'Parents responsible for children's selfishness'

Parents, who do not have time for the family, but provide children with all possible luxuries are the root cause of these problems, opined Nitte University Chancellor N Vinaya Hegde.

Delivering the inaugural address of the two-day national seminar on ‘Today’s Lifestyles: A challenge for well being?’ organised by the Department of MSW at St Aloysius College here on Thursday, he reflected upon the values imparted to people of his age in their childhood and found many of those values missing in today’s generation mainly due to the faulty educational system. “Unfortunately education has become a business now. We give more importance to degrees in the educational system now while the idea of personality development takes a back seat,” he lamented and added that students cause a large amount of harm to themselves.

Reflecting upon the climatic and cultural changes that took place in the last 50 years, he expressed a sense of fear as to what kind of earth/culture we are going to leave for our grand children. Recalling the religious disparity that has emerged recently in the country, Hegde said that what we learn in the name of religion now a days is actually hatred.

He recalled that such disparity didn’t occur during his youth and that supremacy of religion was never discussed, unlike today. “More people are killed all over the world in the name of religion, than in any war,” he noted. He called upon the young people of India, especially students to make an introspection on these matters and make up their minds not to fall for false propaganda.

Rector of St Aloysius Institutions Fr Joseph Rodrigues presided over the session. Principal Fr Swebert D’Silva, Dean Fr Francis Almeida, HoD of MSW Loveena Lobo, Seminar Coordinator Shwetha Rasquinha and Student Coordinator Prajwal Sebastian were present on the occasion.

The inaugural session was followed by the keynote address by Clinical Psychologist from Mumbai Dr Anuradha Sovani. Later, Dr Shekhar P Sheshadri from NIMHANS, Bangalore, spoke on ‘Children’s life styles: Boon or bane?’ and Dr Anisha Shah, also from NIMHANS spoke on ‘Coupling: Changing mindsets’.