Mumbai: Top industrialists, actors, sporstmen and professionals took a pledge under the banner of India @75 headed by Adi Godrej and the CII on Thursday at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai to “make my best effort to help empower the people of India to be educated, skilled, progressive, safer and healthier by the year 2022.”
Among those who took the pledge were businessmen Adi Godrej, Cyrus Mistry, Mukund Rajan, S. Gopalakrishnan, Vikram Kirloskar and Pradeep Bhargava, scientist R.A. Mashelkar, those from Bollywood include Karan Johar, Priya Dutt, politicians like Suresh Prabhu, sportsman Viren Rasqu-inha and professionals like Mahesh Jethmalani, Sam Balsara, Padhika Shapoorji and Bhairavi Jani.
The chairman of the national committee of India@75, Rajan Navani said this is a mass movement and would focus on skills and education, urbanisation and environmental sustainability, and philanthropy.
Lyricist Javed Akhtar, who composed the anthem for the India @75 foundation felt the movement was necessary as India has the highest number of TB patients, the highest numbers of visually handicapped and physically handicapped and 75 crore causal workers have no kind of protection.
In the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s, Akhtar said the average Hindi film protagonist was always from the working class or less privileged section of society, but today the protagonist is always from the privileged class and does not walk the streets and when he does set out, it is to Switzerland. He said, “it shows how insular and callous a society we have become.”
