Virendra Pandit
Mumbai: The global pandemic of COVID-19 virtually house-arrested many self-appointed ‘celebrities’ in the show business industry across the world. To kill boredom and stay on in short public memory, these attention-seeker ‘activists’ have discovered a new mode of instant and free publicity: in a coordinated and time-bound manner, using social media to support ‘causes’ in far-off countries.
It makes a sound business strategy: everybody knows that the number of likes, comments, and shares or retweets translates into the increased ‘value’ of a marketable celebrity. Mass agitations for various causes are the place to garner instant ‘support’ in volumes from gullible agitators.
In other words, social media and ‘public causes’ have emerged as business multipliers for those who can spot the right causes to support, that is the number of ‘customers’ an agitation potentially offers. For this, they wait for the cause to gather enough momentum before they lend their valued support. They do not even have to bother about facts—they have simply to blow out their own trumpet.
That explains why ex-porn queen Mia Khalifa, American singer Rihanna, and Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg have suddenly supported the 70-day-old farmers’ agitation in India, this week.
Rihanna, 32, posted a February 2 tweet sharing a CNN article on the internet shutdown in Delhi’s neighborhoods that turned chaotic after the farmers’ tractor rally of January 26.
“Why aren’t we talking about this?! #FarmersProtest,” Rihanna tweeted to her more than 100 million followers.
The effort paid off: by Wednesday her tweet had been liked by more than 391,000 people and shared nearly 200,000 times. In India, with over 240,000 tweets, Rihanna was trending at the number one spot. Just in a day, India became her entirely unexplored marketplace! Now she can laugh her way to the bank.
Former porn star Mia Khalifa also tweeted her support to the Indian farmers, calling suspension of the internet a “human rights violation”. The aging actor also garnered over 25,000 likes and 3,200 replies. The pandemic almost killed her ‘business’. The Indian farmers’ issue gave her an opportunity to bounce back. Some even asked her if she had even read the farm laws.
Greta’s case is slightly different. The 18-year-old is yet to win a Nobel Peace Prize despite two consecutive nominations in 2019 and 2020. Apparently, she does not know how over-irrigation and excessive use of fertilizers by the prosperous farmers she is supporting has wrought havoc in the environment of Punjab and Haryana, nor is she aware of these states’ negative contribution to Delhi’ environment each winter.
Politicians, who often hate going into the complexities of an issue, routinely support the ‘causes’ brought to their notice by their voters from different countries. For example, Indian-Americans usually prompt their elected leaders to support the Indian domestic causes. Such pressure groups and interest groups exist in all democracies. Some even work as paid professionals in this job.
Not that the Indian celebrities, who buy imported stuff from the money they earn as brand ambassadors of Indian products, are far behind in this ruthless game of show business. They also know it makes eminent business sense to lip-sync a cause without toiling it out in the rough weather.
Film personalities like Kangna Ranaut, Richa Chadha, Hansal Mehta, Diljit Dosanjh, Priyanka Chopra, and others usually keep twitter afire. Without knowledge of the subject, they often hit social media to keep themselves in ‘circulation’ free-of-cost, no matter if they trivialize a serious issue.
Pressures of the cut-throat show business industry, which is a hypocritical interest group, keep these publicity-hunters on their toes. Participants in fashion parades are coached to utter the right and politically-correct words in media interviews. Over the decades, winners of Miss World or Miss Universe pageants have never failed to express the desire to work for the wellbeing of the poor Africans—none of them ever did so, however.
But the governments know how to respond to such one-time supporters to a cause. India’s Ministry of External Affairs, in a statement, said, “The temptation of sensationalist social media hashtags and comments, especially when resorted to by celebrities and others, is neither accurate nor responsible.”
The statement said that “very small sections of farmers in parts of India have some reservations about these reforms”.