Reiterating his stand expressed quite explicitly in the party manifesto, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav asserted in Lucknow on Monday, "Let us put an end to any further computerisation in this country."
Addressing a press conference in Lucknow, he said, "India is a country with millions of unemployed hands and if we go on computerising everything, we will soon have a bigger army of unemployed youth."
Unmindful of the flak his manifesto had drawn on account of the anti-computer and anti-English stance, Mulayam went on to point out, "Nothing should be allowed to go beyond certain limits. We have seen enough of computerisation and any further move in that direction would be detrimental to the overall growth of the nation."
He felt, "Even proliferation of management courses seemed to have only resulted in producing more and more unemployed MBAs."
Mulayam said, "I have always been in favour of discouraging the use of machine in jobs that could be carried out easily by the human hand and mind."
Citing from Mahatma Gandhi's writings, he said, "Even Gandhiji emphasised on the need to promote agriculture, as the livelihood of more than 65 per cent of our population was dependent on tilling of the soil."
Sticking to his guns on the issue of use of English, the SP chief said, "What is stated in the manifesto is nothing new, even though I am not against the idea of learning English language; I am opposed to making it compulsory."
And giving out his reasons in that regard, he said, "Inclusion of English language as a compulsory subject in the curriculum tends to deprive the larger chunk of the population."
He said, "We need to give greater encouragement to the use of our regional languages instead of promoting and pushing the use of English."