SOMERSET, NJ (TIP): On November 1st of 2013, the Kerala Piravi day, the Malayali Pravasis of USA witnessed the grant inauguration of the three day National conference of IPCNA [India Press Club of North America]. All Malayali media activists of North America assembled in Holiday Inn of Somerset, New Jersey to have self evaluation and education on modern trends in journalism with the help of stalwarts from India and the future promises of young media professionals in USA and in India. Very informative and educative sessions were very useful and enjoyable not only for the media activists and community activists but for their families too. The large hearted sponsors of the conference events made it totally free for all. It was definitely a big loss for many who missed the conference. The organizers of the conference, especially the President Mathew Varghese, General Secretary Madhu Kottarakara, VP Joby George, Treasurer Sunil Thymatom and Joint Treasurer George Chirayil deserve special appreciation for the excellent and exemplarary way the conference was conducted. They demonstrated to the public how a public function must be conducted by avoiding long speeches of many self imposed, photo opportunity ‘ leaders’ who still fail to understand the public feeling of their boring and useless show offs in the community.

This national conference was very different from any other national level conferences of Pravasi organizations in USA that carefully avoided all ministers from Kerala/India. By bringing from India the dare devils in media industry like Jose Panachipuram of Manorama, Gopi Krishna of Pioneer paper of Delhi, Vinu of Asianet, Sreekandan Nair of visual media and the young political leaders with excellent track record such as KN Balagopal MP, VC Satheesan, MLA and VT Balaram MLA, the IPCNA has declared to the whole world that the young generation will only identify themselves with and listen to only such voices for their future in India and abroad. ‘Let those who have eyes see and those who have ears listen’ to this message. While appreciating the young media and political leaders from India , the audience representing millions of Pravasis voiced their concern on the indifference of political and bureaucratic leaders of India towards their issues. They requested the Parliament members to take up the issues like OCI card, Passport renunciation and Pravasi property protection in the parliament and the media leadership investigate into the day by day deteriorating public relation of India missions abroad leading to repulsion of investments in India.

Another bold step taken by the organizers of the conference is their determination to keep away the faith based ‘leaders’ and their neo community leaders who use religious platform for popularity. Some of such ‘leaders’ are entering the ‘journalism’ field by introducing different media with the help of religions and faith orientation. Professional media people should guard the public from such foxes with sheep skin working in the community and disintegrating the community. IPCNA is the silver line in the cloud of all negative and destructive tendencies on the air by many media and community organizations. Its leadership has taken bold and correct steps to keep their association as a model for all community/religious/political organizations. Let Almighty God lead the team of IPCNA with wisdom and spirit of unity and team work to instill that moral standard in our community activists for giving positive and beneficial activities for our people. As I write this, our motherland’s Mars exploration rocket was launched very successfully even dismaying all advanced countries. A VERY BIG LEAP FOR OUR MOTHER INDIA!! Every Indian and people of India origin can be proud of this achievement of their brothers and sisters in India who demonstrated their excellence in different fields that led to this achievement.