime later if you give me a maiden speech of fifteen minutes at least, I'll be able to do, sir, my expertise in my field. "Yatra naryastuh pumantervandryah tatra devataah prajavah" That's what our ancestors say, where women are respected, that is a place where gods reside.
And I want to tell you the most important thing for woman, women in general, is her health because she always neglects her health and takes care of the family. And because of that, many women suffer in real life with cervical cancers, and they will come to the hospital only in the fourth stage or third stage.
And being a daughter and a sister of a doctor, I'm aware of this, and I worked in my last thirty years with Infosys Foundation on this particular area, and that I want to give a suggestion. There is a vaccination which is given to girls between the age of nine to fourteen, known as a cervical vaccination, which can, if the girls have take, if the girls take that, it can be avoided.
May I request that to the House that we should incorporate that vaccination for the benefit of our girls because prevention is better than cure. My father, being a doctor, always used to tell me when a woman dies, when a mother dies, in the hospital it's a count plus one. But for the family, a mother is lost forever.
Maybe a man can get another wife, but children will never get another mother. Mother plays an important role, and cervical cancers are more in the later part of life. So I request that our government should look into this matter.
And they have handled a very big vaccination drive during COVID, so this may not be very difficult. If you can vaccinate our girls in the teenage nine to fourteen. This is my first point I want Who has developed the vaccine?
This vaccination is developed in the West for a long time, sir. It is already given for the last twenty years. I tried one batch in my time, ten years back with government of Tamil Nadu with K.
Shanta, the director of the Adyar Cancer Institute. It worked very well. So it is not expensive, I'm sure.
Well, you know, today's one thousand four hundred rupees for person like us who are in the field. But if the government intervenes and negotiates, it can be And it's any business is a win situation. He also should make certain money, but you can bring it to seven, eight hundred rupees.
And we have such a large population, sir, it will be benefiting for our girls in future. And As soon as you please convey to the Health Minister, Harda Ji. Yes, sir. The second point which is very dear to my heart is I'm going to talk.
I may exceed one or two minutes, sir. Please, madam. Yeah. No problem. That is regarding tourism in India.
Sir, we always think only, Ajanta, Ellora, Bharateshwara and Taj Mahal are few things which everybody should see. That's really not true, sir. Our country is vast, and there is a very famous saying in, you know, in Subhashita that said, "Bahurathnani vasundhara" Mother Earth has many diamonds, and we always neglect and care only for one.
Similarly, in India, we have forty-two World Heritage sites, but we have fifty-seven pending. And peop And we should bother about those fifty-seven. And some of them, I want to tell because there is no time.
These are the very important sites I have gone personally and visited. Being a daughter and granddaughter of a school teacher and a history teacher, for the last sixty years, sir, I've done lot of research in our own culture, our own temples, monuments in India. And whatever I have done, in nutshell, I want to give.
There's a marvelous statue of, Tirthankara, not Tirthankara, Bahubali at Shravanabelagola, which is a gem. It is in Karnataka. There are a group of monuments in Mandu, in Madhya Pradesh, who are very beautiful.
There are caves or the prototyping of any temple you take in India, its prototyping is done in Badami, Aihole, Pattadakallu in Karnataka, northern part of Karnataka, where I belong. I'm very proud about it. See Lingaraja temple, see any temple in India.
Konark temple, everything prototyping is done in five seventy-five AD in Karnataka. These three places which are not in World Heritage Center You have, if you go to east, you have Tripura state, and they have a fantastic sculpture known as Unakoti. Nobody knows who has done.
They are one thousand five hundred years old. Then you have Natural Roots Bridge in Mizoram in the eastern part of India, which is God's gift to us. We go to other countries and we see, but we never value because we have diamond in the hand, we search for the broken glass pieces.
There is a complex of the temples in Srirangam, and people must have, some of them must have seen from South India. I'm sure northern and eastern part of India, people might not have seen. They are marvelous. They are as good as Brihadeeswarar Temple of Thanjavur, which is a World Heritage Site.
There are beautiful Mughal gardens in Kashmir. We always go and see the film shooting, but we'll never realize they're not in the World Heritage Sites. Sir, the advantages of putting them on the World Heritage Site, number one, the package should be done very well so that people can come and see them.
The package should be conveniently should be done so that you should have good toilets and good roads so that the tourists can come. It will increase our revenue in our own country. There are so many advantages are there that I will do in my maiden speech.
We have beautiful desert garden Rann of Kutch, and people only will see, can see only in certain months of the year, and we should take advantage of that. We have Buddha was a great person, and we are very proud when whichever country I go, they ask me, "Are you from the land of Buddha?" I always say, "Yes."
He preached his first sermon in Saranath, where very near to Varanasi, the group of old monuments at Saranath, which are two thousand five hundred years old. It is, it is not in the World Heritage Site. The Lothal of Gujarat is equivalent to Mohenjo-daro Harappa of Pakistan.
We can't go there, but we have Lothal and Dholavira. Dholavira is a World Heritage Site, but not Lothal. Lothal was a big port, and how the ships used to come, you should go and see.
It should come in a World Heritage Site. There are beautiful, there's a beautiful island on the river Brahmaputra in Assam. Majul, they call. Maybe my spelling may be wrong.
It Majuli. Majuli. Sir, it is, if you would have seen in some other country, they would have made it as the number one destination for weddings or even for entertainment or even to go and enjoy. But ninety percent of the people are not even aware of this.
There is a, we when you see the old parliament, you say, "Oh, these people, Westerners, have come, and they have built this one." People from, architect from India, in UK, they came and built it. Sir, it is nothing, but if you see the prototyping of that thousand years back, built in Madhya Pradesh from Gwalior, thirty kilometer, it is called Mitawali.
It's a Chausath Yogini temple. It is exactly the replica of that, but in a prototyping, sir. There's a Padawali and Mitawali.
There's one more set of temples which were saved because of, on the Chambal River because of the dacoits, but they are world-class temples. The list is unending, but I want to conclude with the famous, the famous gumbads of Karnataka. That is Gol Gumbaz.
It was ruled by the Adil Shahis in fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred and eighty-five, and it's one of the marvelous thing in India has produced, where you can have the echo of seven times. My list is fifty-seven, but my time is limited. So, sir, I this is an opportunity.
As a, like, young girl, I used to look at Rashtrapati Bhavan. I used to look at Rajya Sabha. I used to always feel lucky are those people who stay there, who go there, who can talk, who can express.
I never knew one day will come to me in my life I can stand and talk about what I believe in. I want to conclude with a shloka which our ancestors have taught us or my grandfather has taught when I was young: "Whatever work you do, beta, do it with your mind, with buddhi, and with hundred percent concentration."
We are in a country where there's so much diverse culture, but still we are all one, like five fingers make a mushti. We all have that character, which is very much Indian character, that we may differ in dress, food, language, and but we are all one. I want to serve in my tenure Rajya Sabha with one single motto, "KAYENA VACHA MANASENDRIYAIHVA BUDDHATMANA VA PRAKRITISSWABHAVAT KAROMI YADYAD SAKALAM NAMASMI NARAYANAYETI SAMARPAYAMI."
It is not my husband Narayan Murthy. It is Narayana, the god, or the god whom you believe. It need not be Narayana.
It could be anybody. So with a single-minded, with my mind, with my buddhimata, with my concentration, with my whatever the age I have, I'm seventy-four, going to be seventy-four, but God willing, I will put my hundred percent in Rajya Sabha and work. Jai Hind. Jai Bharatmata.
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