Issaq

Issaq reminds me of my days far from home. One day, I was trying to cook dinner with my mom’s constant guidance on phone. I had all the good quality ingredients, followed the process and did everything according to the instructions. While I thought I had done a wonderful job, when I sat down to eat with my friends I found the meal insipid. I wasn’t an expert cook and that’s why I was clueless as to why the food wasn’t tasty. Similarly the movie, in my opinion, has good story line, hard working team, actors who have done fairly good job with their roles, wonderful background of Varanasi, dialogues and scripting that gives it close-to-reality touch and even some good music too. However, the film is insipid and hardly connects to audience. I am not an expert movie critic and that’s why once again I fail to understand why so. What magic my mom does to food and I can’t do is the similar to what magic some expert film makers do what Manish Tiwari fails to do.

I think what product sells today in market depends upon its user friendliness. One would fail to understand logic and sequence of the incidents unless he is much focused (and in many cases not even then). I didn’t like at all unnecessary humor added. In fact it actually ruins the work. There circumstantial incidents that brings out humor and we enjoy it, not just to make it funny. By the way I liked the work of all the actors in the movie and the Benaras it has portrayed to some extent. The movie can be watched as several small clips by the students who learn film making but if you go to see it as entire movie, one would certainly be disappointed. Therefore, I find the film maker has wasted all the great talent the movie had to make it a wonderful movie in the same way as I wasted quality ingredients trying to prepare dinner.

Directed by: Manish Tiwary, Produced by: Dhaval Gada, Shailesh R. Singh.

Starring: Prateik Babbar, Amyra Dastur, Ravi Kishan, Makarand Deshpande, Neena Gupta, Prashant Narayanan, Sudhir Pandey, Prashant Kumar, Amit Sial, Vineet Kumar, Yuri Suri, Malini Awasthy.

Music by: Sachin – Jigar, Krsna, Sachinn Gupta.

Background score: Prashant Pillai

Cinematography: Vishal Sinha

Studio: Pen India Pvt. Ltd

Release date(s): 26 July 2013

Country: India

Language: Hindi

From Mid Day Maut to Food Tragedy

Since I am on break from work and get enough spare time to do things I have always longed for doing. One of the things that I make sure I do is to spend time with youth around my neighborhood. It helps me to understand more about what youth of a third tier cities these days, at the same time it also helps me share my learning to enrich their experience.

One fine evening I was on evening stroll of the town with one of boys of my neighborhood. While we passed the stinking public garbage, the boy was compelled to think of some solution to solve the problem which erupted an intense discussion among us which I think needs to be shared with others too. The discussion also is significant to other issues of contemporary public policy discourse in approaching election environment. While the boy immediately came out with his hypothetical solution of government doing more to solve to the problem of public garbage, I was more focused on helping him think of an alternate solution. Here is a sneak pick of our conversation:

Boy: The stinking garbage causes so much inconvenience to people. Government must do something about it.

Me: Why government should work on it?

Boy: Because it’s government’s responsibility to clean our garbage.

Me: Isn’t it our responsibility to clean our garbage.

Boy: Yes, but government has taken up this responsibility and has staffs to do so. We even pay for this.

Me: You are right. Government has an entire big department to maintain cleanliness in town and even after paying for this we don’t get satisfactory result. Doesn’t this give us a learning?

Boy: What do you mean?

Me: We usually in our personal life give more responsibilities to the ones who give us good result and curb the responsibilities of the ones who fail to deliver. Applying the same logic shouldn’t we take away the responsibility from government and figure out another way to maintain cleanliness and shouldn’t we even punish the government for failing to deliver? The thing is the moment we say government should do this or that, we must understand that we are making an expectation from an inefficient system to deliver which has never delivered. Can you give me an example of any public service delivery work where government has done really well?

Boy: Well, I am not sure if there is any such thing.

Me: Right. I am not sure whether this big stinking garbage existed here and how it was managed before government took over the responsibility of garbage management but I am very sure that the more you put this on government, the bigger would be the size of garbage management problem here.

While I tried to explain the boy what should be core function of government and what should be put back to civil society to do on its own, I got more examples from recent crisis to substantiate my point. One of the flagship schemes of government to provide Mid-Day Meal to students in government schools happened to prove killer for more than two dozen school students recently. News channels have filled up the screen with numerous stories of how inefficiently the scheme is managed since the incident took place. MNREGA has spread the corruption from big offices in city/state centers to far away rural areas.  Practically, it can be seen as the largest government program in world to decentralize corruption. And now I am wondering what would happen with the attempt of providing Food Security to us. Can anyone guess how this act can kick off artificial food grain shortage, inflation rate, budget deficit, politics entering into our daily personal lives, increase in corrupt practices and most importantly how many lives it would claim? It would be very interesting to calculate actual price that the country would have to pay for few Kilograms of subsidized food grains…

A Simple Way to Explain Evils of Socialism

An economics professor at a local University made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that  socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the socialism principles".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (Substituting grades for Ranks - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were HAPPY. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

An Old Story

An Old Story:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.


Indian Version:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house.

Medha fasts along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter Mayawati states this as `injustice' done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.


Kapil Sibbal makes 'Special Reservation ' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions
& in Government Services.

The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left
to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.
Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.

CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden '

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later....

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley, 100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,

......AND

As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers, India is still a developing country…!!!

It is time for YOUNG INDIA. It is OUR time…

India winning the Cricket World Cup 2011 is not only just an award. It is another proof of rising India on the world map on the way to be a superpower. I remember my conversation with the taxi driver who drove me from Kottayam to Cochin Airport in Jan 2009. He was very sad with the status of country and I was able to show him a brighter future of the country in the area not only in the key sectors such as economy, foreign affaire, health, energy etc but also in the field of sports, culture, language, space research etc by 2020. The guy was deeply impressed and the interaction changed him from a frustrated person to a more enthusiastic and hopeful person. I am sure where ever he is today; he would have cheered for the victory and enjoyed the proud moment. We have conquered one battle while there are many yet to be fought. Go and prove yourself as Dhobi brigade has done it. It is time for YOUNG INDIA. It is OUR time…

Amit Chandra on Lok Sabha TV

Amit Chandra, Campaign Coordinator of Jeevika: Law, Liberty & Livelihood Campaign was recently featured in a show on Lok Sabha TV where he was talking about struggle of street vendors. Here is a small clip captured in a mobile phone. Here is the link to watch the clip on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIjLEUxA1sk

Centre for Civil Society under it’s ‘Jeevika: Law, Liberty & Livelihood Campaign’ formed a Human Chain urging the government to protect the honest livelihood of poor working in informal sector in partnership with Great India Dream Foundation, Pravah Jaipur Initiative, AIESEC, Rajasthan Abhyudaya Sanstha, National Association of Street Vendors of India and Jaipur Mahanagar Thdai Thela Footpath Vyawasayi Union, at Jal Mahal at 6 PM. Active Citizens of Jaipur and Youth Students of Different colleges also joined the Human Chain.

Mr. Amit Chandra, the Campaign Coordinator of Centre for Civil Society said, “The participation of citizen and youth is very crucial for bringing any kind of social change. We wanted to bring the common citizen out to stand for the livelihood and create a positive environment to enable government to reform the informal sector. Policy reform would ensure protection of livelihood and financial as well as welfare services to the poor working in informal sector such as street vendors, food dhabas, barbars, cycle rickshaw pullers to name a few. The message that we want to pass on to government, media and people is that the street vendors have traditionally been part of social and cultural India and we need to protect this tradition similarly as we have preserved our heritages such as Jal Mahal”

Mr. Ghanshyam Kotwani, Executive Member of National Alliance of Street Vendors of India said, “Street Vendors have to face natural hardships such as rain, sun and cold but they brave it because they have no other alternatives but what really creates problem is the continuous threat and torture of authorities. The stigma attached to us as traffic hazard is also not right. We should be seen as service providers and the one who brings colour, convenience and taste to the life of festival city, Jaipur.”

Mr. Babulal Ramchandani, representative of Jaipur Mahanagar Thdai Thela Footpath Vyawasayi Union at the gathering said, “The Rajasthan Government had introduced a policy for welfare and rehabilitation of street vendors named Pheriwalon Ka Sansar in 2007 which is in effect till date but the Jaipur Municipal Corporation hasn’t implemented this policy. Once the policy is implemented there wouldn’t be a problem of vending and hawking in the city.”

A street play was also done at the beginning of the program showing the hardships of the life of a street vendor. It brought lot of tourists also to come forward and share their view about the issue after which the gathering of around 200 people formed human chain in different shapes and sizes in a very creative and attractive way.

The event was coordinated by Ms. Meenu Nagpal and thank you note was given by Mr. Nitin Dixit at the end.

Amit Chandra
Campaign Coordinator, Centre for Civil Society, D-125, Mahaveer Marg, Ambabari, Jaipur 302012, India
Email: amit@ccs.in, amitchandra2006@gmail.com