Akshay Kumar yesterday (28th March) announced to the world through his Twitter account that he would make a donation of Rs. 25 crore to the newly formed PM-CARES (Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations) fund for the country’s fight against the coronavirus outbreak. A little after that, Varun Dhawan took to social media to say that he would donate Rs. 30 lakh to the PM-CARES fund and Rs. 25 lakh to the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s fund.
Salman Khan’s Being Human Foundation got in touch with the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) and expressed the star’s desire to help its members. On being told that the Federation has a total membership of around 5 lakh, of which 25,000 are active daily wage-earning cine employees, the Foundation requested the Federation to share the bank details of all the 25,000 workers. Said Ashok Dube of the FWICE, “We at FWICE are in the process of compiling the bank details of those 25,000 members for forwarding the same to Salman Khan. His Foundation said, Salman would like to deposit money into each of those 25,000 accounts directly.” FWICE president B.N. Tiwari added, “Salman Khan is the only industry person who has approached us for providing financial assistance to our members who are facing very tough times due to the complete suspension of shootings and other production work in the country’s battle against the coronavirus. Sadly, no other producer, filmmaker or star has approached us.”
Ashok Dube, who has been with the FWICE for two years now, also revealed, “In the last two years, Salman Khan has made contributions totalling about Rs. 1.5 crore to our worker-members in their times of need, whether for hospitalisation or otherwise. God bless Salman.”
The Producers’ Guild Of India had a few weeks back announced that it would collect funds to disburse to the cine workers who are out of job due to the closure of all film work in view of the coronavirus scare. However, nothing has so far come out of that. Tiwari added, “We at FWICE alongwith television producers Hemant Ruparel and Ranjeet Thakur were considering distributing food items like rice, wheat flour, dals etc. among our workers. We had even placed the order for thousands of ration bags filled with essential commodities but the laden truck is still at Navi Mumbai as we don’t know how to go about the distribution in these times of lockdown.” The problem is compounded by the fact that the cine workers are spread all over the city and not localised in a single area. Adds Tiwari, “Ruparel and Thakur invested Rs. 25 lakh in these ration-filled bags but the bags can’t be reached to those in need.”
Among producers, Bhushan Kumar and his T-Series have donated Rs. 11 crore to the PM-CARES fund. Stand-up comic and actor Kapil Sharma has contributed Rs. 50 lakh to the PM Relief fund while filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani has donated an undisclosed amount. Murad Khetani, one of the producers of Kabir Singh, has pledged a sum of Rs. 25 lakh to Maharashtra Relief fund and Rs. 25 lakh to PM-CARES fund. Of course, several other Bollywood personalities have also made their donations but many of them are tight-lipped about their contributions as they are embarrassed to publicly talk about their charitable actions. Hrithik Roshan bought N95 and FFP3 masks for workers of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and other caretakers in the coronavirus fight. Lyricist Javed Akhtar, who was instrumental in getting the Copyright Act amended to the effect that music directors and lyricists are eligible to share in royalties earned by music companies and producers, told Information, “The IPRS (Indian Performing Right Society) has decided to help those composers and lyricists whose share in royalties from the IPRS is very low, by paying them a certain amount per month till the calamity comes to an end.” In this way, every well-earning (from royalties) music composer and song writer would be automatically contributing his share to his brethren in need.
If Bollywood is doing its bit, people from the South film industry are also putting their best foot forward. Prabhas has donated Rs. 4 crore (Rs. 3 crore to the PM’s Relief fund, and Rs. 50 lakh to each of the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments) while Allu Arjun has given Rs. 1.25 crore to the governments of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala to fight against the coronavirus. Rajinikanth made a contribution of Rs. 50 lakh for the daily wage cine workers of the Tamil film industry.