Alia Bhatt on 16 December took to social media to express a political opinion. She did so by retweeting comedian and actor Vir Das’ tweet that reads, “Hey.....uh.....how’s the economy?”
The tweet by Vir Das refers to the current economic slowdown in the country. In October, the new IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva while commenting on the global economic crisis said the global economy is facing a ‘synchronised slowdown’ and the effect is ‘more pronounced’ this year in some of the largest emerging market economies like India.
Earlier, in June 2019, the former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian had invited controversy by claiming that India's growth had been overestimated by around 2.5 percentage points, between 2011-12 and 2016-17.
He had also, in 2018, called demonetisation “a massive, draconian, monetary shock” that accelerated the economic slide from 8 percent to 6.8 percent.
In light of the violence against students of Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi, who were peacefully protesting on 15 December, Alia Bhatt took to Instagram to post a photo of the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, followed by the words, “Learn from the students.”
Celebrities like Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao, Anurag Kashyap and more have spoken up.