The recent melodrama after the success of Slumdog Millionaire forced me to ask this question to myself. What was so "Indiansih" about the movie that it won so many accolades in India before and after winning eight Oscars. It was not for the first time that A R Rahaman took an international project. If we forget A R Rahaman and Gulzar and the small role that Anil Kapoor played in the movie, there wasn't any other contribution made by an Indian in this movie. All the crew members in the movie were non Indian. So then, why such a big fuss? It won Oscars just like any other good movie would have done. Definitely Slumdog is not an exception, when Hollywood went offshore to pick up a theme. I can say this with much conviction because I have watched the movies Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland.
Indians love hero worship. From Team India players to Bollywood stars to politicians, we are known to put heroes up there. And in a country of a billion-plus, what does one do when one falls short of heroes? Do we outsource them or appropriate anybody remotely Indian? The celebration in India over Bobby Jindal’s elevation as Louisiana Governor proves again that whenever, anywhere, round the globe, we smell Indian we begin following the trails like sniff dogs. Even as his village and the rest of India broke into a jig over his political ascent in the US, very few realized that here was a man who had never even visited India. Mother Teresa born in Macedonia, distressed with the poverty stricken India, claimed us as her (too big!!) foster child. We claimed her as our own and one may argue, that she, too, had lovingly claimed us as her own. Then V S Naipaul created waves in the literary circuit and we went all out to embrace him. When NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, born to an Indian father, went into space, we were one of the first to go to town about her victory leap. We prayed day and night for her safe return. Not that we did any wrong praying for her. But we prayed for her considering her an Indian. Tell me is she really more Indian than American?
Do we as Indians tend to borrow role models because we don’t have enough of our own? Or are Bobby, Sunita, etc really our heroes and we are just doing what suits us best - hero worship?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Bad Health….
Does India really value life above all else?
Shocking. Alarming. A massive crippling crisis. These words ring the chords of another November 26th or July 11th. However, when I’m speaking these words, I’m referring to the state of maternal mortality in the country. According to UN, 80,000 Indian women- pregnant or new mothers- die each year from totally preventable causes such as excessive bleeding, anaemia or ratcheting blood pressure.
Not that I’m playing a blame-game against the government. I’m talking about the same Indian Janta who marched the streets with banners and shouting for resignation of the ministries after the Mumbai mayhem, which they said was totally ‘preventable’ if not the negligence of the government in playing their role. But the same Janta recourses to a mute slumber when millions of mothers or even children under five die from entirely preventable causes such as malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition or starvation. Take maternal mortality itself. Maternal mortality rate in India is six times worse than China, eight times worse than Cuba’s, whose people have been living in embargo for decades. And it’s 14 times worse than Chile’s. The UN estimates that 2.1 million Indian children under the age of five die every year mostly from preventable disease.
Indeed, controlling the causes behind these may not be as forbidding a challenge as containing terrorist. Basic hygiene, clean water, and essential medicine are all that it takes. For instance, potentially fatal dehydration from diarrhea can easily be avoided using sugar, salt and water!!
Security is now being spoken as an election issue. But never has such importance being accorded to human health. Of the 5 percent GDP that Indians spend on health, only .9 percent is supported by government. But we never raise a voice against such issues. Obviously we are too busy fighting for extending the reservation quota or the V-Day stuffs. Whose has got the time to watch these alarming death tolls, when you have got girls in noodle straps boozing in pubs? Nevertheless, dying of these preventable causes belongs to our very own Indian Culture. Unlike in the US and Europe, health has never being a social or political issue, rather say no issue at all. Bad health is something that happens in our country. It’s just in India that you could die even of diarrhea.
Just step back a bit and all the preventable fatalities-whether from terror, disease, dowry or even road accidents- seems to be symptoms of systematic ailment. The cheapest commodity in India today is human life!
Shocking. Alarming. A massive crippling crisis. These words ring the chords of another November 26th or July 11th. However, when I’m speaking these words, I’m referring to the state of maternal mortality in the country. According to UN, 80,000 Indian women- pregnant or new mothers- die each year from totally preventable causes such as excessive bleeding, anaemia or ratcheting blood pressure.
Not that I’m playing a blame-game against the government. I’m talking about the same Indian Janta who marched the streets with banners and shouting for resignation of the ministries after the Mumbai mayhem, which they said was totally ‘preventable’ if not the negligence of the government in playing their role. But the same Janta recourses to a mute slumber when millions of mothers or even children under five die from entirely preventable causes such as malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition or starvation. Take maternal mortality itself. Maternal mortality rate in India is six times worse than China, eight times worse than Cuba’s, whose people have been living in embargo for decades. And it’s 14 times worse than Chile’s. The UN estimates that 2.1 million Indian children under the age of five die every year mostly from preventable disease.
Indeed, controlling the causes behind these may not be as forbidding a challenge as containing terrorist. Basic hygiene, clean water, and essential medicine are all that it takes. For instance, potentially fatal dehydration from diarrhea can easily be avoided using sugar, salt and water!!
Security is now being spoken as an election issue. But never has such importance being accorded to human health. Of the 5 percent GDP that Indians spend on health, only .9 percent is supported by government. But we never raise a voice against such issues. Obviously we are too busy fighting for extending the reservation quota or the V-Day stuffs. Whose has got the time to watch these alarming death tolls, when you have got girls in noodle straps boozing in pubs? Nevertheless, dying of these preventable causes belongs to our very own Indian Culture. Unlike in the US and Europe, health has never being a social or political issue, rather say no issue at all. Bad health is something that happens in our country. It’s just in India that you could die even of diarrhea.
Just step back a bit and all the preventable fatalities-whether from terror, disease, dowry or even road accidents- seems to be symptoms of systematic ailment. The cheapest commodity in India today is human life!
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