Actor cum filmmaker and politician kamal haasan has written an open letter to prime minister narendra modi stating that the decision to impose a 21-day national lockdown, in a bid to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was a wrong one. In his letter kamal haasan, founder of the political party Makkal Needhi Maiam, wrote: “Respected Sir, I pen this letter as a responsible but dismayed citizen of our country. In my first letter to you dated 23rd march, I had urged the government to not lose sight of the plight of the unsung heroes of our society, the most downtrodden, the weak and the dependent.
Praising the mass following that PM modi enjoys as no other world leader, he added: “My biggest fear is that the same mistake of demonetisation is being repeated albeit at a much bigger scale. While demonetisation led to loss of savings and livelihood of the poorest, this ill-planned lockdown is leading us to a fatal combination of loss of both life and livelihood. The poor have nobody to look upto except you sir. On one hand you are asking the more privileged people to put up a spectacle of lights while on the other hand the poor man’s plight is itself becoming a shameful spectacle.
He further stated: “This is the first crisis, the first epidemic that the top of the society has inflicted upon the bottom. And the topmost, i.e, you sir seem interested in bailing out everybody but those at the bottom. As millions of daily wage labourers, house-helps, street-cart vendors, auto-rickshaw & taxi drivers and helpless migrant workers struggle to see light at the end of the tunnel, we seem to be securing only an already well-built middle-class fortress. Don’t get me wrong sir, I am not suggesting we ignore the middle-class or any one segment.
