The feature film Aarakshan, which is a simpleton’s take on the issue of 49.5 percent reservation in institutions of higher education for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and OBCs (other backward castes) aka Dalits, has whipped up a storm with three states — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh — banning its exhibition on the ground that some dialogues could irreparably hurt Dalit sentiments, and perhaps prompt them to resort to civic affray, mayhem and worse. Of course the ban raises the issue of freedom of speech and expression bestowed upon all citizens as a fundamental right by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. But to expect these historically deprived groups and their political leaders — mostly alumni of the country’s 1.26 million dysfunctional government primary and secondary schools — to appreciate the finer points of the Constitution is to perhaps expect too much.
Yet the controversial ban has provided welcome fodder for the country’s English language television news channels. In a panel discussion on Times Now, a Dalit spokesperson who justified the ban on Aarakshan in Uttar Pradesh, raised a pertinent question as to why Bollywood producers have failed to ever cast a Dalit hero or heroine — let alone develop a Dalit box office star — when Hollywood has created several Afro-American movie stars.
One would have thought the answer to the question is quite obvious. Bollywood is in the iron grip of a north Indian producers’ cabal deeply enamoured with Central Asian-lookalike movie stars, and heroines in particular. To the extent that even mainstream ethnic-looking actors and actresses are invariably sidelined into supporting roles. And since Dalits and OBCs tend to be dark-skinned, they are absolutely verboten for the Bollywood cabal which is still in denial of the ethnic distinctiveness of the Indian population and entertains the belief that the only difference between Hollywood and Bollywood stars is that the latter mouth Hindi dialogues.
Therefore until Bollywood moguls are sufficiently educated to appreciate instead of denying the distinctive ethnicity of post-independence India, neither the natives, nor Dalits are likely to qualify to dance and yodel in the numbing feature films — four-fifths of which are resounding box-office flops — churned out by the brain-dead badshahs of Bollywood.
Classic case study
The steady multiplication of white-collar frauds, impostors and charlatans whom the post-independence Indian state has conspicuously failed to prosecute and convict, makes the ancient Latin warning caveat emptor (‘buyer beware’) the most important words in commerce and industry in the Indian subcontinent. The publication of the fifth consecutive EducationWorld India’s Most Respected Schools survey in this issue arouses bad memories of the time when EducationWorld published the country’s first-ever primary-secondary schools league tables in 2007. To do the mandatory field work for the survey, EW engaged the services of IMRB International (estb.1971) which bills itself as “the university of Indian market research and one of the top 20 market research companies in the world”, and proudly proclaims the London-based WPP with annual global revenue of £8.68 billion (Rs.54,000 crore) as its parent company.
We signed up the high-end IMRB to rate and rank India’s most respected schools on the assurance that the head office of the agency in Mumbai would prescribe a rigorous methodology which would withstand scrutiny and contestation. Instead, this path-breaking assignment was entirely outsourced to IMRB, Bangalore where two of the branch agency’s perhaps most inarticulate managers supervised the field survey. Presumably to maximise profit, these worthies constituted a respondents’ base of a mere 908 parents, principals, and school and college teachers spread thinly across 15 cities and lumped all schools — day, traditional boarding and international — for evaluation.
Be that as it may, the outcome of the survey was an embarrassing first foray into institutional evaluation by this publication what with day, boarding and international schools — entirely different in character and objectives — jostling for top ranking in league tables which lacked credibility. All requests for a post-mortem to make the rating and ranking methodologies more rigorous next year were ignored. We never heard from IMRB again except to be informed that the bill for the next survey would double to Rs. 9 lakh. A classic case study for B-school students on how to lose business by antagonising customers.
Last man standing
There’s a dangerous loose cannon that’s sliding all over the ship of state as its inept and self-serving admirals and captains blunder through perilous seas. It’s Subramanian Swamy, a rudderless politician and president of the Janata Party, the rump of the party which defeated the durable — perhaps too durable — Congress party in the post-Emergency election of 1977 and actually formed a coalition government at the Centre. Today Dr. Swamy — a former RSS sevak — is the president, treasurer, general secretary and possibly the sole member of the Janata Party and expends most of his time filing and arguing writ petitions against members of the establishment in the Supreme Court.
Despite a formidable curriculum vitae (Delhi U, ISI, Harvard), Swamy has a unique capacity to rub everyone up the wrong way and antagonise people. According to political pundits in the national capital, the periodic transformation of Dr. Swamy into Mr. Hyde has cost him a promising political career and left him wandering in the wilderness of Indian politics.
Recently, this character transformation prompted him to pen an unprovoked column in the Mumbai edition of the daily DNA in which after “decisive soul-searching” on how to combat Islamic terrorism, he inter alia advocated populating the Kashmir Valley with Hindu ex-servicemen; demolition of 300 masjids (mosques) in the vicinity of Hindu temples; implementation of the uniform civil code; making learning of Sanskrit compulsory for all citizens; prohibition on all conversions from Hinduism and propagation of “the Hindu mindset” in secular India. “Even if half the Hindu voters are persuaded to collectively vote as Hindus, and for a party sincerely committed to the Hindu agenda, then we can forge an instrument for change,” writes Swamy (DNA, July 16).
But that’s an India in which Swamy is likely to be the last man standing — as he is in the Janata Party.