Inaugural Speech of President-designate Uday Mahurkar ( Year 2009-10 ) delivered on the Foundation Day Function on March 28, 2009

Honourable Members of the Advisory Board , Mr Manas Dasgupta, Mr Ajay Umat, Mr Bharat Desai Mr Sanjay Pande , other members of the outgoing GMC team, and friends,It is with a great sense of pride that I take over as president of a body that is destined to play a major role for the journalistic fraternity and Gujarat State as a whole. GMC’s journey began in March,2006 when a group of young journalists decided to float the GMC as a section 25 non-profit company driven by the fact that Gujarat was perhaps one of the few states in the country that didn’t have a press club. Soon, senior journalists decided to lend support to the experiment and joined in the effort. And when distinguished personages like Prof YK Alagh, Prof Bakul  Dholakia, Dr Binod Agrawal, Veteran journalist Mr MK Mistry , Mr Pankaj Patel, CMD of Cadila Zydus Group, and IAS officer turned entrepreneur Mr Sanjay Gupta agreed to grace the GMC Advisory Board the effort really took off. In the past three years the GMC has been persevering to expand its

base and fine-tune its vision and with a reasonable degree of success.
The outgoing president Mr Dasgupta and the secretary general Mr Pande
no less than other office bearers left no stone unturned in this
effort in the past year. GMC members have had the opportunity to
hear,among others, distinguished persons like journalist Rajat Sharma
and Thomas Susman, an expert on freedom of right to information Act in
the US.These interactions have been organized as part of GMC’s efforts
to create a platform wherein members get the benefit of expert
opinions on contemporary and relevant subjects with a view to adding
to their vision. Today GMC has an impressive membership which is
upwards of 150 from Ahmedabad –Gandhinagar alone. Apart from
journalists GMC has members in the form of associate members who are
communications managers and PR personnel of Corporate houses.

Friends, our vision of the GMC is not of a hub of entertainment of
journalists alone but that of a platform for overall enhancement of
the capabilities of the journalistic fraternity. The GMC wants to
infuse greater ethics and improve the overall quality of journalism.
Our long-term plan is to create a resource centre which would augment
and analyse inputs related to various fields in Gujarat and create a
pathway for researchers, media professionals, public-private agencies
. A powerful library would be an integral part of such a resource
centre.

But the GMC won’t like to stop at that. It plans to play an important
role in sustaining journalists in their bad times . For example the
resource Centre could be a revenue earning source for such journalists
who could use their skills in resource gathering and research work.

Another important and immediate step that is on our agenda on the eve
of the Golden jubilee year of Gujarat, Swarnim Gujarat, is
documentation of the growth of media in the last 50 years in the State
. This would be an important contribution from the GMC in the golden
jubilee year of Gujarat in 2010 which the State is planning to
celebrate with great enthusiasm and gusto.
But today these goals look like an uphill task in the absence of any
infrastructure. Al though it has organized some of the most memorable
programmes the GMC doesn’t have a complex of its own as is the case
with press clubs in most States across the country. . The press club
of even a State like Chattisgarh has a corpus of over Rs six crores
and an impressive complex for its activities. In most states the State
Governments have played a key role in developing the press clubs by
giving support in the form of land and other infrastructure.

On the eve of Gujarat’s Golden jubilee year which the Gujarat
Government is planning to celebrate with great fanfare we appeal to
the State Government to provide similar support and encouragement to
GMC. But the GMC’s vision is very clear on this. It is not expecting
free largesse from the Government for all times to come but initial
infrastructural support . On the long run we plan to sustain the GMC
on a self-sustaining model. We would also request corporate houses to
chip in with their effort to strengthen the fourth estate which is for
the overall benefit of Gujarat.

Before ending my speech I once again appeal to the powerful sections
of the society including the State Government , the Corporate houses
and newspaper owners not to see the GMC as some kind of an
entertainment club alone or a union of journalists but as a platform
which, if strengthened, would help Gujarati society at large.

Thank you so much.

Uday Mahurkar
(March 28, 2009)