There have been a numerous times in our lives where we have attended an event or a launch but we get to hear from the wrong kind of speakers, the ones who might not even be aware of the cause. Recently Kareena Kapoor was in the city for the Bengaluru International Film Festival 2018 where she gave the opening speech at the festival on social justice and human rights. And Shahrukh Khan was also invited to the Global Business Summit in New Delhi on Friday which included a top quality audience of CEOs, academics, top policymakers and diplomats, the summit helps pursue global, regional and industry growth agendas. But we wonder what SRK was called for as clearly he fits none of those criteria's. Some time ago, Karan Johar was invited to Davos in January at the World Economic Forum as a cultural leader in a session titled 'The Weaponization of Culture' and Irffan Khan will speak at the Harvard Business School on the 'Disruptive Innovation in India'. Are the intellectuals so star struck? How do these actors get to speak at such august events and with topics they have no background in, we explore.
Binitesh Baruri, the HOD of the Direction Faculty at the Whistling Woods International says, "The responsibility of how apt a celeb is for an event, an institution or an industry lies solely on those who extend that invitation. It is the responsibility of the organiser to make sure that the celebrity invited is apprised of the demands of the event/occasion and that her speech is guided accordingly. The success of all of this depends on the communication between the invitees and the inviters. It is not only easy to blame someone in hindsight, it is also bad practice. You could call a Nobel laureate to an event and she might still give a speech that some in the audience think inappropriate. It is okay, move on. No special laws are needed, unless of course you want to be fascist and start to decide who says what all the time. We already have enough of that kind, already enough is taboo and banned."
There's nothing wrong in inviting any celebrity to any event, they serve the purpose of generates more attention and gets more crowd expresses Harishankar, corporate governance faculty at SIBM Bengaluru says," The choice of celebrity and a good briefing of these celebrities is where the events go wrong. A movie personality coming for a literary or an art event sounds like a good fit, but celebrity from the movie industry going for a social cause may have no knowledge about the cause, that's where the briefing part comes in. If a celebrity who can speak on the relevance of the event that's always good but sometimes it's not the choice of celebrity but the lack of briefing which fails the event."
Vijayshanthi K, a social educator says, "There are some film celebs like Nandita Das, Shabana Azmi, Prakash Rai, Benedict Cumberbatch and much more who are from the film industry and are sensitive to issues around them. So, as an educator, I feel that there are people who sensitive and there are people who are lesser sensitive in all the professional fields. So, inviting anybody who is not suitable for the subject matter doesn't make any sense. If a person is invited just because she/he is a celebrity then the selection panel has been only market-oriented in the process."
