Actor and Founder of MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination) Farhan Akhtar attended Lalkaar Concert jointly hosted by MARD, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Population Foundation Of India on Tuesday in Mumbai. During media interaction, Farhan stated that his entire team doesn’t want MARD to look like elitist type of movement.
Farhan Akhtar’s Men Against Rape and Discrimination (MARD), is a social initiative designed to create awareness to instill gender equality and respect towards women, When asked Farhan what kind of awareness they are trying to bring through MARD’s Lalkaar Concert, he said, “This concert has messaging. We organized a contest for college students to make 2 minutes of short film with an aim of spreading a message about ending violence. We received lot of entries for the contest so today, we will announce winners of the contest”
“Now we are also thinking about what other things we can do to grow this as a movement because I feel this movement shouldn’t be restricted to cities, we want it to go deeper like in villages and small cities so that it doesn’t look like an elitist type of movement. We want regional artist and people to get associated with it as we want to present this concert in different languages”
Talking about the Lalkaar Concert, Farhan said, “I don’t know about the expectations but I am very happy to organize concert like this. It’s a free concert. We wanted that people in large numbers should come to see the concert and in few hours, we will get to know how many people got associated with this initiative”
“It’s a beginning. We are planning to organize more concerts in future as well. We are happy that we have started this in our very own city Mumbai. I feel violence is such an issue which doesn’t see age, cast and creed. It happens with older and children as well, which shouldn’t be happen so it’s a good thing that people from various age groups have came together to involve themselves with this cause.”
MARD’s Lalkaar Event was attended by Shah Rukh Khan, Armaan Malik, Papon, Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant, Harshdeep Kaur, Sukriti Kakkar and Prakriti Kakkar.
Superstar Shah Rukh Khan performed small gig at the event
