The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : `Celebrities should help in reducing urban squalor'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 19, 2006
ePaper

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Celebrities should help in reducing urban squalor'

Staff Reporter

Part of the endorsement fees should go towards this end, says Gopalkrishna Gandhi

JOVIAL MOOD: Governor of West Bengal Gopalkrishna Gandhi (left) arriving to deliver the second Mohandas Moses Memorial Lecture at J.R.D. Tata Auditorium, NIAS, in Bangalore on Monday. With him are Governor T.N. Chaturvedi and Director, NIAS, K. Kastu rirangan. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi would like a "Board of control for commercial endorsements" to be set up that will ask sportspersons and film stars to contribute a part of the huge fees they command for endorsing a whole range of products that are not necessary for healthy living, for the reduction of urban squalor.

Delivering the second Mohandas Moses Memorial Lecture on "Actor, acting and action" at the National Institute of Advanced Studies," Mr. Gandhi, speaking on the theme of "action", said that these celebrities must "break the ice of complacency."

Well-known journalist P. Sainath's photo exhibition on the theme of women at work in rural areas was a form of "action" that carried a message of the need for change.

He had captured the never-ending plight of the woman who spent seven hours a day in merely procuring water for her family's needs.

By contrast, the numerous hoardings in cities displayed the "off-stage acting" of celebrities peddling things that were not only unnecessary, but harmful to those who used them, Mr. Gandhi pointed out.

On the theme of "actors", Mr. Gandhi spoke of his own "acting" when he had the chance to seek Mother Teresa's blessings at Rashtrapathi Bhavan when R. Venkataraman was President.

"She alighted from the car, and I bent down to touch her feet, all the time visualising a ray of light emanating from her heart towards me, and when I final rose, I found she was not looking at me at all. She was surveying Rashtrapathi Bhavan like a building inspector, and she said this would make a very good hospital. And when I hoped she would give me a rosary or a prayer book, all she handed to me was her business card!" M.S. Subbulakshmi too was an actor, "like we all are", said Mr. Gandhi, but she was not acting when she fearfully anticipated music critic Subbudu's judgment of her film performance as Meera.

"Please read and tell me what Subbudu has to say," was her anxious plea.

Gandhiji, for his part, made a statement through his sartorial choices. While taking his family to South Africa, he was particular that the family members were dressed appropriately for that country.

Coming back to India, he was just as insistent that everyone should be dressed in the Indian way.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka