Groundhog Day :- Review

Often you hear the adage, "It is just a film". Well, for most times it is true. But on rarest of rare occasions, it isn't. This is one of them. Like a great piece literature, painting, poetry, speech it has the capacity to change the way you feel and think. It is the biggest compliment I can pay to a film.

It is anything but a preachy film as the "intro" to the review might suggest. In fact it an extremely entertaining and funny film with one of the best performances ever by Bill Murray. The plot revolves around a weather man (Bill Murray) is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting "rat" (as he calls it). This is his fourth year on the story, and he makes no effort to hide his frustration. On awaking the 'following' day he discovers that it's Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realization that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing every day.

The challenge here for the makers was in terms of screenplay, editing and performances. Bear in mind that, the "loops" Bill Murray's character goes through, might become redundant for the audience after a while. This is where the genius of Harold Ramis and Bill Murray comes into play, who seem to introduce some "novelty" factor with every shot of the same sequence. I couldn't think of any actor other than Murray who could have pulled this one off.

It is a movie likely to deceive you in its effortless narrative and casual comic tone. Yes, it is funny, but make no mistake about it, it is a film with a strong philosophical undertone. This is a quality that separates Groundhog from rest of the movies with similar intent. It tells you what it intends to on your terms. It deals with the questions that bother us for a better part of our lives i.e. meaning of life, purpose of life, existentialism, death, god but never preaches, nor propels any propaganda. But by the end of it, you know that something has changed, something you didn't see coming has happened. And then you watch it again only to realize the moment of Epiphany that eluded you the first time.

Every time I am down or losing perspective this is the movie that eases everything and makes me ask a simple question, "What is important?", "Am I living the same day over and over again?". If answer is affirmative for too long, then something needs to change. It really is the most basic philosophical question which most of us fail to confront. Knowing that you are dying everyday, what can be the possible meaning to life ? What can we do to make it bigger than what it is ? Lot of the times the answers are a lot simpler to these questions, maybe not convinient.

One of the absolute great films of the 90s, but more than just a film for me.

Here is the trailer

Deconstructing Miss Roy.

There are few matters on which I have been unable to arrive at instant judgement. There have been matters that I have taken positions on only to revert later. However, with Miss Roy there is this peculiar element that she brings to the table which has in the past put some doubt as to where she stands or where I stand in relation to it. Is she is the Indian version of Noam chomsky trying to restore the rights of poor and the weak from the elitists who have continued to scour this country at the cost of majority who continue to survive in sub human conditions while the part of the country where India is shining is celebrating CWG medals ? or is she attention whore who would stoop to any level in her public discourse to maintain here anti India narrative which keeps her as an interesting prospect both for national and international media for different reasons.

Lately, regrettably, the opinion has swayed comprehensively towards the latter. Now, before anyone jumps on me for being a hardline nationalist, let me make it perfectly clear that I am no fan of Indian govt. and consider myself to be the one of the biggest critics of democracy as it is practised in India. So, it is not Miss Roy's anti-India rant per se that is troubling. It is the fact that she has not shown any more flexibility than Osama Bin Laden with her opinions. So, there might be times I might agree with her like I agree with Bin Laden when he talks about concerns of Global Warming. But the crux of the issue is whether a "fundamentalist" or a hardliner can ever be or should ever be taken seriously. Do they have any role in meaningful discussions ? Here is where you have to detach the opinions from the person who is giving it to understand where exactly is this person's modus operandi.

Miss Arundhati doesn't necessarily like to be on the left or the right of any discussions. She prefers the top from where she can have a "bird's eye" view and slur oall players involved. Take for instance: Mumbai attacks . Even the most hardline cynics would not have even remotely thought of Kashmir when the 26/11 attack took place, but Roy with her uncanny consistency saw a connection between Military action in Kashmir to justify 26/11. She will very conviniently not comment on the role of Pakistan, the insurgency and the terrorism, the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits. She will shae stage with a certain Pro Pakistani seperatist who has unequivocally stated that he wants to impose Sharia law in Kashmir. Why? This is where we come to the Osama analogy, it doesn't fit here anti-India narrative.

Again here response after the massacre at Dantewada. One can site case after case of the blatant that the delusional chomskians are doing yet missing out on the most important principle that Chomsky believed in "Truth". She will not talk of the be-headings or the children kidnapped from the tribal areas or the villagers threatened by the Maoists. Why ? Because their missions alligns with hers, i.e. undermining and overthrow of the Indian state. She will come out and make a statement a knee jerk reactionary statement like this which immidiately rules out any reasonable intellectual discussion and reduces it to a shouting contest "I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning's papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state."

So how do we deal with her ? The problem is that she does not fit within the usual image of a hardliner or extremist that we associate with. She is relatively rich, she is outspoken, she is eloquent, she is "booker" award winner which adds more weight to her portfolio and she has some important friends abroad who will magify her voice and reach. I think the best way is to ignore her. It is a test of democracy to handle elements which ar undermining its unity and integrity without stooping to the same levels. I also believe the recent news of action or FIR goes against the idea of free speech. Also, any kind of jail time would be exactly what the attention whore will look forward. If anything we have learnt from our neighbours, there is no substitute to playing a victim. It is ironic though that the democracy Miss Roy shuns is same one which is protecting her to right to free speech, considering that she would have been jailed under US sedition act, 1918.

Finally, to the media, grow up already. I know 24 hours are hard to kill but given a chance Congress will provide enough scams to keep everyone engaged. I know talking about a lunatic can make for some provocative discussions and better ratings. But please, ask yourself, would you give the same leverage to Osama if he makes some anti-US statements. Am I calling Miss Roy a terrorist ? No. But she is a fundamentalist and I reiterate they have no role is any meaningful dicussion or solution.

No, we can't

Barack Obama's visit to India has made him such a huge celebrity here that it's a wonder he hasn't yet been asked to appear on Bigg Boss. I can imagine the housemates being given a task: 'The President is coming, prepare for the president's visit.' So they get all set to greet Obama: Veena Malik puts on her best make up and pouts in front of the mirror, Dolly Bindra personally supervises the making of special gaajar ka halwa with secret ingredients, Ashmit Patel and Hrishant Goswami trim their eyebrows again, Shweta Tiwari puts on a finely-tailored, figure-hugging anarkali churidar kurta, and choreographs a dance for herself, Manoj Tiwari composes and practises a Bhojpuri song written specially for the occasion, Mahabali Khali practises punching through walls to impress the president, Sara Khan decides that she will try and call Obama 'Pops' so as to cuddle up to him, and they all line up in the garden as the moment nears. The gates swing open. Pratibha Patil walks in.

Okay, this is unlikely to happen -- as unlikely as our country is to ever throw up a politician quite like Obama. A few months ago I was invited for a television talk show to discuss "Who is India's Obama?" I couldn't participate because I was busy at the time, but I found the question ridiculous. For a political figure like Obama to rise in India would be as unusual as growing palm trees in a snowfield. India's political system would never allow someone like Obama to rise, and would disincentivise entry in the first place.

Consider how Obama climbed the ladder in politics. He wasn't from a privileged background or a political family: he worked as a community organiser in Chicago in the 1980s, and then graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review for a while. He worked as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for a few years, and wrote an acclaimed memoir. Given that background, you'd have expected him to stay in academics and write more books, maybe even winning a Pulitizer along the way. (He's a very fine writer.) But he saw a different calling for himself.

It might have been idealism that motivated him to join politics, but he also possessed the pragmatic street-smartness without which you can't rise in that profession. He networked superbly in the local political scene and built a base for himself. (Interestingly, poker was a part of his tactical mix, as James McManus points out in this article in the New Yorker. For more on the role poker has played in American public life, I strongly recommend you read McManus's magisterial history of poker in America, Cowboys Full.) But Obama's rapid ascent in national politics was not a result of backroom wheeling-and-dealing, but of the power of ideas. He came on the national scene when America, tired of the Iraq war and the growing partisanship in politics, was ready for a change. Obama, a thinker of much nuance, was also a speaker of great clarity and eloquence, and galvanized a nation with his words alone. Despite being criticized for his lack of managerial experience, he also ran perhaps the greatest political campaign in American history.

Now, can you imagine a similar career graph for a politician in India today? America is the most meritocratic of all countries, and their politics is truly democratic, which is why they have an incumbent president whom pretty much no one outside his city had heard of just ten years ago. India, on the other hand, as I have written before, has a feudal political system, and none of our parties are internally democratic in the true sense of the term. All our promising young politicians are scions of political families who have been handed an inheritance. The time is past when someone like Obama could emerge on the scene from nowhere and rise to the very top in Indian politics through the force of his ideas. An Indian Obama would be a professor at a business school, a top manager in a multinational company, an acclaimed writer with a modest income -- or he would simply have gone abroad, where the opportunities are far greater.

Obama's visit hasn't prompted any self-reflection in our political elite or our media, though. We gush over him, we get orgasms when he praises India or disses Pakistan, but we don't think a little harder and realise that what Obama says about India not being an emerging nation any more is just sweet talk. We are still a backward, emerging nation, and this is amply reflected in the poverty of our political landscape, where Ashok Chavan and Suresh Kalmadi stand for the quintessential, typical Indian politician. Can India produce an Obama in this kind of system? No, we can't.

* * * *

Needless to say, my admiration for Obama doesn't necessarily translate to support for his policies. While it's heartening to see a politician who doesn't speak in platitudes and is capable of intellectual depth, Obama inherited an enormously difficult set of circumstances, and I find aspects of his approach to the economy somewhat dubious. (Indeed, when it comes to expanding the role of government in America, there isn't much difference between GWB and BHO.) That said, even Lincoln and Roosevelt, it could be argued, were not confronted with two problems quite as complex as this economic crisis or as nebulous as the war on terror. But that's a subject for another day.

* * * *

Speaking of young politicians, check out England. Their prime minister, David Cameron, is 44 years old. His deputy prime minsiter, Nick Clegg, is 43. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (their equivalent of a finance minister) is the 39-year-old George Osborne. The leader of the opposition (and of the Labour Party) is Ed Miliband, who turns 41 this December. In contrast, Indian politicians in their 50s are often described as "young and upcoming". It's crazy -- but perhaps a dysfunctional system deserves senile or our-of-date leaders. Such it goes.

Atithi Devo Bhava - Indeed!!!

An article in Times before the arrival of Obama!! - Nice

What's good for President Barack Obama is good enough for us...

Mark Manuel I TNN

Somebody here seems to have taken the meaning of Atithi Devo Bhava far too seriously. Also religiously. And irrespective of how the ancient Hindu scriptures meant it, or whether he deserves it or not, President Barack Obama is being treated like God in a city where the proud Maharashtrian not so long ago shut the door on Indians coming from parts North of the country.

Our laying out the red carpet to greet an American President not so hot on his own turf has to be the most slavish display of hospitality ever. We thought we were subservient and this, like pink gins in the afternoon and coffee after dinner, was an old Raj hangover from which generations post Independence had not got over. But what we are seeing in the run-up to Air Force One bringing Obama plus 3,000 today is not just the city bending over backward to welcome a visiting head of state, but well, embarrassingly also forward. And that kind of hurts. Not just because it comes at a time when we want to be by ourselves, for Diwali is meant to be celebrated with family and friends, and certainly not with an unwelcome guest who plays spoilsport at the party. Or because we find parts of the city, yes — aamchi Mumbai, out of bounds for our festive weekend and ourselves declared persona non grata at Gateway of India for the nightly fireworks. That too, perhaps with a stiff upper lip — another English hand-me-down to the long-suffering Indian, we might have accepted in silence. After all, a guest is a guest, and we are known to be a tolerant people.

If we can grit the teeth and bear a 50-car cavalcade holding up peak hour traffic as it rushes President Pratibha Patil to Raj Bhavan for dinner, then we can clench the fists as the Obama juggernaut hurtles through silent and deserted roads with flashing lights and wailing sirens. No, what has caused the iron to enter our soul is this servile deference of a city getting dressed up and having nowhere to go because its date for the weekend is a man who will hop from one bullet-proofed and sanitised venue to another without so much as a glance at the preparations that have gone into making him feel important. Yes, you couldn't have missed it this week, a workforce of labourers toiling in the sun to paint dividers, scrub kerbsides, wash roads, fill up potholes, plant trees, shine traffic lights, re-tar flyovers and give Mumbai an avatar that would have RK Laxman's common man gaping in awe because the last time he saw the city like this, was never. And the question uppermost on the poor fellow's mind would be, but what about me? Why am I, the poor tax payer, the cheated voter, not given these basic amenities the rest of the year? What have I done not to deserve this? If it's good for Barack Obama, then it's good enough for me. And I, too, would like to live in a city that Nana Chudasama and Chhagan Bhujbal once promised would be "sundar Mumbai, swaccha Mumbai". For which, of course, there is no answer.

Somebody once said, the people get the government they deserve. And this is true. We promised, after 26/11, to be the change we want. Change, not this! A meek acceptance yet again of government decision for which there is no explanation or reason, just a dismissive excuse... that it has to be done. Well, the damage has been done. To the warm and generous Mumbaikar's hospitable spirit. And to the President of the US of A, we have only this to say, "Welcome, Mr. Obama... and after you've gone, and perhaps miss Mumbai, your Consul General Paul Folmsbee here could send you pictures of the city you never visited."

HERE I COME: Barack Obama, and all around, a city getting dressed up to meet him

Mumbai getting ready for the Most Powerful on Earth

Corruption Per sqaure!!

Corruption| Adarsh housing scam What makes India's property market the biggest sink of black money in the country? The Adarsh Housing Society scam threatens to topple ministers, politicians and military top brass, but that's unlikely to slow property transactions in Mumbai, Delhi or anywhere else in the country. Some of these, according to anecdotal evidence, could involve as much as 60% to 70% of the payment in hard cash.

"Real estate is where most of the cash generated in the economy flows," admits a finance ministry official, who doesn't want to be identified. He should know. In December, the ministry compiled the results from income tax investigations across the country: of the relatively modest Rs 4,500 crore uncovered, nearly half —Rs 2,000 crore—was unearthed from real estate. About a quarter of the total was traced to manufacturing and a tenth to bullion.

We don't notice it often, but despite its success in modern technology and services, India largely remains a cash economy. We pay the cabbie cash; we hand over banknotes to the family help and despite the growth of organized retail, we do most of our shopping at the local kirana store where the gentleman has a sign that reads, "In god we trust, rest only cash."

One such store we visited claimed to service 300 households in the neighbourhood, supplying everything from soap and shampoos to cooking oil, flour, butter, biscuits and even plastic utensils. The owner refused to talk about sales and earnings, but the math wasn't hard. Let's say a household spends Rs 15,000 per month on essentials. This store's takings would be Rs 45 lakh per month.

Retail margins vary widely, from as little as 5% for soap and shampoo to as much as 50% to 100% for food and baltis. Even so, an average margin of say,a third, would leave the store owner with a profit of Rs 15 lakh a month. That's Rs 1.8 crore a year. And it's all cash.

Every time you see a truck drive by, think cash. There is a high chance the trucker has been paid in cash. The average nine-tonne truck charges about Rs 25,000 for a full load on a Delhi-Mumbai run. If it averages a hundred such runs in a year, that's Rs 25 lakh per truck per year, mostly cash. India's trucking industry is heavily fragmented: of the 5.2 million trucks on the road today, more than four million are run by people who own 10 trucks or less.

The taxman's survey found that manufacturing generates a lot of cash. That's surprising because it should be relatively easy to measure – and tax –what comes out of factories. Not quite, explains the finance ministry official. "In the past when we had excise inspectors physically present at excise gates, most factories had a second gate to take untaxed output to the market," he says. "VAT was supposed to change all that, but people have found ways around that too."

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street; If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat; If you get too cold I'll tax the heat; If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet; Taxman! Cos I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman (Taxman, lyrics by George Harrison)

It's hard to tell whether Indira Gandhi was inspired by the Beatles, but from the 1970s, when she hiked top income tax rates to 90%-plus, well heeled Indians have played cat and mouse with the taxman with gusto. In the early 2000s, economist Arun Kumar reckoned that about half of India's wealth was stashed away as black money. In a trillion dollar economy, that's about $500 billion.

Some of this money is salted away overseas. A few years ago, a Ford Foundation-sponsored study by think tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI) found that Indians had salted away $23 to $31 billion dollars overseas in 2006.

India's economy has grown since then and it's safe to assume so has the volume of funds salted away overseas. But even if you double the outflows to $50 billion, there's still another $450 billion sloshing around the country. You can't eat two breakfasts a day, you can't buy too many expensive cars with cash, so what's the best place to park cash? Bullion of course, but real estate is right at the top of the list.

"It's out there, you don't need to hide it, it can't be stolen and the best thing,it doesn't have a price sticker on it telling the government how much you paid for it," explains the head of a Delhi-based real estate brokerage that does deals for high networth clients.

It's not as if governments haven't tried to keep tabs on–and tax—property. For several years, the Delhi government has set something called 'circle rates' – the minimum prices at which property can be traded in the city. It recently hiked those rates, in some areas even doubling them to Rs 125,000 per square metre. That narrowed, but hasn't closed the gap between the official and market rates. For example, the highest circle rate could still be as low as a fifth to a quarter of what you'd actually pay to buy property in those areas.

"The market is changing for the better," says the real estate broker agehead. "More professionals are entering the market, forcing builders to accept cheque payments, forcing the cash component down." But he still reckons that most secondary transactions have a cash component of anywhere between 40% and 50%. The cash market is fickle, he explains. In many cases it depends on the background of the seller and how much he's paid in cash.

"Businessmen have more cash than professionals. And if someone's paid 70% in cash to buy, he'll want the same when he's selling," shrugs the broker, "History matters, you know."