Mumbai: An activist’s tweet that ‘250 crore spent on making Baahubali should had been used to feed the poor people’ has drawn criticism from the intellectuals and fellow social activists alike.
With so many hands to give and so many mouths to feed, do we need high budget films and do we need to praise 200-crore club actors?
Radha, aged 29, is involved in teaching the poor kids in and around slums of Mumbai for free. Having left her high earning job, she was involved in uplifting the poor through education for the past three years and she is popular on Twitter too, with people praising her initiative.
But, with a tweet this morning, she lost all her popularity. She tweeted, ‘250 crore rupees spent on a movie? Why not give it to poor? Why not build free schools with that money? #Baahubali #feelingangry’.
Within few minutes, her Twitter Timeline was first flooded by fans of actor Prabhas and director Rajamouli. Many of them abused her in Telugu for criticising the movie and told her to produce one movie and then talk about it. And soon, many Bollywood celebrities, who were following her, too told her to take back her words, as cinema is an art and it shouldn’t be valued with money.
We met Radha, outside her apartment. With tears in her eyes she said, “Man, this is atrocious. I couldn’t even believe that people could talk against me for a high budget movie. Think logically. Who is going to benefit from the movie? The Producer. Distributors. Movie crew. Were poor families employed in the movie making? As soon as I posted the tweet, I faced backlash from Telugu people. They told me to make a movie. Make a movie? I would spend that money in building free schools for poor. ”
She continued, “Not only that, celebrities from film industry, whom I considered as messiah for the poor people, told me to delete my tweet. I was flabbergasted. I thought that they would back me in my campaign. They had backed criminals and gangsters, but not an activist who really cares for poor. Many of them said that ‘Cinema is an art. We should not look for the money spent in making an art’. The same people, few months back, were shouting over their rooftops that a 200-crore allocation by central government for a statue is unnecessary and that money which is being spent on statue should be spent for poor people. If cinema is art, why not statue be a form of art?”
Finally she said, “Even being an activist, I was never into our politics. So I’m confused now. Why shout against 200 crore allocation for statue, but cheer and praise a 250 crore film, while both are form of arts and the money used for both could had been used for poor people?”
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