The writer is a National Award-winning film actor, dancer and public policy researcher. Views are personal
A time to speak up
As we open our eyes to 2019, we are all burdened with the responsibility of defining what “immense value” means to us? How do we, in the truest sense, set the foundations of a just and equal society, an idea enshrined in the Indian Constitution?
2018 has been marred by scars, anguish and fear — all of it either originating from a renaissance or creating one. From my time on this planet — since the Eighties — rare have been the occasions that have seen pain being fought on the streets, month after month, across the country, through the year. Never before seen visuals creating a churn and asking everyone to think deeply about the marginalised, but most importantly to rethink if they have been marginalised themselves.
If the #MeToo movement woke us up, challenging hierarchies of power in a deeply patriarchal society, farmers with worn feet holding red flags have made us inquire once again into the right and wrong side of markets. If the media, both vernacular and national, were openly lured or threatened with money and power, it has, amidst murders, death threats, house arrests and litigation, opposed force and silence.
While the gig economy has brought cool, free, do-it-myself approaches to the work space, it has simultaneously pushed us to question what safety and freedom of choice really means. The internet, social media, artificial intelligence, racy human innovations in technology while providing liberty, are threatening the autonomy they supposedly guarantee.
Educational establishments are at war, asking for freedom on the path of knowledge and cursing those who remain mute spectators. It is a rare sight to see the film fraternity across the country staging a walkout during the most prominent awards’ ceremony for their right to dignity, or artists returning awards in the blink of an eye that they have spent their entire lives trying to earn.
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