A photo op, short for a ‘photo opportunity’, is defined as ‘an arranged opportunity to take a photograph of a politician, a celebrity or a notable event.’ Now, if you’re a politician and a celebrity at the same time, photo ops must be routine, but I think you have to be someone, er, legendary to still be able to ruin them.
Our very own and very recently re-elected Member of Parliament Hema Malini, who also served as a member of the Rajya Sabha (Upper house) from 2003 to 2009, happened to be cleaning the air around the Parliament in a recent cleanliness drive under the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, one of the flagship schemes of the Modi Government during the 2014 elections. The video is available here.
We know the Delhi air quality has degraded to hazardous levels and urgent steps must be taken to clean the air, but someone needs to tell her that this is not how it works. The same can be said about her failure of commitment to work or the fact that she doesn’t even remember her work. In one of her interviews during election campaigning, when an interviewer asked her about the work she had done for her constituency in the last 5 years, she failed to recollect a single task!
This wasn’t the MP’s first experience with a failed photo op. She was trolled earlier during her campaign for the 2019 elections where she posed as a farmer holding a sickle and pretending to cut crops while another farmer actually did it for her. If you think you’ve seen enough inept behaviour, very recently another member of Hema’s family joined politics and all I can say about his actions is that this vapid nature probably runs in the family. Sunny Deol, Hema’s stepson, appointed a ‘representative’ to take care of Gurdaspur constituency in his absence.
If this doesn’t make you even ‘slightly’ scared about the state of democracy in our country then you are not exactly politically aware. The mockery of democracy is that celebrity fame is being exploited to attract votes for a particular party who is adamant on making statues.
We elect someone who represents the people and works for them. And in the current scenario, some pretend to work while some are just brushing off their responsibilities to someone else. The misuse of popularity isn’t a new concept in politics as criminals and gangsters are given party tickets for their popularity in a particular area.
This is just a shout out to the masses to raise their concerns, as to why our revered MP does not remember her work or why right after the election a representative has to be placed to take care of a constituency- where I am of the opinion that the celebrity won solely due to their popularity. If we can raise our voices loud enough, only then can we expect such ridiculousness to reduce and see actual productive work happen.