Swaraj India leader Yogendra Yadav today said people nowadays believe in "lies", in an apparent dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He claimed that the intelligentsia has lost connect with the people, who have become suspicious of the institutions "entrusted to produce truth".
"Ordinary person does not have the reason to trust them...Journalists, scientists, professors...What has happened in recent times is that trust has broken for various reasons," Yadav said.
The Swaraj India President was speaking at a panel discussion on 'Truth and Politics in Our Times', organised by the Media Foundation.
Without naming US President Donald Trump and Modi, Yadav said one commonality in the two countries is that both peoples are being suspicious of institutions which led to the rise of the two leaders.
"The consumers of truth are deeply suspicious of producers of truth. And suspicion is a very cultural suspicion. (People think) What these professors in universities do...They are not right and don't represent me and I don't relate to them.
"It is this which is driving the situation and creating a condition in which what you and I recognise as falsehood is being perpetuated," Yadav said.
He said in India the mistrust by the masses in the institutions also stems from "linguistic apartheid" and battle of English versus the regional language.
"Initially people thought that these English speaking elites must be doing the right things.
"It's not that they don't know it's a lie, but they think that the person who is telling me the lies is closer to me. In someway he is my person. That is the connect we (the intelligentsia) have lost," Yadav said, without naming Modi.
On this occasion, woman journalist Neha Dixit was awarded the 'Chameli Devi Jain Award'.
Delivering the B G Verghese Memorial Lecture, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research, said critical thinking is necessary for the growth of democracy.
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