slumdog, underbelly, awards, marketing and Gandhi

Last week I went to see slumdog millionaire along with a good friend. After so much hype on both sides it was difficult to avoid this movie. Most of the reviews rated it as four and half star out of five whereas on the other hand there was strong criticism that it had exploited the dark underbelly of India to the hilt. We thought apart from the pleasure of watching an all time great movie that has got 10 nominations for Oscar it will also provide an understanding of the ills that exist in our country. We were disappointed on both these aspects. Overall movie, story, direction and acting wise it was quite ordinary especially when compared to "A Wednesday" or "Taare Zameen Par" and many others. I also don’t understand the reactions of critics regarding the portrayal of the dark underbelly of India. On every aspect we have much better movies where a particular aspect has been depicted in detail. Life in a slum has been depicted very well in Chakra, an acknowledged master piece in Indian Cinema. Let us remember that be it slums, communal violence, prostitution, police torture, underworld, we have better movies that has dealt with an issue in more depth and the ground reality is much worse. Except perhaps the scene of the child coming out through the toilet which was at best disgusting there is no other aspect that was negative enough to justify the hue and cry. Even there, the reality is worse as just two days back I read a news report in the Hindu that a child died when he fell into an open septic tank in Hyderabad. As Mark Twain has rightly pointed out “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't”. What was surprising is not the fact that the movie was quite ordinary but the fact that none of the reviewers dared to give it a lesser rating (I am not sure if we have seen all the ratings). Is it because they are in awe of the awards that the movie has already won or is expected to win? We tend to take awards too seriously. While awards are good we should not forget that each award has been constituted by a particular group and a set of people decide whether someone wins it or not and as we have seen in the past they may have their own agenda. When the corporations from the west were looking for the huge market in India we suddenly started winning consecutive awards of Miss World and Miss Universe. That is not to say that the winners didn’t deserve it but one wonders if it was merit alone or they were at the right place at the right time. This year Padma award was given to someone under the category of culture by mistake. Even Harbhajan who was suspended by IPL and BCCI for slapping a teammate on the field was also selected for a padma award the highest honor in India. So while getting any established award is a good thing we should not forget that there could be aberrations and we should not be afraid to give our independent opinion lest we should look stupid in case it gets selected for a big award. Talking about awards let us remember that even nobel prize has received serious criticism on many occasions including the fact that Gandhi was never selected for the peace prize whereas Henry Kissinger went on to win it. That doesn’t reduce the stature of Gandhi but rather puts a question mark on the nobility of the nobel committee. I of course am not a great admirer of Gandhi as a leader though I think he was a great individual. It takes a lot of wisdom, character and conviction to stitch a pair of sandal for a jailer of the jail in which you have been incarcerated. However at the same time one can’t ignore his reaction to the defeat of Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya by Subhash Bose in 1939 and the fact that Nehru became the first Prime Minister of this country even though Sardar Patel was chosen by 13 of the 16 Pradesh Committees. How could a man like Gnadhi who could make the greatest sacrifice for the country failed to overcome his weakness for Nehru and put him above the interest of the nation? It has been several decades since both Gandhi and Nehru have died. Even today lot of us sincerely believe that Nehru was a great leader whereas the truth is that if we had a good leader in the formative years, India would have been a much better country now. Gandhi was the ultimate marketing guru. Propaganda Minister Joel Goebel demonstrated the potency of propaganda if done effectively. Congress party has exploited that to the hilt. Not that other parties are any better. A nation completely bruised and disillusioned under the draconian rule of Mrs. Gandhi during the emergency chose Janata Dal as its alternative and was betrayed by its shameless leaders who were more interested in the Kursi than healing the wounds of the citizens. Who siad that you can't fool all the people all the time? In fact you don't need to as long as you can fool enough to win the next election and once you win you decide what gets propagated and what gets suppressed. The marketing success of Om Shanti Om and Ghajini is nothing compared to what Gandhi was able to achieve. In any case let all wish that Slumdog Millionaire wins a few Oscars so that a few Indians will achieve the feat and we shall also not worry too much about not winning an Oscar so far. This will also provide some sort benchmark and we can continue to make movies like Taare Zameen Par that we know are btter than the benchmark. Let us also realize that the real underbelly of India lies elsewhere hidden behind our success. What is really disturbing is that we think a student scoring 95.5% is more brilliant or capable than another who has got 95% and a person with a bank balance of few millions is more worthy than another whose networth is negligible. A society where parents are driving their children crazy to score that extra 0.5%, corruption has become a way of life and you are admired as long as you are not caught is the real underbelly that needs to be dealt with. UBS was sued by US and would pay $780 million as penalty apart from disclosing the names of many secret account holders as part of an agreement to avoid prosecution. If we want to really see our underbelly then we should also put pressure on Swiss banks to release the names of leaders having secret accounts there. After all we have more money in Switzerland than any other country. Even a real investigation into Satyam saga without fear or favor can show us our real underbelly to a great extent. Incidentally Raju/Satyam has won many awards including the one for Corporate Governance. This underbelly is not only dark but also frighetening. Let us not refrain from making our independent analysis lest we should appear foolish as that is the essence of democratic spirit.