Women Empowerment

I remember that Madhu Dandavate, railway minister in the 1970s, once said that he would recruit only women as ticket collectors because women were less corrupt. The statement became controversial because many people said there was no guarantee that women would not be corruption. It’s a debatable point, but what is true is that if you help women develop, all of India’s problems will disappear. If we keep women down and depressed, we will never develop as a nation.
I read somewhere recently that women do 62 per cent of the work in this country. I don’t mean to denigrate men but it is true that women are the real carriers of this nation’s burden. So by improving their lot, we can improve India itself. I think our films can make a difference in this. How? Let’s start by projecting women as individuals with their identities. Not only as mother, sister, wife/mistress and so on. Why can’t a woman be her own person?

Slumdog Millionaires vs Slumgod Millionaires

When I saw the debated movie Slumdog Millionaire, the thing that hit me was that communalism and slums are somehow connected. The movie show how when a communal riot breaks out the slum dwellers are the most affected. They become victims because they are the weakest in our society. That’s why I could never get myself to support a communal party like the BJP. Development must come first, all communal issues will be automatically resolved then.

My agenda

1. No child should go to bed hungry. No mother should have to beg for food for her child.
2. Get rid of caste discrimination.
3. Eradicate poverty, poverty, poverty, poverty, poverty!
4. Take care of farmers and they will take care of you.
5. Every child must be put in school. Pay their families money to send their kids to school if that is what it takes.
6. Crack down on corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption!
7. Empower women. Development will be achieved just by this.
8. Every educated person should do one thing to help society: pay for a poor child’s schooling, donate Rs 100 every year to the government’s relief fund, whatever.
9. Get rid of terrorism.

Why YSR? Why not?

With a sustained focus on the farmers’ plight, neglect of agriculture, irrigation, rural employment and industry, Rajasekhara Reddy garu has led the AP Congress back to issues of relevance. The welfare measures being implemented by his government in the past five years and his pro-farmer policies have turned the tide irrevocably in favour of the Congress party. The people of our state are about to make a dramatic statement in support of the Congress party’s policies. The pre-poll surveys are a clear indication of that.
As far as development schemes are concerned, YSR’s focus has always been on farmers. Not that he is ignoring IT but he has always been leader who gave more importance to basic necessities like water and electricity.

Hooliganism is no politics

Mother Teresa, Gandhiji, Ambedkar and Jotiba Phule are all respected for the service they rendered to society. Chiranjeevi uses the images of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, but his partymen have done everything that is against those two apostles of peace. It does no credit to their leader. I was shocked by the behavior of PRP supporters last year. They attacked me, my husband and my daughters merely because my husband expressed some innocuous views on Chiranjeevi’s political entry.
Does Chiranjeevi believe in democracy at all?The outbursts of his brother Pawan Kalyan are even more appalling. In one of his speeches, he even made some very distasteful comments against Y S Rajasekhara Reddy garu. I wouldn’t bother to repeat his exact words but cinemalalo oka laga, nija jeevitamlo oka laga undadam hypocrisy kada? What message is Pawan Kalyan sending to young people? Hooliganism is no politics.

Actors are at home in politics

My friends ask me “Why do actors click in politics?” I think they do because they have a connect with the public. Their movies reach millions of people. People already know something about them. So they have a head start in politics. I draw inspiration from Jayalalithaa, Nargis Dutt, Shabana Azmi, Hema Malini, all actors before they became politicians. When actors join politics, they may have to don a new set of costumes, read from a different script, and abandon the world of make-believe for the harsh realities of leadership, but that has not deterred actors and actresses across the world from opting for a life in the world of politics.