CHENNAI: Actor Kamal Haasan on Thursday criticised the Tamil Nadu government over a host of issues, including agricultural distress, conversion of farmland into commercial plots, poor state of education, lack of sanitation facilities and divisive politics.
He said his mission was to convert neglected villages into heavenly abodes, for which he was ready to launch the journey ‘Naalai Namadhey’. He appealed to like-minded people to join him.
“If politicians and technocrats show interest, it will be possible to move towards the next stage of development by linking modern technology and our tradition and can convert the villages into heavenly abodes where people would aspire to live,” he said in his regular column in a Tamil weekly.
“My journey towards this goal has begun. The army for glorifying agriculture is ready to fan out saying ‘Naalai Namadhey’. Those interested and good-hearted people join us; the disinterested can leave the way for us. We will reach you after achieving our goals,” he said.
Referring to his recent lectures at Harvard University, the actor said he had interacted with the Tamil diaspora on how to utilise technologies they innovated for the development of Tamil Nadu and many had offered him support. “The journey to America was part of the efforts to give shape (find answers) to the questions I had already been asking,” he said.
Lamenting that agriculture and its allied activities were gradually disappearing due to negligence on the part of politicians and authorities, he said children of farmers were forced to migrate towards urban areas looking for a better milieu without caste differences, which were kept burning by parochial politicians.
Referring to education, the actor rued that rote learning method was spoiling rural children, who could not follow their traditional profession or become well qualified professionals.