Mayawathi has achieved her ascendancy in UP because of the dissilusionment of the masses with all the previous governments - they have promised much more than they have been able to deliver and the electorate comprising all castes has decided to ditch them if only to teach them a lesson ! The really poor and the dispossesed have been treated shabbily by those in power - you have only to read SHANTARAM by Gregory David Roberts to know how some of the thakurs brutalised the socalled Dalits . India is cursed by its citizens being preoccupied with it.Will God ever bless a country where some of His children look down on His other children ? Touching on a completely different subject -why are the popular film stars allowed to hog almost all the advertisements ? It appears as if the advertising agencies are devoid of any originality of ideas to promote their products.The subsequent amassing of wealth by film stars only perpetuates and increases the disparity between the very rich and the very poor in India.This must definitely lead to frustration among the dispossessed - one of the reasons why the so called Maoists are swelling their ranks by garnering the support of the locals.Many would not want to accept this view but just see what happened in Nepal - the GOI was surprised by this turn of events but a similar scenario is developing in India - there are none so blind as those who will not see ! Will the advertising agencies read this message and take note ?
RE:Popular Film Stars Dominating Advertisements
by Kris iyer on Apr 27, 2008 08:49 AM Permalink
Ramchunder, For a variety of reasons, U.P. has lagged behind, although it is so near New Delhi. For centuries it had been exploited by whichever "empire" was in the area. Even the "Amethi" constituency that had elected the Nehru family members for years, is not really as developed as the least developed constituency in Gujarath or Punjab. Political parties spend too much time "manipulating castes", against each other. The most open example was V.P. Singh - he went the whole way. Unfortunately, he unleashed a caste genie that cannot be easily put back in the bottle. In other words, "Divide and Rule" is the main political device in India today. No time left for REAL work of development. Dalits WERE ill-treated is a fact. But you need to visit India to observe that the voting power of the Dalits has given them REAL power. No point in keeping 1940s and 1950s as the reference points in assessing the position of the Dalits today. The other point you are making is interesting. India is obsessed with money, movies, women and cricket. You cannot blame the advertising agencies for exploiting these obsessions.
RE:Popular Film Stars Dominating Advertisements
by Kris iyer on Apr 27, 2008 09:40 AM Permalink
Ramchundar, In India, you can separate every centre of influence or centre of "opinion-making" into "A DIVIDER" and "A UNITER". There is a third category of individuals, "DISRUPTERS" - you will find them in every Indian office, organisation - they are tolerated in India in a way no other country does. We have some bloody-minded people who support such disrupters. India may suffer the most damage to public property than any other country in the world. That is how unruly we are. Media won't publish statistics on buses burnt etc. Caste-awareness is so strong that most political parties play on it. The one party that tried to unite Hindus, over-coming caste barriers, the BJP, unfortunately got into a mess with "Ayodhya" issue. Strangely, if you seek to unite Hindus, that is communalism and any political party that does it is a "communal force". The Congress and Samajwadi parties posture a lot about "casteless" society but what they do in action is to exploit caste. But the media here has not got the intelligence or will to investigate and expose the so-called "secular" parties, which are in practice, "Caste parties". The English language media sticks to this platform of "secular" and "communal" parties - they won't investigate this division. Incidentally, the muslim-only parties are "secular" for this media. That is how perverted they are. Our entire public debate in India takes place on a number of such distorted platforms. Amazing the little progress that is made.
RE:Popular Film Stars Dominating Advertisements
by Ramchunder Maraj on Apr 27, 2008 01:37 PM Permalink
Thanks ! Kris Iyer for your detailed and thought provoking response.India is indeed in a mess! Do you have any ideas about how things can be sorted out ? I agree with you that the media is partly responsible for this sad state of affairs.One of the major newspapers purporting to represent the whole of India has not published any of my messages highlighting their spinelessness ! Would a newspaper financed by the intelligentsia and NRIs make any impact on a nation obsessed with filmstars and their shenanigans ? As I have mentioned earlier , it is a case of all the Neros in India playing their fiddles while their Rome is burning.How the Chinese must be rubbing their hands in glee as they prepare to seize the whole of northern India while the Indians are lulled into stupefaction with their song and dance (mostly of the " naanga natch" version )obsession !
RE:Popular Film Stars Dominating Advertisements
by Kris iyer on Apr 30, 2008 04:57 PM Permalink
Ramchunder, There is scope for NRIs to enter the English language media. But it has to be a small start, targetting a very specific audience, offering good comparative essays - providing information from abroad that Indian newspapers are not good at. The Hindu, one of our left-wing newspapers [ which won't publish any letters contrary to its ideology - it does not believe in freedom of expression in the same way as Western newspapers ] started a magazine called, "Front Line". It has not done well, because readers could see that they are brain-washing. Your second point abt the quality of Indian movies is also valid. I feel sick at times even to catch a glimpse of the same type of "nanga natch" that is part of every movie here. The dead-habits of our producers, directors and even, song-writers are the reasons why Indian movies have not had such success in other cultures. The story-line is very predictable, the songs are full of words like "mohabbath" "taqdeer" "aank" and so on. If you collect those words and put them through a computer programme you can come up with about 5,000 different songs. Compare these with the songs of a film like "Siddharth" produced by a German director but in Hindi, you will know the difference. Bollywood and Kollywood have reduced the intelligence of our people by about 40%.
