The recent ruling on reservation issue has drawn a lot of flak from the student community. People have gone for blackout night protest (check www.youth4equality.org) to candle light walks and what not? All inspired by movie Rang De basanti i guess. Some of my friends who in practical life I know are never capable of even coming inches close to bravery write extremely motivating mails. My principle is simple, practice what you preach !! If you want people to come to a protest march or something, be the first to reach there and motivate by meeting people FACE-TO-FACE and make this cause as your cause ... Anyway, avuthu-pottu today is not directed at such people as there is no point in wasting key-strokes on this hypocrisy issue ....
Today avuthu-pottu is directed at DEMOCRACY itself .... It is very difficult to bend a DEMOCRACTIC government. You can easily twist a DICTATORIAL regime. It is in fact more flexible than a Democractic regime.. You just need to flex a single person and your policies fall in place... Now i received a lot of mails from people stripping ARJUN SINGH and making him responsible for this... No ARJUN SINGH has on date the backing of all VOTE-DRIVEN POLITICIANS including the support of the Opposition(Don't let the saffron party of the hook next time) .
Whenever a democractic government decides to do something, IT DOES ... COME WHAT MAY.. Because a democractic government is people driven and not person-driven... I request all students to look at reality and see that 70% of India comes from Backward castes. These castes form the big VOTE BANK and these are the category of people who REALLY VOTE UNLIKE US... They brave the heat,rain,cold to vote for their choice of candidate something which we really don't do often... Anyway, it is a different thing that these people are not realizing that reservation is not really helping them ... If they realized this, they really woudn't be backward and needy as on date.... But who cares ???
Thus, you do whatever protest march or something, a democractic government is very strong.... Be it strikes during INDIRA-GANDHI TIME, JAYA-LALITHA TIME or anything else... Sorry to say!!! I LAUD YOUR TIRELESS EFFORT IN this regard .... but sadly it is a case of MAJORITY KILLING THE MINORITY.... which is the problem of a democractic government ......... people talk about IIT'ans floating a party for people's governance ... Please see that our Prime Minister is more Intellectual and wise than most IIT'ans but he too is unable to do anything in this regard ...... Corporates like NARAYANAMURTHY, RATAN TATA are not even giving a statement in the press on this....
THE POLICY IS LIKE A DRAUPADI BEING UNDRESSED IN PUBLIC BUT UNFORTUNATELY ALL WISE MEN ARE SEEING THIS SCENE MUTELY LEAVING OTHERS TO DIE IN GRACE..... The second biggest problem is THERE IS NO LORD KRISHNA HERE TO RESCUE ALL OF US...
Thus, all those who are praising and lauding democracy to the last mile ..... PLEASE THINK Again ................
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
The Southern film Industry
After taking care of reservations & family planning, Avuthu-pottu is now back to analyze the southern film industry.
Couple of months ago, when Thespian RAJKUMAR died a natural death, a lot of hue and cry happened in Karnataka. Buses were torched, vandalization of property, riots in all places, stone-pelting in some pockets and what not !! It is as if the entire Karnataka wanted to protest Yamadeva's action of taking the thespian's life.
I more or less felt that the action was purely to show to entire world that there existed a Kannada film industry in India. When Veerapan kidnapped RAJKUMAR, India came to know that there existed a hero in this part of world (at an age of 60+ is still remarkable). Then Kannada industry went a step further and banned new hindi films from being released in Bangalore citing protection of local industry. The local industry still did not do well with this protectionist measure as there is simply a lack of quality in their movies. Now let me explain you how ....
The Malayali film industry like the Bengali one had an excellent lot of script-writers. Now a film is not complete by just writing a script. You need actors/actresses to completely do justice to that script. Actresses were bounty of the range of Meera Jasmine, Asin & Shakeela. These actresses covered a wide gamut of scripts and made movies which even rule the Mallu land today.
But in case of actors, they did not have a new face after Mamooty and MohanLal... The Tamil industry came to the rescue in the form of providing faces like VIJAY, AJITH, SURYA, DHANUSH, VIKRAM & even the good-ol THALAIVAR (RAJNI-KANTH) ... The partnership took the industry by storm and even today Tamil film industry has a better revenue than the Bollywood. Actors like VIKRAM, THALAIVAR are better payed than Amitabh or Shahrukh today.
The Telugu film industry had been languishing all these years. It's only face N.T RAMA RAO made upteen number of movies potraying himself as "LORD KRISHNA" and winning elections. The Telugu film industry saw this booming opportunity in their southern neighbours. Now, ideally all Gults are good at mugging (hard-work). You can see the amount of marks they score in exams purely by mugging formulaes ... 100/100 in the english paper is child's play here ....
They simply started dubbing the Tamil films in Telugu. The people enjoyed good,fresh new faces on screen as well as savoured on the histrionic skills of tamil actors. You can safely the entire industry rode on the success of Tamil films in Tamil Nadu.
Now the Kannada film industry felt that it was left behind. It could not copy the movies made by Tamil film industry as there were lot of ego problems created between the two states by a river dispute. So Kannada film industry started borrowing from Telugu film industry (That lead to their demise as they started borrowing ORIGINAL scripts of the Telugu industry).
Now these scripts and movies are typical. You have a hero who will dance in extremely gaudy clothes (yellow shirt on orange pant types)around trees with a hands on a 42 inch belly swerving around a comparable heroine ... Andavaa!! Even my hands shudder when i have to describe such a scene in detail.
The movies have the same set of story-line with a unrelated rape scenes & obscene dances thrown in between so as to capture the attention of audience for the entire span of 3 hours. And this is how most films came to be characterized. The people of Karnataka initially enjoyed but then became mature as a result of mingling with outsiders pouring in karnataka. To this date, a single Kannada film has not been described a nation-wide hit either due to superior script or due to it's star-cast.
And what even irritates me to the point is the very persons who support the spread of Kannada language by such goosy measures send their sons to work in companies abroad or put them in the best english medium schools across india.
I do not have many kannada friends as of date, but i heard that these people are very passionate about their film industry. I would like to hear their views on this........
Couple of months ago, when Thespian RAJKUMAR died a natural death, a lot of hue and cry happened in Karnataka. Buses were torched, vandalization of property, riots in all places, stone-pelting in some pockets and what not !! It is as if the entire Karnataka wanted to protest Yamadeva's action of taking the thespian's life.
I more or less felt that the action was purely to show to entire world that there existed a Kannada film industry in India. When Veerapan kidnapped RAJKUMAR, India came to know that there existed a hero in this part of world (at an age of 60+ is still remarkable). Then Kannada industry went a step further and banned new hindi films from being released in Bangalore citing protection of local industry. The local industry still did not do well with this protectionist measure as there is simply a lack of quality in their movies. Now let me explain you how ....
The Malayali film industry like the Bengali one had an excellent lot of script-writers. Now a film is not complete by just writing a script. You need actors/actresses to completely do justice to that script. Actresses were bounty of the range of Meera Jasmine, Asin & Shakeela. These actresses covered a wide gamut of scripts and made movies which even rule the Mallu land today.
But in case of actors, they did not have a new face after Mamooty and MohanLal... The Tamil industry came to the rescue in the form of providing faces like VIJAY, AJITH, SURYA, DHANUSH, VIKRAM & even the good-ol THALAIVAR (RAJNI-KANTH) ... The partnership took the industry by storm and even today Tamil film industry has a better revenue than the Bollywood. Actors like VIKRAM, THALAIVAR are better payed than Amitabh or Shahrukh today.
The Telugu film industry had been languishing all these years. It's only face N.T RAMA RAO made upteen number of movies potraying himself as "LORD KRISHNA" and winning elections. The Telugu film industry saw this booming opportunity in their southern neighbours. Now, ideally all Gults are good at mugging (hard-work). You can see the amount of marks they score in exams purely by mugging formulaes ... 100/100 in the english paper is child's play here ....
They simply started dubbing the Tamil films in Telugu. The people enjoyed good,fresh new faces on screen as well as savoured on the histrionic skills of tamil actors. You can safely the entire industry rode on the success of Tamil films in Tamil Nadu.
Now the Kannada film industry felt that it was left behind. It could not copy the movies made by Tamil film industry as there were lot of ego problems created between the two states by a river dispute. So Kannada film industry started borrowing from Telugu film industry (That lead to their demise as they started borrowing ORIGINAL scripts of the Telugu industry).
Now these scripts and movies are typical. You have a hero who will dance in extremely gaudy clothes (yellow shirt on orange pant types)around trees with a hands on a 42 inch belly swerving around a comparable heroine ... Andavaa!! Even my hands shudder when i have to describe such a scene in detail.
The movies have the same set of story-line with a unrelated rape scenes & obscene dances thrown in between so as to capture the attention of audience for the entire span of 3 hours. And this is how most films came to be characterized. The people of Karnataka initially enjoyed but then became mature as a result of mingling with outsiders pouring in karnataka. To this date, a single Kannada film has not been described a nation-wide hit either due to superior script or due to it's star-cast.
And what even irritates me to the point is the very persons who support the spread of Kannada language by such goosy measures send their sons to work in companies abroad or put them in the best english medium schools across india.
I do not have many kannada friends as of date, but i heard that these people are very passionate about their film industry. I would like to hear their views on this........
Friday, May 05, 2006
Myths of Reservations
A brief story:
4 men were staying togethar in a hut namely A,B,C,D ... A said i'll go to find some food .. Maybe even hunt .. I can't stay hungry ... the remaining three agreed .. They waited for a long time ... A didn't turn up .. so B said .. I better take this grass with me and look for some hungry animal which can give me something in exchange ..
When A & B went out ... C said to D ... instead of waiting for them let us do something... The hut is dirty so C said to D why don't you clean around .. meanwhile i'll attempt to light this hut with minimal resources which we have around ...
Finally A&B returned and C& D completed their respective JOBS .... and the day ended.
This soon extended and rules were made in which duties were fixed for a person without exchange .... son of A did A's job .. son of B did B's job and so on .. This absolute division of labour resulted in what we call as the great indian divide for the next 2000 years .... A,B,C prospered whereas poor D was made to suffer throughout .. he remained poor and soon became used to taking orders ....... A,B,C thus continued to relish their prosperity ... D did not bother to retaliate ...
Note: essentially all these were similar type of persons in the beginning ... (99% gene pool was same ... only 1% differed)
Modern world teaches you a lot many things .... In body ..when people say the most important part is not the brain,heart or lungs ... but the garbage clearing mechanisms ... D realized this that he was made to dirty work all along and ....
Cut to 2006:
A lot of Hue and cry is being made in the name of reservations these days.. People in India really love to form communities on orkut these days condemning reservations but when it really comes for a peaceful protest on the grounds of mumbai .. you find that people rarely turn up ... Leave that apart !! I have a few questions to ask all these protestors :
1) For the so called hard core reservation opposers i have a question : Why do you all fill the minority form when you go to united states ? why do you all claim benefits of US affirmative action programs ?
2) Why do you oppose reservation in all forms ? Do you think the best things in life happen by merit ? Do you believe that being able to score marks in such a skewed one dimensional entrance test makes you worthy ? Why don't you design entrance test capable of testing multiple qualities in a person ?
3) Why don't you proactively support and push through a petition supporting income-based reservation ? Why don't you attempt and use your surplus to help atleast one needy student in your life ?
4) Your ancestors have broken the circle of poverty by providence. Why are you not giving others a chance to break their circle of poverty by this scheme ?
5) You all give motivating lectures of team-work .. about how to help weaker team members .. Where is this implementation of this concept in practical life ?
The problem is accentuated by acute supply side problem where there no attempt to raise the number of seats of engineering colleges .... It is always the fear of commoditizing the entire structure .. but remember the situation is not good now either ... you throw a stone .. most likely it will hit an engineer ...
I agree that reservation in it's present form is helping a very narrow range of people to fulfill their selfish short-term motives ..... Let us beat it down and design a more acceptable form of reservation by not haggling in terms of percentages but going down to more systemic level ... Using reservations for helping the general population as a whole .... and bring that person D described earlier into an equivalent person.
4 men were staying togethar in a hut namely A,B,C,D ... A said i'll go to find some food .. Maybe even hunt .. I can't stay hungry ... the remaining three agreed .. They waited for a long time ... A didn't turn up .. so B said .. I better take this grass with me and look for some hungry animal which can give me something in exchange ..
When A & B went out ... C said to D ... instead of waiting for them let us do something... The hut is dirty so C said to D why don't you clean around .. meanwhile i'll attempt to light this hut with minimal resources which we have around ...
Finally A&B returned and C& D completed their respective JOBS .... and the day ended.
This soon extended and rules were made in which duties were fixed for a person without exchange .... son of A did A's job .. son of B did B's job and so on .. This absolute division of labour resulted in what we call as the great indian divide for the next 2000 years .... A,B,C prospered whereas poor D was made to suffer throughout .. he remained poor and soon became used to taking orders ....... A,B,C thus continued to relish their prosperity ... D did not bother to retaliate ...
Note: essentially all these were similar type of persons in the beginning ... (99% gene pool was same ... only 1% differed)
Modern world teaches you a lot many things .... In body ..when people say the most important part is not the brain,heart or lungs ... but the garbage clearing mechanisms ... D realized this that he was made to dirty work all along and ....
Cut to 2006:
A lot of Hue and cry is being made in the name of reservations these days.. People in India really love to form communities on orkut these days condemning reservations but when it really comes for a peaceful protest on the grounds of mumbai .. you find that people rarely turn up ... Leave that apart !! I have a few questions to ask all these protestors :
1) For the so called hard core reservation opposers i have a question : Why do you all fill the minority form when you go to united states ? why do you all claim benefits of US affirmative action programs ?
2) Why do you oppose reservation in all forms ? Do you think the best things in life happen by merit ? Do you believe that being able to score marks in such a skewed one dimensional entrance test makes you worthy ? Why don't you design entrance test capable of testing multiple qualities in a person ?
3) Why don't you proactively support and push through a petition supporting income-based reservation ? Why don't you attempt and use your surplus to help atleast one needy student in your life ?
4) Your ancestors have broken the circle of poverty by providence. Why are you not giving others a chance to break their circle of poverty by this scheme ?
5) You all give motivating lectures of team-work .. about how to help weaker team members .. Where is this implementation of this concept in practical life ?
The problem is accentuated by acute supply side problem where there no attempt to raise the number of seats of engineering colleges .... It is always the fear of commoditizing the entire structure .. but remember the situation is not good now either ... you throw a stone .. most likely it will hit an engineer ...
I agree that reservation in it's present form is helping a very narrow range of people to fulfill their selfish short-term motives ..... Let us beat it down and design a more acceptable form of reservation by not haggling in terms of percentages but going down to more systemic level ... Using reservations for helping the general population as a whole .... and bring that person D described earlier into an equivalent person.
Iyer - Iyengars are not alone
The motivation to write this comes from the fact that people always tend to view Iyer and Iyengar as separate .Several attempts have been made to break the ice between them. For Eg:- some of close iyengar friends are after iyer girls these days and not to forget vica-versa ... :)
It is an accepted fact that Iyengar girls have more sharper features and are beautiful but yes that's because Iyer boys are more beautiful than Iyengar boys ... (See God always creates a balance between his creations) ... The population of Iyengars is less than that of Iyers (rougly 1:8) which loosely translates as that one Iyengar is sufficient and equivalent to about 8 Iyers ....
Now there are many more statements like these which can extend the argument and are beyond the scope of my writing in English .... What i want to say that such things are healthy and promote overall growth .... See we all should never think alike .. Napolean once said " if all of them are thinking alike then only one of them is thinking " .....
Which brings me to the central point ... divisions are common in the society ... there are splits all around you (PUN UNINTENDED) and it is natural ... Where there is positive there is always negative .. People always question the natural order of things ... Look around you ...
1) Jains are split into Shwetambar and Digambar.
2) Maharashtrians are split into Kokanastha and Deshastha.
- For observing this simply watch them in action ... Their actions would speak
louder than my words.
3) Marwaris are split into Maheshwari's and Agarwals.
- equivalent of iyengars and iyers in marwari community.
4) Muslims are split into Shia's and Sunni's.
- shia's believe that successors of muhammad are as good as the man himself
sunni's believe that muhammad was the sole god and refused dynastic rights to
religious authority.
5) Christians are split into Catholic and Protestants.
- The cause of Protestant movement originated as a direct protest to the actions
of roman Catholic church.
Divisions have brought in healthy growth overall in the world ....
1)they questioned as to why assumptions were made in the particular place
2)why things were done in one particular way
3)questioned earlier heresies in the society... offlate religions are both reviewing themselves looking at each other .....
Anyway, just a passing thought ......
It is an accepted fact that Iyengar girls have more sharper features and are beautiful but yes that's because Iyer boys are more beautiful than Iyengar boys ... (See God always creates a balance between his creations) ... The population of Iyengars is less than that of Iyers (rougly 1:8) which loosely translates as that one Iyengar is sufficient and equivalent to about 8 Iyers ....
Now there are many more statements like these which can extend the argument and are beyond the scope of my writing in English .... What i want to say that such things are healthy and promote overall growth .... See we all should never think alike .. Napolean once said " if all of them are thinking alike then only one of them is thinking " .....
Which brings me to the central point ... divisions are common in the society ... there are splits all around you (PUN UNINTENDED) and it is natural ... Where there is positive there is always negative .. People always question the natural order of things ... Look around you ...
1) Jains are split into Shwetambar and Digambar.
2) Maharashtrians are split into Kokanastha and Deshastha.
- For observing this simply watch them in action ... Their actions would speak
louder than my words.
3) Marwaris are split into Maheshwari's and Agarwals.
- equivalent of iyengars and iyers in marwari community.
4) Muslims are split into Shia's and Sunni's.
- shia's believe that successors of muhammad are as good as the man himself
sunni's believe that muhammad was the sole god and refused dynastic rights to
religious authority.
5) Christians are split into Catholic and Protestants.
- The cause of Protestant movement originated as a direct protest to the actions
of roman Catholic church.
Divisions have brought in healthy growth overall in the world ....
1)they questioned as to why assumptions were made in the particular place
2)why things were done in one particular way
3)questioned earlier heresies in the society... offlate religions are both reviewing themselves looking at each other .....
Anyway, just a passing thought ......
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