‘Jhatka’ culture of Indian entertainment industry!

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Lil Champs started on June 5, 2009 with usual gaudy sets and adults talking to children as if they were retarded. These are 8-12 year old children, not 3 of 4 year olds. We don’t even talk to our not yet 3 year old grandson like that. What do you think these children would grow up to be – mentally retarded? Shri Subhash Chandra of Zee TV needs to bring some adult supervision to his lower-middle class entertainment programs. The last Sa Re Ga Ma Pa started with high quality talent in 2008, and despite clean-shaven boobs of Himesh Reshammiya the show was promising till the end when the ‘Ghatis’ of Shiv Sena took over the stage.

India is a country with exceptional talent in every single human endeavor, including entertainment industry and yet we have failed to evolve as a sophisticated audience. One of the reasons for that is a low expectation from our domestic entertainment industry. On one hand India has produced a film like ‘Cheeni Kum’ and then goes and churns out garbage like ‘Chandni Chowk to China’. This extreme contrast in tastes and perceptions is shocking for an emerging India. We have had 60 years to develop our tastes and sensibilities and yet we seem to equate a dehati ‘Tamasha’ to urban entertainment. The sets of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Lil Champs 2009 are worst than a ‘Munni Bai Ka Kotha’. Indian media, specifically the entertainment media, ought to take professional help from qualified stage designers and pay them for their badly required services. We need qualified professionals behind quality productions!

Why Indians are disliked around the world?

This is an extremely complicated question! Indians in Australia believe that they are being targeted because of their race. Australian authorities believe that Indians have been attacked because of their possessions like expensive cell-phones and laptop computers. Both could be right to a limited extent. Others call Indians, “filthy foreigners“, they are also right. I was 34 years old when I came to America and I have spent more than 22 years in this country, 7 of these in a university environment and 10 on the American main-street. I have yet to find a single non-Indian who for any reason admired any Indian or India. Besides interacting with Americans, White and Black, we had to deal with students from every country in this world. Nobody had any kind words for India or Indians! Why such profound dislike for all things Indian?

Indians are very proud people and often arrogant. We all love to talk about us and India, just like Americans, Europeans and all others do. The difference is that we lecture everybody and try to make others feel that they are unfortunately, stupid! People resent that, as we have very little to show for. The world applauds non-violence but make fun of ‘Mahatma Gandhis’ of the world in their private confines. People may denounce a ‘Tiananmen Square‘, but they admire the Chinese for that. Pakistan may be the epicenter of terrorism but it is lionized as a nuclear power. Russia has been a brutal dictatorship since God knows when, but the President of United States feels obliged to pay a courtesy visit every four years. We live in a hypocritical world where might is right, India needs to learn this very important lesson.

Blaming Dhoni for the defeat is pointless!

The writing was on the wall for many many weeks. The India T-20 World Cup squad was basically a good team, capable of winning any cricket tournament. Unfortunately, it is also the most over-worked team in the world. Mahindra Singh Dhoni, the captain himself could do with some much needed rest. It is absolutely insane the way some of our best players have been over-exposed. Ishant Sharma has been used like a work-horse for two years without a break. BCCI could break him apart just like they did with Irfan Pathan. Besides, a young captain like Dhoni needs a veteran in the slips for a second opinion. Sachin Tendulkar or even Rahul Dravid could give the required input, standing beside a wicket-keeper captain in times of crisis. Mahi (Mahindra Singh Dhoni) looked confused when Zaheer Khan failed to use the bouncy Lords pitch to his advantage. R P Singh pressed his attack with reasonable line and length but Ishant Sharma lost the momentum. Ishant has been out of his league for a long time, he needs to recharge his batteries. He gave 10 extra runs just too many. Yuvraj Singh as a bowler was a very bad idea at that time, Yusuf Pathan could have been a better alternative. But this is all 20-20 hindsight, the important point is that we win some and we lose some. What matters is that we play good cricket for the long run.

Kapil Sibal could harvest the demographic dividend

Twenty years back when we left India, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi used to consider India’s exploding population as a major national liability. Their successors, P V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh converted this liability into a global human capital. How could this happen and that too virtually overnight? The reason was simple, the Gandhi’s were modestly educated, unlike the three scholars who followed them as Prime Ministers of India. Gandhi’s of India, excluding Mahatma Gandhi, were political animals with a short-sighted vision of India. It was Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao who completely changed the destiny of India. Even today the sycophants of Nehru-Gandhi cabal would hate to admit the fact, but then who cares? The fact of the matter is that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got a unique mandate in 1985 but squandered it on petty politics. India is lucky to have a window of relief from this political dynasty and grow to its full God given potential.

Kapil Sibal, a Master’s of Law from Harvard Law School, has been appointed the Minister for Human Resource Development by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, replacing a dogmatic and infirmed, Arjun Singh. Sibal has already indicated his willingness to open India’s educational sector to foreign universities and thereby provide vastly expanded higher-education opportunities to millions of Indians. This has the potential to further enhance India’s growing human capital. India is on its way to become the world’s largest English-speaking liberal democracy. Currently, 30 million Indians are fluent in English language and 60 million more are somewhat functional in an English speaking environment. There seems to be a unanimous opinion around the world that India would have 300 million English-proficient workers by 2020. Besides being fluent in English, these Indian workers are likely to be better educated and trained compared to their Western counterparts and would cost only half to one third of their competition. Just THINK about its global impact!

The best part of India’s story is its demographics. India has the youngest population in the world, unlike China or the ‘Western World’. According to Vijay Srinivasan, “Nearly 31% of the Indian population is less than 14 years old, and approximately 58% of the population is less than 25 year old, which translates to over 600 Million young people. As the Western nations age and even China ageing fast due to its “one-child policy”, the future workers of the world would be coming from India, it seems. The GDP growth of India itself would absorb most of these young workers, if only India manages between 8 and 10% growth annually for the next 25 years. This is entirely possible, and India could well become the only country in the next few years to reach a double-digit economic growth rate. China would experience an inevitable slow down, possibly dropping down to no more than 5 to 6% growth rate.” India is likely to provide low-cost legal and health-care services to the world for decades to come. Indian design and culture has the depth and breadth to fire the imagination of the world. Young people around the world are likely to follow India in this century!

Australia is not really a developed society!

Every time Australians misbehave, Indians seem to be quite shocked by their crude behavior! Just because they are white and talk in some form of English does not mean they are like the Europeans or the Americans. Australia remains a British colony in some respect, protected by an American security umbrella. Its economy is increasingly dependent on supplying China the raw materials like coke and iron ore, exactly the same way African countries used to supply to their colonial masters. With all the infrastructure built by the Europeans and the Americans, Australians have acquired some frivolous and unnecessary trappings of a developed country.

What has happened with Indian students in Australia in the last few days is almost impossible with either Chinese or Japanese students. The reason for that is pretty simple, either country would have taken very serious steps against the Australian government. Chinese students might have even gone on a rampage, attacking the Australian police. Indian students and the government, both are soft targets as far as Australians are concerned. They have rarely experienced India throwing its weight around, except for the last cricket tour by the Indian team! India’s diplomatic mission in Australia is a disgrace and has managed to demean their own country.