Poor.........

What happened in these two days, is quite similar to what I said earlier. Film Burfi, is certainly an amazing flick, as it contained the right combination of love, emotions, and one of the finest Indian actor ranbir kapoor. With all these, director has done what should be done with a masterpiece. Considering this it is already announced as india’s entry to the Oscars in the foreign film category. But a masterpiece must be unique in itself. There emerge a controversy that its many characters and scenes were copied from Hollywood movies. Videos of its evidence is running quite popularly in youtube. Though i know the story is awesome, original and expressive, but how could (with huge disappointment), such a film could get an award in Hollywood, when it is found to be copied from their own movies. In an earlier article dated 27 jan'12 I wrote about this tendency of Indian cinema. I am passionate about cinema and want to see bollywood at par in creativity with other nations, but may be I am desiring more. In the second case I am pointing towards team india’s uncertain performance in T-20 worldcup. In one match against  England india performed amazingly well, even its not so good bowlers, unmatched the opponents and got them bowled all out in just 90 runs. But in the very next match of it in super-8 against Australia, india let them win by 9 wickets, showing very poor performance. I must say they have no heart in breaking hearts of millions of its poor fans and viewers in india. As I said in my article dated 27 aug'12 team india’s performance is completely influenced by fate much more then what it should be. I hope people would agree with me keeping their emotions aside that two most loved things in india, cinema and cricket, is not showing the kind of effort and sincerity in fulfilling peoples rising expectations from them. If the things wouldn’t be changed for good, may be one day these fields of entertainment would feel the problem of depression or meltdown and have to search something for their existence.

Health is the real wealth..

We all know about general condition of public health care system in India , low level of cleanliness, general gap between demand and supply, low reliability of quality medical facilities like pathology tests, x-ray machines, etc then what to tell about the availability of ultrasound, ECG, EEG, MRIs, and other advanced facilities, at district hospitals in India. Beside this I think around 50% Indians have to depend totally upon these government hospitals for treatment because they have no other choice due to unaffordable cost of health services in private hospitals. Even then they have to spend around 50% of their average income in health services as even in government hospitals people have to arrange for medicines and others on their own(not to mention things like health insurance as they are very new and even rare for majority of Indian population). Now coming to medicines, pharma chain right from production to retail is making the most profitable business as I don’t think there is any other business with such a huge profit margins(sometimes more than 100%)in India. What to say about governments, they are making huge revenue without doing anything in the form of taxes of varied nature. Striking this phenomena supreme court from long ago directs the governments to provide generic medicines (which are of very low cost with same effectiveness, as they got exemption under intellectual property rights laws) to masses, but they didn’t do anything untill yesterday, when they announced a new pharma policy under which 348 important and most popular medicines  are to be made available in generic form for the people at large. Courts also directs governments to regulate the rates charged at the private hospitals and tests and diagnostics centers for providing services to people, but nothing significant has happened yet. Now cost of private hospitals are regulated in house, according to the commercial principle of demand and supply. Hence even after more than 65 years of independence, fate of Indian population is in the hands of almighty god as in earth even in so called democracies there is no one, who could really bring quick transformation in their lives. Let see what color this initiative of central government spreads to the condition of health services in India.

Justice delayed is justice denied!

It is quite hard to believe that in our country laws related to crime ie. IPC and CrPC, are around 150 years old. Police act was made in 1860, basically to regulate public affairs under colonial environment, but successive governments couldn’t find it important to transform these laws according to present needs and circumstances. Therefore issues related to police-people interface, police highhandedness and peoples overall dissatisfaction is quite common and can be seen on daily basis, in each and every part of country. Since police and criminal laws comes under the state subject list, supreme court many times since quite long gives directives to state governments to change their respective laws, but nothing significant happens. Due to many loopholes and lax system of judiciary perpetrators of crime whether economic or of criminal nature have little deterrent to respect laws in letter and spirit. On the one hand criminals of big repute play with the present system of policing and judiciary, while on the other hand common people don’t want to be part of all this since they have little hope of timely justice and action. Moreover poor have to pay very hard to prove their innocence due to lack of money and influence and have to wait quite long for justice to come over. Today  I saw in a newspaper that supreme court announce life sentence to some criminals alleged of doing murder of 5 people in UP after around 32 years of trials, pathetic!  So we are in a dire need of judicial reforms, reforms which increase the ratio of judges to number of people, which make system of appointments, transfers, promotions etc of judges more fair and transparent, which make overall judiciary more responsible by making it easier for system to investigate against judges of dark repute, which make use of information and communication technology to modernize the judiciary by using its applications in behavioral and practical manner etc. This way prosecution rate would increase and people develop faith and respect for judiciary, which is very important in a successful democracy. Criminals would hesitate in doing crimes due to risk attached and overall crime rate would come down including level of corruption. Hence we can say that these transformations work like an antidote against the present system of disorder and anarchy which is growing in the hearts and minds of more aware and conscious people of India. We hope the governments pay heed to these demands of our democracy which is considered the largest in world over.

Monetary face of entertainment.

Today in a newspaper I saw an amazing fact about Hollywood movies (or say box office). While our bollywood blockbusters could fetch around Rs 200cr worldwide, these Hollywood hits have the overall collection of around Rs 4000cr. This is the collection of an animated hit of 2012 named “ice ige 4”, what I say about the earnings of “Avengers”, since it is around Rs 8000cr. Though we all know that cost of these Hollywood movies are also very huge but in proportion to their income, I don’t think it is more than 20%. Whatever, the point is, why there is so much flow of money in any activity related to cinema and television. This is a fact that whatever shows on screen become famous and important for society in general and people in particular, but only this doesn't clarify the reason behind this limelight and glamourous shining face of entertainment industry at the world level. On the one hand in this globalized world, these medium of entertainments have the direct sponsorship of corporate houses, while on the other hand, many times it is evident that these have illicit channels of financing and funding, which is considered economic crimes in legal circles. Corporate financers find them safe to invest their black money (mainly generated through tax thefts and evasions), and for entertainment industry it is an easy source of money, even having the potential to absorb the shock of related risk. Therefore right from the production to distribution, we can easily find a direct or indirect nexus between them and corporate houses. Even these days looking upon the great prospects in India, we saw direct involvement or increasing interest of MNC’s and Hollywood companies from entertainment industry in Indian market. Let see what color it gives to the colorful field of entertainment in India…….. we only hope that creativity of entertainment sector wouldn’t be lost in this race of money and market.

Not again!

Today I get up with the news, that there is going to be held foreign minister level talk between India and Pakistan……..Not again! Problems between India and Pakistan is not new, and we have talked hundreds of time with the hope of easing our tensions (with the help of different strategies, including people to people contacts , media and trade relations, friendly train and bus service, and cricket) but nothing really worked. There always struck historic emotions(especially defeat in bangladesh war) of gaining and losing between our relations with Pakistan. Pakistan also knew that it has loosen behind India in the race of overall development. Whatever progress they achieved has invested in feeding communal forces, terrorism, intelligence conspiracies and much dreaded arms race with India. After capturing around 1/3^rd of Kashmir in the war of 1948 itself, diplomacy of Pakistan still stuck around issues of Kashmir, sir creek (marshy area along Pakistan-Gujrat border), some rivers flowing through northern india etc, which they point out for infiltrations and shameful terrorist attacks, which cause hundreds of lives in india. I am not getting much deeper in the politics of Kashmir(which consist of jihadis, separatist and communal forces, incompetent governments and development issues,etc), as I think it is our internal matter and once Pakistan give us free hand in tackling these issues without their interference and support to traitors, we shall easily see a progressing and democratic kashmir in recent future. We can observe that these issues have stretched so long that this hatred and suspicion has reached the level of people which is I think is most unfortunate. It is of such nature that beside the politicians, people of both the countries know that these talks aren’t going to give any concrete solutions to our problems with Pakistan. It become a matter of prestige and ego between people of both the countries, against which only strong democratic governments(which is only a hope for Pakistan in recent future) have the courage to adopt some working practical measures. So till then wait and have faith in cricket that it become more friendly and have the potential to make overall atmosphere more cordial, as there is little that the governments are going to do…..