Kamal Haasan pens open letter to PM Modi; criticises the nation-wide Lockdown

Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan, in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, criticised the implementation of the 21-day national lockdown, which was imposed to control the spread of coronavirus. On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a 21-day lockdown in the entire country effective from midnight of March 25 to curb the spread of coronavirus, saying that "social distancing" is the only option to deal with the virus. 
 
This letter from Kamal Hassan comes after many people and celebrities across India on Sunday lit candles and extended their support to PM Narendra Modi's '9pm 9 minutes' initiative. He also said that the PM is repeating the mistake that he did while implementing demonetisation. He also claimed that it's being done at a much bigger scale this time. Writing this letter as a 'dismayed' citizen, Haasan started the saying that he was taken aback after the announcement of the lockdown.

Further 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 the 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 up to 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. While your world lit up oil diyas in their balconies, the poor are struggling to gather enough oil to bake their next roti."

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Haasan further emphasised on the plight of poor in the country that this time of crisis saying, "What about those who don't even have a roof on their heads?. History has proven that any efforts to destroy the bottom has led to the toppling of the top.

Furthermore, Haasan took a jibe at the late realisation of the government over the pandemic and said,

"As per the Chinese government''s official statement to the WHO, the first confirmed case was reported on 8th December. Even if you concede the fact that the world took a lot of time to understand the gravity of the situation, by early February, the entire world knew that this is going to wreak havoc of an unprecedented kind. India''s first case was reported on 30th of January. We had seen what happened to Italy. Yet, we did not learn our lessons early enough. When we eventually woke out of our slumber, you ordered an entire nation of 1.4 bn people to shut down within 4 hours. A mere 4 hour notice period for the people when you had a 4 month notice period! Visionary leaders are ones who work on solutions long before problems become big.

Kamal Haasan ended the letter saying that although angry, he is on the Prime Minister's side. Read the full letter here- 

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