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Step into the intoxicating world of Madhushala – a timeless masterpiece by Harivansh Rai Bachchan. In this episode of our poetry podcast, we explore the deeper meanings behind the symbols of wine (madhu), the tavern (shala), and the drinker (piwane wala).Through a thoughtful conversation between two voices—one as the curious audience, the other as the poetic guide—we reflect on the cultural, spiritual, and philosophical layers of this iconic Hindi poem. Is the Madhushala just about wine, or is it a metaphor for life, death, and liberation?Whether you're a poetry lover or a curious mind, this episode invites you to see beyond the verses and sip slowly from the cup of Bachchan's wisdom.
Hi everyone, thanks for listening. Drop a line or two about the episode! Senior film journalist and author Dilip Thakur joins us to recount memories of covering Hindi cinema in the 80s and the 90s. The excitement of muhurat shots, the glitz of premiere parties, the charm of single screen cinemas, Bachchan media boycott, access to stars, and Mumbai of the old — it's all here. Join us!If you enjoy the podcast, do consider supporting the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/257788/supportFeedback/comments/questions: loveofcinemasf@gmail.comCredits:Produced and hosted by: Himanshu Joglekar (@loveofcinemasf8)Editor: Devika JoglekarMusic: Nakul AbhyankarCopyrights © Love of Cinema 2025Support the showIf you liked the episode and found value, please considering supporting the show. Your support will help me continue making good content for fans of Indian cinema everywhere across the world: https://www.buzzsprout.com/257788/support
Hi everyone, thanks for listening. Drop a line or two about the episode! Deewaar (1975) turns 50 this year. The Bachchan Coolies (Alok Sharma, Diptakirti Chaudhuri and Shiva Krishnamurthy) are back to celebrate the film that proved to be a landmark film not just for Bachchan, Salim-Javed and Yash Chopra but Hindi cinema itself. We discussed how Deewaar is a goldmine of quotable as well as throwaway lines, how Bachchan sensed very early on during the making that this film could be his golden ticket, how the film has loomed large over many films and shows right upto Scam 1992 and Pushpa, where the film sits in top 5 Bachchan, and much more! If you enjoy the podcast, do consider supporting the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/257788/supportFeedback/comments/questions: loveofcinemasf@gmail.comCredits:Produced and hosted by: Himanshu Joglekar (@loveofcinemasf8)Editor: Devika JoglekarMusic: Nakul AbhyankarCopyrights © Love of Cinema 2025Support the showIf you liked the episode and found value, please considering supporting the show. Your support will help me continue making good content for fans of Indian cinema everywhere across the world: https://www.buzzsprout.com/257788/support
BJP's Shaina NC joins Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena after party fields her as candidate, ED chargesheets AAP lawmaker Amanatullah Khan in alleged Delhi Waqf Board scam, Joe Biden Hosts Diwali Celebration At White House, Matthew Wade announces retirement from international cricket, Veteran Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan on Monday presented the ANR National Award 2024, instituted in the name of legendary Telugu actor Akkineni Nageswara Rao, to megastar Chiranjeevi. Nageswara Rao's son and actor Nagarjuna, his family members and several other Telugu film personalities were present on the occasion. Bachchan said he was deeply honoured for having been chosen to honour Chiranjeevi. He thanked Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna and director of 'Kalki' fame Nag Ashwin for making him a part of their films. "I can now proudly say that I am a member of the Telugu film industry. I am proud to be a member of the Telugu film industry," he said. Bachchan has acted in Chiranjeevi's historical Telugu film 'Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy' in 2019, while Nagarjuna and Bachchan acted together in 1992 Hindi movie titled 'Khuda Gawah'.
Kabhi kabhi, mere dil mein, khayaal aata hain...Open Bathroom lo - Raghuveer, Pavani and Sumatheja!____________________Subscribe, and Share!***Patreon: patreon.com/ThyGapInstagram: @_ThyGap |Twitter: @ThyGap |Email: mindthygap@gmail.com |Discord: https://discord.gg/mPS4aNWa94 |All Links: https://linktr.ee/thygap |
Kabhi kabhi, mere dil mein, khayaal aata hain...Open Bathroom lo - Raghuveer, Pavani and Sumatheja!____________________Subscribe, and Share!***Instagram: @_ThyGap |Twitter: @ThyGap |Email: mindthygap@gmail.com |Discord: https://discord.gg/mPS4aNWa94 |All Links: https://linktr.ee/thygap |
The Mohua Show is a weekly podcast about everything from business, technology to art and lifestyle, But done and spoken ईमानदारी सेConnect with UsMohua Chinappa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohua-chinappa/The Mohua Show: https://www.themohuashow.com/Connect with the GuestSMM Ausaja: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smm-ausaja-193a6a3/Follow UsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMohuaShowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/themohuashow/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/themohuashow/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themohuashowFor any other queries EMAILhello@themohuashow.comEpisode Summary: In this insightful conversation, SMM Ausaja, a passionate archivist and film historian, takes us through his remarkable journey of preserving Indian cinema's rich legacy. From humble beginnings in Kanpur, collecting Amitabh Bachchan postcards, to spearheading the preservation of cinema at Osians, Ausaja discusses the challenges of archiving and the passion driving his work. He shares fascinating anecdotes, including Bachchan's lesser-known early struggles and his admiration for icons like Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Ausaja delves into the artistry behind film posters and the importance of preserving this "dead art." His collaborations with Bengali cinema and his efforts to raise awareness about forgotten cinematic legends highlight his dedication to the cause.Chapters:00:00 - Highlights01:39 - Introduction03:14 - From Postcards to Preservation: The Early Days of a Film Collector04:00 - Expanding Horizons in Mumbai05:36 - The Magic of Amitabh Bachchan: A Fan's Journey07:03 - Entering the World of Cinema: A Career in Archiving08:48 - Bachchan: The Saga of Excellence – 14 Years in the Making09:43 - Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan: Poetry, Politics, and Pandit Nehru's Influence12:41 - BTS Stories About Amitabh Bachchan14:50 - The Lost Art: Hand-Designed Posters and Their Legacy17:49 - Relationship with The Film Fraternity19:00 - Lesser Known Personalities From Films21:22 - Preserving India's Film Heritage: Challenges and Hopes for the Future23:39 - Bengali Cinema: Satyajit Ray, Suchitra Sen, and a Collector's TributeDisclaimerThe views expressed by our guests are their own. We do not endorse and are not responsible for any views expressed by our guests on our podcast and its associated platforms. #TheMohuaShow #MohuaChinappa #Podcast #IndianCinema #Amitabh Bachchan #BachchanFamily #Aishwarya Rai Bachchan #JayaBachchan #HarivanshRaiBachchan #CinemaHeritage #FilmPreservation #BollywoodHistory #AmitabhBachchanLegacy #IndianFilmArchive #PosterArt#BengaliCinema #SatyajitRay #FilmCollecting #CinemaCulture #FilmMemorabilia #BollywoodPoster #HarivanshRaiBachchan #PreserveThePast #CinemaIcons #Arts #PodcastEpisode Thanks for Listening!
We continue the tricky journey of following Amitabh Bachchan's career through its most treacherous stretch: the '90s. Show notes: Thank you DT24x Time for a Tezaab rewatch? The Big B recap Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Begun, the Dadscension has Khuda Gawah Buzkashi, the national sport of Afghanistan Why did Badshah Khan actually go to jail? Amitabh Bachchan's School for Gifted Youngsters (INTERVAL "Sona Sona" from Major Saab) Major Saab Rushed ending Medical beards Matt considers joining the Indian Army after a decade of propaganda Sooryavansham A passing of the torch ... to himself Justice for Karishma The Good Animal? The danger in looking at a career from outside Mohabbatein was discussed in episode 32, "Travelling in the Love Lane: The Films of Aditya Chopra" Check out Bollywood Drafts! NEXT TIME: Hindi Horror Halloween X Find us on Apple Podcasts! and Stitcher! and audioBoom! and iHeartRadio! and Spotify! and Google Podcasts! and Saavn! and Hubhopper! Thank you to Becca Dalke for the artwork! Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook! #AmitabhBachchan, #KhudaGawah, #MajorSaab, #Sooryavansham, #AjayDevgn, #AnupamKher, #Sridevi
Welcome to another episode of A Century Of Stories presented by IDFC FIRST Bank! This week, we look back at the 'Angry Young Man' of Indian cinema. Amitabh Bachchan and his persona redefined the image of the hero during the 1970s and 1980s. His films captured the simmering anger and rebellious spirit of the youth, reflecting the socio-political unrest of the time. With his intense eyes and powerful voice, Bachchan became more than just an actor; he became a symbol of resistance against societal injustices. His characters often portrayed a man fighting against corruption and inequality, resonating deeply with audiences and leaving an indelible mark on Indian cinema. Subscribe for more such inspiring stories! New episodes out every Monday! #AngryYoungMan #IndianCinema #AmitabhBachchan #ACenturyOfStories Open IDFC FIRST Bank savings account : https://www.idfcfirstbank.com/personal-banking/accounts/savings-account?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=June&utm_content=COS Know more about Zero Fee Banking : https://www.idfcfirstbank.com/getmorefromyourbank?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=centuryofstories&utm_campaign=cosepi1&utm_term=Aug23 Follow ‘A Century of Stories' official Instagram handle at @acenturyofstories Subscribe to A Century of Stories YT channel Listen to A Century of Stories across Audio Platforms Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Gaana | Amazon Music | Jio Saavn Follow our host Kunal on Instagram at @kunalvijayakar And don't forget to rate us!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan is set to star in the upcoming drama film Ghoomer. Directed by R Balki, the film also stars Saiyami Kher in the lead alongside Bachchan. The plot pivots around a paraplegic sports star who thrives as a cricket player under the supervision and guidance of her mentor. Angad Bedi and Shabana Azmi essay supporting roles in the film and the trailer is set for an August 3rd launch. Ghoomer will hit theatres on August 18.
Strap in Lovers, we're going on an international chase to catch Asia's biggest criminal mastermind, Don. Show notes: It's not only difficult to catch Don (1978), it's impossible “Bachchan ‘76 - ‘78″ The Making of Don Don: The Chase Begins Again Petronas Towers, as seen in Entrapment Songs: “Yeh Mera Dil,” “Main Hoon Don,” and “Khaike Paan Banaraswala” Comparisons to contemporary Bollywood action Don has read The Game (INTERVAL (“Aaj Ki Raat” from Don: The Chase Begins Again) Don 2 Another stacked year, and a great year for the Akhtars Hallo Berlin! Songs: “Zaraa Dil Ko Thaam Lo” and “Dushman Mera Don 2″ Mission: Impossible similarities Where will they go in Don 3? Suchin Mehrotra‘s The Streaming Show Next time: Pilot Season Vol. 2 Our sponsor this episode is #BollywoodMonsterMashup, the LARGEST South Asian festival in Canada and features FREE performances by international Bollywood stars, food, shopping, dance performances, a laser show and more! The whole family can enjoy this monstrous event with FREE entry, FREE parking and FREE family activities. Come dance, sing and feast with us at this one-of-a-kind production taking place at Mississauga Celebration Square! Find us on Apple Podcasts! and Stitcher! and audioBoom! and iHeartRadio! and Spotify! and Google Podcasts! Thank you to Becca Dalke for the artwork! Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook! #Don, #Don:TheChaseBeginsAgain, #Don2, #ShahRukhKhan, #PriyankaChopra, #PriyankaChopraJonas, #AmitabhBachchan, #FarhanAkhtar, #JavedAkhtar, #BomanIrani, #ArjunRampal, #OmPuri, #KareenaKapoor, #KunalKapoor, #LaraDutta, #HrithikRoshan, #Bollywood, #HindiCinema
Welcome to Cyrus Says!Use the Coupon code 'CYRUS2023' to get Rs. 4799/- off on your EVEN subscription.Become a member of Club Cyrus SaysOn Cyrus Says this week, Cyrus is joined by celebrity photographer - Avinash Gowariker. Avinash chatted w/ Cyrus about some of his memorable shoots with the biggest names in the industry, like Amitabh Bachchan, Amir Khan, Salman Khan, Sridevi & more. He also shared why people's thinking of Mr. Bachchan being intimidating is wrong. And he quizzed Cyrus with some serious cricketing questions and, of course, won the round.Tune in for this and much more!Follow Avinash on Instagram at @avigowarikerSubscribe to the Cyrus Says YouTube Channel for video episodes!Check out the Cyrus Says Official MerchListen to Cyrus Says across Audio PlatformsIVM Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Gaana | Amazon Music | Jio SaavnEmail your AMA questions to us at whatcyrussays@gmail.comDon't forget to follow Cyrus Says' official Instagram handle at @whatcyrussaysConnect with Cyrus on socials:Instagram | TwitterAnd don't forget to rate us!-x-x-xDisclaimer: The views, opinions, and statements expressed in the episodes of the shows hosted on the IVM Podcasts network are solely those of the individual participants, hosts, and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of IVM Podcasts or its management. IVM Podcasts does not endorse or assume responsibility for any content, claims, or representations made by the participants during the shows. This includes, but is not limited to, the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided. Any reliance you place on such information is strictly at your own risk. IVM Podcasts is not liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages arising out of or in connection with the use or dissemination of the content featured in the shows. Listener discretion is advised.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
सिद्धि नवे की फरमाइश पर---- मधुशाला_हरिवंशराय बच्चन Harivansh Rai Bachchan was an Indian poet and writer of the Nayi Kavita literary movement of early 20th century --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/katha-amrit/message
Manoj Bajpayee is all set to enthral us once more with his performance. He sits down for a no holds barred chat with our very own RJ Stutee in this latest episode of Aur Batao. From confessing that he is brutal with himself and rarely gets impressed by his own performance to talking about being a Bachchan fan, Manoj talks about what it takes to get into the skin of any character. His latest film Sirf Ek Bandaa kaafi hai has been directed by Apoorv Singh Karki and releases on Zee5 on 23rd May 2023.
Listeners join in to chat about some of our favorite films of 2022! Sandeep Padhi, Amey Pandit and Anirudh Somani join me as we reflect on RRR, Gangubai, Me Vasantrao, Kantara, Monica O My Darling, Jhund, Laal Singh Chaddha, Toolsidas Jr., and Jersey. We also chatted about Rajamouli, RRR's crossover success, SRK's Pathaan and more. Join us!Feedback/comments/questions: loveofcinemasf@gmail.comCredits:Produced and hosted by: Himanshu Joglekar (@loveofcinemasf8)Editor: Devika JoglekarMusic: Nakul AbhyankarCopyrights © Love of Cinema 2022Support the show
India Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Lynnette Quast and Thomas Crafts were high school sweethearts when they got married at 21 in august of 1985. For a few years, everything is great and they're building a good life together. After Lynnette gets pregnant with their first child, though, their relationship starts to deteriorate and would come to a head 8 years later in July of 1999If you or anyone you know is in a domestic Violence situation, know that their are resources out there to help.The National Domestic Violence Hotline has multiple means of contact:thehotline.orgCall: 1(800)-799-(SAFE)Text: START to 88788it's never too late to ask for help.Associated Press. (2011, May 16). Man convicted of killing wife to be released (UPDATE). Wisconsin Law Journal - WI Legal News & Resources. https://wislawjournal.com/2011/05/15/man-convicted-of-killing-wife-to-be-released/Bachchan, V. (2021, February 19). Lynnette Craft Murder: Who Killed Her? Where is Thomas Craft Now? The Cinemaholic. https://thecinemaholic.com/lynnette-craft-murder-who-killed-her-where-is-thomas-craft-now/CBS Detroit. (2011, May 15). Husband Convicted Of Dismembering Wife To Be Released From Prison After 11 Years. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/husband-convicted-of-dismembering-wife-to-be-released-from-prison-after-11-years/Dungjen, T. (2011, May 15). Man convicted in grisly killing of wife to be released in June. The Blade. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://www.toledoblade.com/Courts/2011/05/15/Man-convicted-in-grisly-killing-of-wife-to-be-released-in-June.htmlFatal Vows: Deadly Obsession. (2017, July 8). [Video]. Investigation Discovery. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/video/fatal-vows-investigation-discovery/deadly-obsessionLynnette Marie Quast Craft (1962-1999) - Find a. . . (n.d.). https://nl.findagrave.com/memorial/113976645/lynnette-marie-craftNelson, A. (2022, December 2). Scary and Real! 20 True Crime Stories That Would Be Great Movies. Parade: Entertainment, Recipes, Health, Life, Holidays. https://parade.com/culture/true-crime-storiesReyes, T. (2017, July 8). Lynette Quast, Tom Craft: Dismembered Mother's Head Found, Body Parts In McDonald's Dump, On ID's ‘Fatal Vows.' The Inquisitr. https://www.inquisitr.com/4353476/lynette-quast-tom-craft-dismembered-mothers-head-found-body-parts-in-mcdonalds-dump-on-ids-fatal-vowsSign the Petition. (n.d.). Change.org. https://www.change.org/p/pass-lynnette-s-lawState v. Craft. (2003). [Press release]. https://cases.justia.com/ohio/sixth-district-court-of-appeals/2003-ohio-68.pdfState v. Craft, 2003-Ohio-68Victim's family concerned after convicted killer's release | ABC30 Fresno | abc30.com. (2022, January 19). ABC30 Fresno. https://abc30.com/archive/8202320/If you enjoyed learning about this case, check out our Instagram @bookofthedeadpodShoot us an email with a case suggestions or just say "hi" at bookofthedeadpod@gmail.comAnd don't forget to rate and review and share with your friendsMuch Love-Courtney and Lisa
Two film fans get together to reminisce the greatness of one Amitabh Bachchan. It is an incredibly difficult exercise to navigate through a great career like Bachchan's which has lasted the test of time over five decades. That being said the hosts - Saahil and Saqib believe the peak Bachchan years were the late 70's and especially the phase titled The Angry Young Man. During this phase Bachchan had given five great performance where his character was named Vijay and all five of these screenplays were scripted by the talented duo of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar.It's an homage into the journey of Salim-Javed's famously penned down iconic characters - Vijay Varma(Deewar), Vijay Khanna(Zanjeer), Vijay Pal Singh(Kala Pathar), and Vijay Kumar(Trishul and Shakti).
Allu Arjun आए Rishab की Support में Jaya Bachchan को बताया पागल | Allu Arjun | Rishab Shetty
Kangana Ranaut की हुई पहली बार ऐसी बेज्जती | Jaya Bachchan Insulted Kangana Ranaut | Kangana Ranaut
We go back to the 1980s to catch up with two testosterone-tastic action films featuring your favourite hero and ours, Amitabh Bachchan. Notes: The Bachchan Series The never-ending search for movies with subtitles We couldn't find 1986 or 1988 Mard Best horse and best dog Is Amrita Singh into BDSM? Jabisco's many costume changes Hitchcock's pure cinema Is this The Mummy of its time “Mard Tangewala,” “Sun Rubia Tumse Pyar Ho Gaya,” “Hum To Tambu Mein Bambu” and “Buri Nazarwale” Would kids like this movie? (INTERVAL (“Will You Marry Me” from Mard) Toofan The point at which the double roll switches “Jadugar Ka Jadu Hathoon Kamal Hai” Bollywood magicians Jaadugar Matt loves Pran Erin watched The Graduate for It Pod To Be You Next time: Hindi Horror Halloween Bollywood is For Lovers is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network Check out Alberta Blue Cross! Visit the connectFirst Credit Union! Find us on Apple Podcasts! and Stitcher! and audioBoom! and iHeartRadio! and Spotify! and Google Podcasts! Thank you to Becca Dalke for the artwork! Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook! #AmitabhBachchan, #AmritaSingh, #DaraSingh, #NirupaRoy, #PremChopra, #KamalKapoor, #Mard, #ManmohanDesai, #Toofan, #KetanDesai, #MeenakshiSeshadri, #FarooqShaikh, #Pran, #HindiCinema, #Bollywood
It's back to school season, at least for some people, and we are hitting the books with two films about the right to education. Notes: Paani on launchgood.com, donations to Pakistani refugees floods.pk, a list of charities in the region trying to help 67th Filmfare Awards These awards are just copying the BiFL Awards We need to watch Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi Erin loves back to school shopping and Canadian department stores Taare Zameen Par Akira Kurosawa Dyslexia Aamir Khan is a magic art fairy (INTERVAL (“Jame Raho” from Taare Zameen Par) Hindi Medium The film actually came out after the 2016 Uri Attack, which led to ban of Pakistani actors in Bollywood Angrezi Medium Deepak Dobriyal redeems himself in our eyes Irrfan Khan's eyes Next time: Bachchan! Bollywood is For Lovers is a member of the Alberta Podcast Network Check out Alberta Blue Cross! Visit the Edmonton Community Foundation website! Find us on Apple Podcasts! and Stitcher! and audioBoom! and iHeartRadio! and Spotify! and Google Podcasts! Thank you to Becca Dalke for the artwork! Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook! #Bollywood, #HindiCinema, #Filmfare, #FilmfareAwards, #67thFilmfareAwards, #TaareZameenPar, #AamirKhan, #DarsheekSafary, #TiscaChopra, #VipinSharma, #TanayChheda, #SachetEngineer, #AmoleGupte, #DeepaBhatia, #HindiMedium, #SaketChaudhary, #IrrfanKhan, #SabaQamar, #DishitaSehgal, #AmritaSingh, #DeepakDobriyal, #TillotamaShome, #NehaDhupia, #SanjaySuri
Happy Independence Day!- Pranay Kotasthane and RSJThis newsletter can often seem pessimistic about India. That isn’t true, though. Every year, on Independence Day, we remind ourselves and our readers why we write this newsletter. This is how we ended the Independence Day edition of 2020:“What we have achieved so far is precious. That’s worth reminding ourselves today. We will go back to writing future editions lamenting our state of affairs.We will do so because we know it’s worth it.” This year we thought it would be fun (?) to run through every year since 1947 and ask ourselves what happened in the year that had long-term repercussions for our nation. This kind of thing runs a serious risk. It can get tedious and all too familiar. Most of us know the landmark events of recent history and what they meant for the nation. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve given an honest try (of over 8000 words) to see if there’s a different way of looking at these familiar events and their impact on us. Here we go.1947 - 1960: Sense Of A Beginning 1947Perhaps the most significant “What, if?” question for independent India surfaced on 17th August 1947 when the Radcliffe Line was announced. The partition of the Indian subcontinent has cast a long shadow. What if it had never happened? What if Nehru-Jinnah-Gandhi were able to strike a modus vivendi within a one-federation framework? These questions surface every year around independence.The indelible human tragedy of the partition aside, would an Akhand Bharat have served its citizens better? We don’t think so. We agree with Ambedkar’s assessment of this question. In Pakistan or the Partition of India, he approaches the question with detachment and realism, concluding that the forces of “communal malaise” had progressed to such an extent that resisting a political division would have led to a civil war, making everyone worse off. The partition must have been handled better without the accompanying humanitarian disaster. But on the whole, the partition was inevitable by 1947.“That the Muslim case for Pakistan is founded on sentiment is far from being a matter of weakness; it is really its strong point. It does not need deep understanding of politics to know that the workability of a constitution is not a matter of theory. It is a matter of sentiment. A constitution, like clothes, must suit as well as please. If a constitution does not please, then however perfect it may be, it will not work. To have a constitution which runs counter to the strong sentiments of a determined section is to court disaster if not to invite rebellion.” [Read the entire book here]1948What if Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t killed that year? How would the course of our history change? Gandhi spoke like an idealist and worked like a realist. He was possibly the most aware of the gap between the lofty ideals of our constitution and the reality of the Indian minds then. He knew the adoption of the constitution was only half the work done. He’d likely have devoted the rest of his life to building a liberal India at the grassroots level. His death pushed a particular stream of right-wing Hindu consciousness underground. We still carry the burden of that unfinished work.1949The Constituent Assembly met for the first time in December 1946. By November 26th 1949, this assembly adopted a constitution for India. Even a half-constructed flyover in Koramangala has taken us five years. For more context, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly began work on 10th August 1947, and their first constitution came into force in March 1956, only to be abrogated two years later. India’s founding fathers and mothers were acutely aware that they were elite, unelected, and unrepresentative of the median Indian. They dared to imagine a new nation-state while grappling with that period's harsh economic, social, and political realities. Their work should inspire us to strengthen, improve, and rebuild—but never to give up on—the Republic of India.For more, check out the miracle that is India’s Constitution in our Republic Day 2021 special edition.1950We have written about our Constitution a number of times. It is an inspiring and audacious document in its ambition to shape a modern nation. It has its flaws. Some consider it too liberal; others think it makes the State overbearing. Some find it too long; others feel it comes up short. This may all be true. However, there is no doubt our constitution has strengthened our democracy, protected the weak and continues to act as a tool for social change. It is our North Star. And a damn good one at that. 1951Few post-independence institutions have stood the test of time as the Finance Commission (FC), first established in 1951. In federal systems, horizontal and vertical imbalances in revenue generation and expenditure functions are commonplace. Closing the gap requires an impartial institution that is well-regarded by various levels of government and the people. The Finance Commission is that institution.It’s not as if it didn’t face any challenges. As a constitutional body established under article 280 of the Constitution, it was sidelined by an extra-constitutional and powerful Planning Commission until 2014. But we have had 15 FCs in total, and each key tax revenue-sharing recommendation has become government policy.1952Our Constitution adopted a universal adult franchise as the basis for elections. Every citizen was to be part of the democratic project. There was to be no bar on age, sex, caste or education. And this was to be done in one of the most unequal societies in the world. The ambition was breathtaking. To put this in context, women were allowed to vote in Switzerland only in 1971. Not only did we aim for this, but we also moved heaven and earth to achieve it in 1952. In his book India After Gandhi, Ram Guha describes the efforts of the government officials led by the first Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen, to reach the last man or woman for their ballot. The elites may lament vote bank politics or cash for votes scams and question the wisdom of universal franchise. But we shouldn’t have had it any other way. And, for the record, our people have voted with remarkable sophistication in our short independent history. 1953 For a new nation-state, the Republic of India punched above its weight in bringing hostilities on the Korean peninsula to an end. Not only did the Indian government’s work shape the Armistice Agreement, but it also chaired a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC) that was set up to decide the future of nearly 20,000 prisoners of war from both sides. This experience during the Cold War strengthened India’s advocacy of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). 1954Article 25 guaranteed the freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate religion to all citizens. But how does one define a religious practice? And can a practice under the garb of religion breach the boundary of individual rights or public morality? This is a familiar conflict zone in secular States and would inevitably show up in India because everything in India can be construed as a religious practice. Like Ambedkar said during the constituent assembly debates:“The religious conceptions in this country are so vast that they cover every aspect of life from birth to death…there is nothing extraordinary in saying that we ought to strive hereafter to limit the definition of religion in such a manner that we shall not extend it beyond beliefs and such rituals as may be connected with ceremonials which are essentially religious..."In 1954, the Supreme Court gave a landmark judgment on what constitutes a religious practice in what’s known as the Shirur Math case. It held that the term religion would cover all practices integral to that religion. Further, the Court will determine what practice will be deemed essential with reference to doctrines within that religion itself.This test of ‘essentiality’ in religion has kept the public, the legislature and the courts busy since (entry of women in Sabarimala, headscarf in Islam, to name two). The outcome has bent towards individual liberty in most contexts, but the ambiguity in the definition of essential means it could go the other way too.1955Another wild "What, if” moment that we like to recall relates to Milton Friedman’s visit to the Indian finance ministry in 1955. What shape would India’s economy have taken had his seminal document “A Memorandum to the Government of India 1955” been heeded?In this note, Friedman gets to the root of India’s macroeconomic problems—an overburdened investment policy, restrictive policies towards the private sector, erratic monetary policy, and a counterproductive exchange control regime. Being bullish about India’s prospects was courageous when most observers wrote epitaphs about the grand Indian experiment. But Friedman was hopeful and critical both.The Indian government, for its part, was humble enough to seek the advice of foreigners from opposing schools of thought. At the same time, it was too enamoured by the Soviet command and control model. In fact, many items from Friedman’s note can be repurposed as economic reforms even today.Here’re our points from Friedman’s note.1956The idea of One Nation, One ‘X’ (language, election, song, tax, choose any other) is both powerful and seductive. It is not new, however. Back in the 50s, there was a view that we must not strengthen any identity that divides us. So when the question of reorganisation of the colonial provinces into new states came up, an argument was made that it must be done on factors other than language. Nehru, ever the modernist, thought the creation of language-based states would lead us down the path of ethnic strife. The example of nation-states in Europe built on language in the 19th century and the two devastating world wars thereafter were too recent then. So, he demurred.Agitation, hunger strikes and deaths followed before we chose language as the primary basis for reorganising the states. It was perhaps the best decision taken by us in the 50s. As the years since have shown, only a polity assured of its heritage and identity will voluntarily accept diversity. The melding of our diversity into a single identity cannot be a top-down imposition. We should never forget this.1957India’s economic strategy of state-led industrialisation through deficit financing in pursuit of import substitution took off with the Second Five-Year Plan. Heavy industries needed imported machinery, inflating India’s import bill. Since the exchange rate was pegged to the British pound, it meant that Indian exports became pricier. This imbalance between rising imports and flagging exports was financed by running down the foreign exchange reserves. By 1957, India witnessed its first foreign exchange crisis. This event had a significant effect on India’s economy. Instead of devaluing the rupee, the government opted for foreign exchange budgeting - every investment in a project needed government approval for the foreign exchange required to buy foreign inputs. The immediate crisis in 1957 led to controls that worsened India’s economic prospects over the next 35 years.1958The government nationalised all insurance companies a couple of years earlier. India hadn’t gotten into a socialist hell yet, so this was a bit of a surprise. The proximate cause was a fraud that few private life insurers had committed by misusing the policyholders’ funds to help their industrialist friends. A run-of-the-mill white-collar crime that should have been dealt with by the criminal justice system. But the government viewed it as a market failure and moved to nationalise the entire industry. It would take another 45 years for private players to come back to insurance. Insurance penetration in India meanwhile remained among the lowest in the world. Also, in 1958, Feroze Gandhi took to the floor of Lok Sabha to expose how LIC, the state insurer, had diverted its funds to help Haridas Mundhra, a Calcutta-based businessman. The same crime that private insurers had done.The government would repeat this pattern of getting involved where there was no market failure. The outcomes would inevitably turn out to be worse. Seven decades later, we remain instinctively socialist and wary of capital. Our first reaction to something as trifling as a surge price by Ola or a service charge levied by restaurants is to ask the State to interfere.1959“The longest guest of the Indian government”, the 14th Dalai Lama pre-empted the Chinese government’s plans for his arrest and escaped to India. Not only did India provide asylum, but it also became home to more than a hundred thousand Tibetans. Because of the bold move by the Indian government in 1959, the Central Tibetan Administration continues its struggle as a Nation and a State in search of regaining control over their Country to this day. This event also changed India-China relations for the decades to come.1960Search as hard as we might; we hardly got anything worth discussing for this year. Maybe we were all sitting smugly waiting for an avalanche of crisis to come our way. Steel plants, dams and other heavy industries were being opened. The budget outlay for agriculture was reduced. We were talking big on the international stage about peace and non-alignment. But if you had looked closer, things were turning pear-shaped. The many dreams of our independence were turning sour.The 60s: Souring Of The Dream1961The Indian Army marched into Goa in December 1961. The 450-year Portuguese colonial rule ended, and the last colonial vestige in India was eliminated. It took this long because Portugal’s dictator Antonio Salazar stuck to his guns on controlling Portuguese colonies in the subcontinent, unlike the British and the French. Portugal’s membership in NATO further made it difficult for the Indian government to repeat the operations in Hyderabad and Junagadh. Nevertheless, that moment eventually arrived in 1961. This was also the year when India’s first indigenous aircraft, the HAL HF-24 Marut, took its first flight. Made in Bengaluru by German designer Kurt Tank, the aircraft was one of the first fighter jets made outside the developed world. The aircraft served well in the war that came a decade later. It never lived up to its promises, but it became a matter of immense pride and confidence for a young nation-state.1962Among the lowest points in the history of independent India. We’ve written about our relationship with China many times in the past editions. The 1962 war left a deep impact on our psyche. We didn’t recover for the rest of the decade. The only good thing out of it was the tempering of idealism in our approach to international relations. That we take a more realist stance these days owes its origins to the ‘betrayal’ of 1962.1963ISRO launched the first sounding rocket in November 1963. Over the years, this modest beginning blossomed into a programme with multiple launch vehicles. The satellite programmes also took off a few years later, making India a mighty player in the space sector. 1964If you told anyone alive in 1964 that less than 60 years later, Nehru would be blamed for all that was wrong with India by a substantial segment of its population, they would have laughed you out of the room. But here we are in 2022, and there’s never a day that passes without a WhatsApp forward that talks about Nehru’s faults. It seems inevitable that by the time we celebrate the centenary of our independence, he would be a borderline reviled figure in our history. But that would be an aberration. In the long arc of history, he will find his due as a flawed idealist who laid the foundation of modern India. 1964 was the end of an era.1965As the day when Hindi would become the sole official language of the Indian Union approached, the anti-Hindi agitation in the Madras presidency morphed into riots. Many people died in the protests, and it led to the current equilibrium on language policy. The “one State, one language” project moved to the back burner, even as Hindi became an important link language across the country. The lesson was the same as in the case of the 1956 states reorganisation: melding our diversity into a single identity cannot be a top-down imposition.1966The two wars in the decade's first half, the inefficient allocation of capital driven by the second and third five-year plans, and the consecutive monsoon failure meant India was on the brink in 1966. The overnight devaluation of the Rupee by over 50 per cent, the timely help with food grains from the US and some providence pulled us back from it. The green revolution followed, and we have remained self-sufficient in food since.The experience of being on the brink taught us nothing. We still believe in the Pigouvian theory of market failure, where government policies are expected to deliver optimality. Strangely, the idea that we reform only in crisis has only strengthened. There cannot be worse ways to change oneself than under the shadow of a crisis. But we have made a virtue out of it.1967This was the year when the Green Revolution took baby steps, and the Ehlrichian prediction about India’s impending doom was put to rest. But it was also the year when the Indian government made a self-goal by adopting a policy called items reserved for manufacture exclusively by the small-scale sector. By reserving whole product lines for manufacturing by small industries, this policy kept Indian firms small and uncompetitive. And like all bad ideas, it had a long life. The last 20 items on this list were removed only in April 2015. We wrote about this policy here. 1968In the past 75 years, we have reserved some of our worst public policies for the education sector. We have an inverted pyramid. A handful of tertiary educational institutions produce world-class graduates at the top. On the other end, we have a total failure to provide quality primary education to the masses. It is not because of a lack of intent. The National Education Policy (NEP) that first came up in 1968 is full of ideas, philosophy and a desire to take a long-term view about education in India. But it was unmoored from the economic or social reality of the nation. We often say here that we shouldn’t judge a policy based on its intentions. That there’s no such thing as a good policy but bad implementation because thinking about what can work is part of policy itself. NEP is Exhibit A in favour of this argument.1969 The nationalisation of 14 private-sector banks was a terrible assault on economic freedom under the garb of serving the public interest. The sudden announcement of a change in ownership of these banks was challenged in the courts, but the government managed to thwart it with an ordinance. Fifty years later, we still have low credit uptake even as governments continue to recapitalise loss-making banks with taxpayer money.1970The dominant economic thinking at the beginning of the 70s in India placed the State at the centre of everything. But that wasn’t how the world was moving. There was a serious re-examination of the relationship between the State and the market happening elsewhere. The eventual shift to a deregulated, small government economic model would happen by the decade's end. This shift mostly passed India by. But there were a few voices who questioned the state orthodoxy and, in some ways, sowed the intellectual seeds for liberalisation in future. In 1970, Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai published their monograph, India: Planning for Industrialisation, which argued that our economic policies since independence had crippled us. It showed with data how central planning, import substitution, public sector-led industrial policy and license raj have failed. But it found no takers. In fact, we doubled down on these failed policies for the rest of the decade. It was a tragedy foretold. What if someone had gone against the consensus and paid attention to that paper? That dissent could perhaps have been the greatest service to the nation. It is useful to remember this today when any scepticism about government policies is met with scorn. Dissent is good. The feeblest of the voice might just be right.The 70s: Losing The Plot1971Kissinger visited China in July 1971 via Pakistan. Responding to the changing world order, India and the USSR signed an Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in August of that year. India had become an ally of the USSR. Four months later, the India-Pakistan war pitted India and the USSR against Pakistan, China, and the US. The Indian strategic community came to internalise USSR as a super-reliable partner and the West as a supporter of India’s foes. It took another three decades, and the collapse of the USSR, for a change in this thinking. Even today, Russia finds massive support in the Indian strategic establishment. We had problematised this love for Russia here. 1972India won the 1972 war with Pakistan and liberated Bangladesh. India’s unilateral action stopped a humanitarian disaster. The victory was decisive, and the two parties met in Simla to agree on the way forward. This should have been a slam dunk for India in resolving festering issues on the international boundary, Kashmir and the role of the third parties. But international diplomacy is a two-level game, and Bhutto played that to his advantage. We explained this in edition 30. We paid a high price for giving away that win to Bhutto.1973The Kesavananda Bharti verdict of the Supreme Court rescued the Republic of India from a rampaging authoritarian. The basic structure doctrine found a nice balance to resolve the tension between constitutional immutability and legislative authority to amend the constitution. Bibhu Pani discussed this case in more detail here. 1974You are the State. Here are your crimes. You force import substitution, you regulate the currency, you misallocate capital, you let the public sector and a handful of licensed private players produce inferior quality products at a high cost, you raise the marginal tax rate at the highest level to 97 per cent, you run a large current account deficit, and you cannot control Rupee depreciation.Result?People find illegal ways to bring in foreign goods, currency and gold. And so was born the villain of every urban Bollywood film of the 70s. And a career option for a capitalist-minded kid like me. The Smuggler.But the State isn’t the criminal here. The smuggler is. And the State responded with a draconian law to beat all others. An act the knowledge of whose expanded form would serve kids well in those school quizzes of the 80s. COFEPOSA — The Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Act. A predatory state's defining feature is how it forces ordinary citizens to do unlawful activities. COFEPOSA was the mother of such laws. It has spawned many children. 1975This blank editorial by the Indian Express says it all. 1976We view our population as a core problem. The politicians, the public servants and the ordinary citizens share this view. We don’t want to acknowledge our governance deficit. Calling population a problem allows us to shirk the responsibility of running a functioning State. We have written about the flaw in thinking about the population as a problem on many occasions.How far could we go to control the population? Well, in 1976, during the peak of the Emergency, the State decided to sterilise male citizens against their wishes. This madness ended when the Emergency was lifted. But even today calls for population control keep coming back. 1977The first non-Congress union government was an important milestone for the Indian Republic. While Morarji Desai’s government did reverse the worst excesses of the Emergency rule, its economic policies were less successful. This period went on to witness a demonetisation in search of black money (2016 from the future says Hi!), and the same old counter-productive policies in search of self-reliance.1978Despite all available evidence that statist socialism was an abject failure, the Janata government that came to power decided to double down on it. One of the great ideas of the time was to force MNCs to reduce their stake in their Indian subsidiaries to below 40 per cent. A handful agreed, but the large corporations quit India. One of those who left was IBM in 1978. The many existing installations of IBM computers needed services and maintenance. In a delightful case of unintended consequences, this led to the nationalisation of IBM’s services division (later called CMC). Domestic companies started to serve this niche. Soon there were the likes of Infosys, Wipro and HCL building a business on this. CMC provided a good training ground for young engineers. And so, the Indian IT services industry got underway. It would change the lives of educated Indians forever.1979In a classic case of violating the Tinbergen rule, the Mandal Commission recommended that the reservation policy should be used to address relative deprivation. While the earlier reservations for oppressed castes stood on firm ground as a means for addressing unconscionable historical wrongs, the Mandal Commission stretched the logic too far. Its recommendation would eventually make reservation policy the go-to solution for any group that could flex its political muscles. We wrote about it here. 1980After ditching the Janata experiment and running out of ideas to keep Jan Sangh going, the BJP was formed. It wasn’t a momentous political occasion of any sort then. A party constitution that aimed for Gandhian socialism and offered vague promises of a uniform civil code and nationalism didn’t excite many. Everything else that would propel the party in later years was to be opportunistic add-ons to the ideology. The founding leaders, Advani and Vajpayee, would have been shocked if you told them what the party would be like, four decades later.The 80s: A Million Mutinies Now1981This year witnessed a gradual shift away from doctrinaire socialism in economic policymaking. “The Indira Gandhi government lifted restrictions on the expansion of production, permitted new private borrowing abroad, and continued the liberalisation of import controls,” wrote Walter Anderson. The government also “allowed” some price rises, leading to increased production of key input materials. The government also permitted foreign companies to compete in drilling rights in India. All in all, a year that witnessed changes for the better. 1982The great textile strike of Bombay in 1982 was inevitable. The trade unions had gotten so powerful that there was a competitive race to the bottom on who could be more militant. Datta Samant emerged intent on breaking the monopoly of RMMS on the city's workers. And he did this with ever spiralling demands from mill owners in a sector that was already bloated with overheads and facing competition from far eastern economies. There was no way to meet these demands. The owners locked the mills and left. Never to come back. The old, abandoned mills remained. The workers remained. Without jobs, without prospects and with kids who grew up angry and unemployed. The rise of Shiv Sena, political goondaism and a malevolent form of underworld followed. Bombay changed forever. It was all inevitable.1983The Nellie massacre in Assam and the Dhilwan bus massacre in Punjab represent the year 1983. Things seemed really dark back then. It seemed that the doomsayers would be proved right about India. Eventually, though, the Indian Republic prevailed. 1984Her Sikh bodyguards assassinated India Gandhi. The botched Punjab policy of the previous five years came a full circle with it. An unforgivable backlash against innocent Sikhs followed. A month later, deadly gas leaked out of a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, killing and paralysing thousands. 1984 will rank among the worst years of our republic. There were two silver linings in retrospect. One, we would learn to manage secessionist movements better from the harrowing Punjab experience. Two, had Indira continued, would we have had 1991? Our guess is no.1985This was an eventful year in retrospect. Texas Instruments set up shop in Bangalore. It was to begin one of modern India’s true success stories on the world stage. This was also the year when the Anti-defection law transformed the relationship between the voter and her representative. Political parties became all-powerful, and people’s representatives were reduced to political party agents. We have written about this changing dynamic here. This was also the year when the then commerce minister, VP Singh, visited Malaysia. The visit was significant for India because it served as a reference point for Singh when he visited that country again in 1990, now as the Prime minister. Surprised by Malaysia’s transformation in five years, he asked his team to prepare a strategy paper for economic reforms. This culminated in the “M” document, which became a blueprint for reforms when the time for the idea eventually came in 1991.1986Who is a citizen of India? This vexing question roiled Assam in the early 80s. The student union protests against the widespread immigration of Bangladeshis turned violent, and things had turned ugly by 1985. The Assam accord of 1985 sought to settle the state's outstanding issues,, including deporting those who arrived after 1971 and a promise to amend the Citizenship Act. The amended Citizenship Act of 1986 restricted the citizenship of India to those born before 1987 only if either of their parents were born in India. That meant children of couples who were illegal immigrants couldn’t be citizens of India simply by virtue of their birth in India. That was that, or so we thought.But once you’ve amended the definition of who can be a citizen of India, you have let the genie out. The events of 2019 will attest to that.1987Rajiv Gandhi’s ill-fated attempt to replicate Indira Gandhi’s success through military intervention in another country began in 1987. In contrast to the 1971 involvement, where Indian forces had the mass support of the local populace, the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) got itself embroiled in a bitter Sri Lankan civil war. Not only did this involvement end in a failure, it eventually led to Rajiv Gandhi’s brutal murder in a terrorist attack. The policy lesson internalised by the strategic community was that India must stay far away from developing and deploying forces overseas.1988Most government communication is propaganda in disguise. However, there are those rare occasions when government messaging transcends the ordinary. In 1988, we saw that rare bird during the peak era of a single government channel running on millions of black and white TV sets across India. A government ad that meant something to all of us and that would remain with us forever. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara got everything right - the song, the singers, the storyline and that ineffable thing called the idea of India. No jingoism, no chest beating about being the best country in the world and no soppy sentimentalism. Just a simple message - we might all sing our own tunes, but we are better together. This is a timeless truth. No nation in history has become better by muting the voice of a section of their own people. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Toh Sur Bane Hamara, indeed. 19891989 will be remembered as the year when the Indian government capitulated to the demands of Kashmiri terrorists in the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case. It would spark off a series of kidnappings and act as a shot in the arm of radicals. 1990VP Singh dusted off the decade-long copy of the Mandal Commission report and decided to implement it. This wasn’t an ideological revolution. It was naked political opportunism. However, three decades later, the dual impact of economic reforms and social engineering has increased social mobility than ever before. Merit is still a matter of debate in India. But two generations of affirmative action in many of the progressive states have shown the fears of merit being compromised were overblown. The task is far from finished, but Mandal showed that sometimes you need a big bang to get things going, even if your intentions were flawed.1990 also saw the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) from the valley. A tragedy that would bookend a decade of strife and violence in India. The only lesson one should draw from the sad plight of KPs is that the State and the people must protect minority rights. We’re not sure that’s what we have taken away from it. And that’s sad.The 90s: Correcting The Course1991With the benefit of hindsight, the 1991 economic reforms seem inevitable. But things could well have been different. In the minority government, powerful voices advocated in favour of debt restructuring instead of wholesale reforms. In the end, the narrative that these changes were merely a continuation—and not abandonment—of Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s vision for India carried the day. This political chicanery deserves some credit for transforming the life of a billion Indians. 1992Harshad Mehta scammed the stock markets. It wasn’t a huge scam. Nor did it hurt the ordinary Indians. Fewer than 1% invested in markets back then. Yet, the scam did something important. It set in motion a series of reforms that made our capital markets stronger and safer for ordinary investors. Notably, over the years, Mehta came to be seen as some kind of robber baron figure. Capitalism needed an anti-hero to catch the imagination of people. Someone who could reprise in the 90s the Bachchan-esque angry young man roles of the 70s. Mehta might not have been that figure exactly, but he helped a generation transition to the idea that greed could indeed be good.Also, Babri Masjid was brought down by a mob of kar sevaks in 1992. It will remain a watershed moment in our history. The Supreme Court judgement of 2019 might be the final judicial word on it. But we will carry the scars for a long time.1993The tremors of the demolition of the Babri Masjid were felt in 1993. Twelve bombs went off in Bombay on one fateful day. The involvement of the city’s mafia groups was established. The tragic event finally led to the government rescuing the city from the underworld. Not to forget, the Bombay underworld directly resulted from government policies such as prohibition and gold controls. 1994One of the great acts of perversion in our democracy was the blatant abuse of Section 356 of the constitution that allowed the union to dismiss a state government at the slightest pretext. Indira Gandhi turned this into an art form. S. R. Bommai, whose government in Karnataka was dismissed in this manner in 1988, took his case up to the Supreme Court. In 1994, the court delivered a verdict that laid out the guidelines to prevent the abuse of Section 356. It is one of the landmark judgments of the court and restored some parity in Union and state relationship.Article 356 has been used sparingly since. We are a better democracy because of it.1995India joined the WTO, and the first-ever mobile phone call was made this year. But 1995 will forever be remembered as the year when Ganesha idols started drinking milk. This event was a precursor to the many memes, information cascades, and social proofs that have become routine in the information age. 1996Union budgets in India are occasions for dramatic policy announcements. It is a mystery why a regular exercise of presenting the government's accounts should become a policy event. But that’s the way we roll. In 1996 and 1997, P. Chidambaram presented them as the FM of a weak ragtag coalition called the United Front. But he presented two budgets for the ages. The rationalisation of income tax slabs and the deregulation of interest rates created a credit culture that led to the eventual consumption boom in the next decade. We still carry that consumption momentum.1997The creation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is an important public policy milestone for India. By no means perfect, the setting up of TRAI helped overturn a norm where government departments were both players and umpires. TRAI made the separation of “steering” and “rowing” functions a new normal. That template has been copied in several sectors thereafter, most recently in the liberalisation of the space sector. 1998India did Pokhran 2, which gave it the capability to build thermonuclear weapons. We faced sanctions and global condemnation. But the growing economy and a sizeable middle class meant those were soon forgotten. Economic might can let you get away with a lot. We have seen it happen to us, but it is a lesson we don’t understand fully.Also, in 1998, Sonia Gandhi jumped into active politics. The Congress that was ambling towards some sort of internal democracy decided to jettison it all and threw its weight behind the dynasty. It worked out for them for a decade or so. But where are they now? Here’s a question. What if Sonia didn’t join politics then? Congress might have split. But who knows, maybe those splinters might have coalesced in the future with a leader chosen by the workers. And we would have had a proper opposition today with a credible leader.1999This was a landmark year for public policy. For the first time, a union government-run company was privatised wholly. We wrote about the three narratives of disinvestment here. 2000We have a weak, extended and over-centralised state. And to go with it, we have large, unwieldy states and districts that make the devolution of power difficult. In 2000, we created three new states to facilitate administrative convenience. On balance, it has worked well. Despite the evidence, we have managed to create only one more state since. The formation of Telangana was such a political disaster that it will take a long time before we make the right policy move of having smaller states. It is a pity.The 2000s: The Best Of Times2001Not only was the Agra Summit between Musharraf and Vajpayee a dud, but it was followed by a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament. It confirmed a pattern: PM-level bilateral meetings made the Pakistani military-jihadi complex jittery, and it invariably managed to spike such moves with terrorist attacks. 2002There was Godhra and the riots that followed. What else is there to say?2003The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act and the Civil Services Pension Reform are two policy successes with many lessons for future policymakers. We have discussed these on many occasions. 2004The NDA government called for an early election, confident about its prospects. India Shining, its campaign about how good things were, wasn’t too far from the truth. It is how many of us felt during that time. The NDA government had sustained the reform momentum of the 90s with some of the best minds running the key departments. Its loss was unexpected. Chandrababu Naidu, a politician who fashioned himself like a CEO, was taken to the cleaners in Andhra Pradesh. Apparently, economic reforms didn’t get you votes. The real India living in villages was angry at being left out. That was the lesson for politicians from 2004. Or, so we were told.Such broad narratives with minimal factual analysis backing them have flourished in the public policy space. There is no basis for them. The loss of NDA in 2004 came down to two states. Anti-incumbency in Andhra Pradesh where a resurgent Congress under YS Reddy beat TDP, a constituent of NDA. TDP lost by similar margins (in vote share %) across the state in all demographics in both rural and urban areas. There was no rural uprising against Naidu because of his tech-savvy, urban reformist image. Naidu lost because the other party ran a better campaign. Nothing else. The other mistake of the NDA was in choosing to partner with the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu (TN) over DMK. TN was famous for not giving split verdicts. It swung to extremes between these two parties in every election. And that’s what happened as AIADMK drew a blank.Yet, the false lesson of 2004 has played on the minds of politicians since. We haven’t gotten back on track on reforms in the true sense. 2005The Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came into force in 2005. The “right to X” model of governance took root.2006In March 2006, George W Bush visited India and signed the Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with Manmohan Singh. From facing sanctions in 1998 for Pokhran 2 to the 123 Agreement, this was a victory for Indian diplomacy and its rising status in the world. You would think this would have had bipartisan support among the political class in India. Well, the Left that was part of UPA and the BJP that worked on the deal when it was in power, opposed it. Many shenanigans later, the deal was passed in the parliament in 2008. It is often said there’s no real ideological divide among parties in India. This view can be contested on various grounds. But events like the opposition to the nuclear deal make you wonder if there are genuine ideological positions on key policy issues in India. Many sound policy decisions are opposed merely for the sake of it. Ideology doesn’t figure anywhere. 2007It was the year when the Left parties were out-lefted. In Singur and Nandigram, protests erupted over land acquisition for industrial projects. The crucible of the resulting violence created a new political force. As for the investment, the capital took a flight to other places. The tax on capital ended up being a tax on labour. Businesses stayed away from West Bengal. The citadel of Left turned into its mausoleum.2008Puja Mehra in her book The Lost Decade traces the origin of India losing its way following the global financial crisis to the Mumbai terror attack of 2008. Shivraj Patil, the home minister, quit following the attack and Chidambaram was shifted from finance to fill in. For reasons unknown, Pranab Mukherjee, a politician steeped in the 70s-style-Indira-Gandhi socialism, was made the FM. Mehra makes a compelling case of how that one decision stalled reforms, increased deficit and led to runaway inflation over the next three years. Till Chidambaram was brought back to get the house in order, it was too late, and we were halfway into a lost decade. It is remarkable how bad policies always seem easy to implement while good policies take ages to get off the blocks.2009The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in January 2009 to architect a unique digital identity for persons in a country where low rates of death and birth registrations made fake and duplicate identities a means for corruption and denial of service. Under the Modi government, the digital identity — Aadhaar — became the fulcrum of several government services. This project also set the stage for later projects such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Abha (Health ID).2010There’s petty corruption everywhere in India. It is pervasive. Not surprisingly, it is one political issue leading to mass movements in India. The anti-corruption mood gripped India in 2010 on the back of the 2G spectrum scam, where the chief accountant of the government claimed a notional loss of about Rs. 1.8 trillion to the exchequer. Auctioning of natural resources wasn’t exactly a transparent process then. It was evident there was a scam in the allotment of the 2G spectrum. But the 1.8 trillion number was a wild exaggeration that anyone with a semblance of business understanding could see through. It didn’t matter. That number caught the imagination. UPA 2 never recovered from it. More importantly, the auction policy for resources was distorted forever. We still suffer the consequences.The 2010s: Missed Opportunity2011India’s last case of wild poliovirus was detected in 2011. Until about the early 1990s, an average of 500 to 1000 children got paralysed daily in India. The original target for eradication was the year 2000. Nevertheless, we got there eleven years later. India’s pulse polio campaign has since become a source of confidence for public policy execution in India. We internalised the lesson that the Indian government can sometimes deliver through mission mode projects. 2012If you cannot solve a vexing public policy issue, turn it into a Right. It won’t work, but it will seem like you’ve done everything. After years of trying to get the national education policy right, the government decided it was best to make education a fundamental right in the Constitution. Maybe that will make the problem go away. A decade later, nothing has changed, but we have an additional right to feel good about.2013This year saw the emergence of AAP as a political force via the anti-corruption movement. AAP combines the classic elements of what makes a political party successful in India - statist instincts, focus on aam aadmi issues, populism and ideological flexibility. Importantly, it is good at telling its own version of some future utopia rather than questioning the utopia of others. 2014The BJP came to power with many promises; the most alluring of them was ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. Over the past eight years it has claimed success in meeting many of its promises, but even its ardent supporters won’t claim any success on minimum government. In fact, it has gone the other way. That a party with an immensely popular PM, election machinery that rivals the best in the world, and virtually no opposition cannot shake us off our instinctive belief in the State's power never ceases to surprise us.2015The murder of a person by a mob on the charges of eating beef was the first clear indication of the upsurge of a new violent, majoritarian polity. It was also one of the early incidents in India of radically networked communities using social media for self-organisation. Meanwhile, 2015 also witnessed the signing of a landmark boundary agreement between India and Bangladesh, which ended the abomination called the third-order enclave. The two States exchanged land peacefully, upholding the principle that citizen well-being trumps hardline interpretations of territorial integrity. 2016There will be many case studies written in future about demonetisation. Each one of them will end with a single conclusion. Public policy requires discussion and consensus, not stealth and surprise. We hope we have learnt our lesson from it.2017Until 2017, many in India still held the hope of a modus vivendi with China. Some others were enamoured by the Chinese model of governance. However, the Doklam crisis in 2017, and the Galwan clashes in 2020, changed all that. Through this miscalculation, China alienated a full generation of Indians, led to better India-US relations, and energised India to shift focus away from merely managing a weak Pakistan, and toward raising its game for competing with a stronger adversary. For this reason, we wrote a thank you note to Xi Jinping here. 2018It took years of efforts by the LGBTQ community to get Section 377 scrapped. In 2018, they partially won when the Supreme Court diluted Section 377 to exclude all kinds of adult consensual sexual behaviour. The community could now claim equal constitutional status as others. There’s still some distance to go for the State to acknowledge non-heterosexual unions and provide for other civil rights to the community. But the gradual acceptance of the community because of decriminalisation is a sign that our society doesn’t need moral policing or lectures to judge what’s good for it.2019The J&K Reorganisation Act changed the long-standing political status quo in Kashmir. Three years on, the return to political normalcy and full statehood still awaits. While a response by Pakistan was expected, it was China that fomented trouble in Ladakh, leading to the border clashes in 2020. 2020We have written multiple pieces on farm laws in the past year. The repeal of these laws, which were fundamentally sound because of a vocal minority, is the story of public policy in India. Good policies are scuttled because of the absence of consultation, an unclear narrative, opportunistic politicking or plain old hubris. We write this newsletter in the hope of changing this. 2021The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic left behind many bereaved families. People are still trying to pick up the pieces. The sadness was also interrupted by frustration because of the delays in getting the vaccination programme going. India benefited immensely from domestic vaccine manufacturing capability in the private sector. Despite many twists and turns in vaccine pricing and procurements, the year ended with over 1 billion administered doses. In challenging times, the Indian State, markets, and society did come together to fight the pandemic. So, here we are. In the 75th independent year of this beautiful, fascinating and often exasperating nation. We are a work in progress. We might walk slowly, but we must not walk backwards. May we all live in a happy, prosperous and equal society. Thanks for reading Anticipating the Unintended! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com
India Policy Watch: The Road Of FireInsights on burning policy issues in India- RSJThe Union Defence Minister along with the chiefs of the three armed services on Tuesday announced the ‘Agnipath’ scheme for recruitment into the Indian military. You can read more about the scheme here. I have summarised the key features below:The soldiers under this scheme (referred to as ‘Agniveers’) will be enrolled for a duration of four years in a conscription or tour of duty (ToD) like model that’s prevalent in other countries. They will be paid between INR 30,000 - 40,000 per month during their tenure apart from risk or hardship allowance as applicable. 30 per cent of their salary will be deducted as a voluntary contribution into a corpus called ‘SevaNidhi’ with a matching contribution from the government. Roughly put, the soldiers will get this SevaNidhi package of about INR 11.7 Lacs plus the interest accumulated on this amount at the end of their four years of service. Few other post-retirement benefits are thrown in, including a life insurance cover and access to a bank loan of INR 18.2 Lacs against the SevaNidhi package.About 25 per cent of Agniveers will be absorbed into the regular cadre after four years. The rest will receive an Agniveer Skill certificate, the SevaNidhi corpus and some preferential treatment in getting into the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) and maybe even state police forces. The Agniveers who leave at the end of four years, however, will not get the usual entitlements of gratuity and pension. This is huge. Over a period of couple of decades, this could mean only about 25 per cent of the forces will have the pension benefits that are available to all today. The enrollment under this scheme will be on an all-India and an all-class basis. This will be, by itself, a distinct rank in the armed forces with its own insignia. The likely implications of this are quite significant. The recruitment of soldiers today, especially in the army, is based on state-wise quotas and on the retirement of soldiers from various regiments that are class based. Class here should be read as an euphemism for caste or community. Drawing Agniveers on an all-class basis will mean withering away from the traditional structure of regiments. It could also mean a larger representation of states where unemployment rates are high because there might not be state-wise quotas anymore. This could further alter the composition mix of the armed forces.The government also positioned this as a move that will infuse youth and vitality (or ‘josh’ and ‘jazba’ as mentioned in various media reports) into the armed forces. The whole thing including the names Agnipath and Agniveer sounds like a campaign for an early 1990s Nana Patekar film. You could soon shoehorn Agni Pariksha (for the recruitment tests), Krantiveer (best Agniveer cadet), Yugpurush (lifetime achievement award for Agniveers), Angaar, Tiranga, Prahaar and so on. You get the picture. We are in this territory now. Anyway, the average age of the armed forces which is 32 now will come down by about five years. The younger workforce will be more technology-savvy that will be more attuned to the changing nature of modern warfare. Also, the 75 per cent of Agniveers who will go back into civil society will serve as a disciplined and nationalistic labour pool to draw from for organisations. There will be Agniveers in every village and taluk who will improve the moral fibre of our society. We will have no riots, no littering, no traffic violations and no crime. The retired Agniveers will change us. Because they will put the nation first. Always. Like Arnab. Well, that’s the official line anyway. BacklashUnfortunately, the response to the scheme hasn’t been what the government was expecting. There have been protests, arson and general lawlessness by unemployed youth that seems to be spreading across the country at the moment. A large section of retired armed forces officials too have questioned both the scale and speed of a change like this. The issues agitating them have some basis:There have been very few recruitment rallies during the two years of the pandemic. About 60,000 soldiers retire every year and this gap is filled up during the regular recruitment drives. It is safe to assume there's a 1.5 Lac gap that’s opened up since 2020. The expectation among aspirants was this will get filled up in the next year or so. That apart, there are those in the middle of their recruitment process who are unclear about their status now. Roughly put, there could be more than a crore of youngsters under the age of 21 who were waiting for these recruitment drives to restart. What they have now instead is about 46,000 open positions for the current year with a 25 per cent probability of a long-term career in armed services with full benefits. If you work the numbers, it also suggests a reduction in armed forces count by about 1.5 - 2 Lacs (about 10-15 per cent of the workforce) over the next four years. I’m not sure if that’s also a stated intent of this scheme but it will be a collateral result unless the Agniveer recruitment numbers are ramped up significantly in the following years.There is an inherent contradiction in acknowledging a modern military requires advanced warfare systems, technical know-how and expertise that takes years to build and having only 25 percent of personnel working on longer tenure commissions. Will the constant churn come in the way of managing these systems? Will there be institutionalised knowledge management that will be able to handle this scenario? Also, the eventual dismantling of the class-based system that this move seems to portend will need to be thought through. It is fundamental to how the army operates today.The other question is about the prospects of the 75 per cent who will be released every four years. This is a number that will keep rising over a period of time. All the romanticisation of the armed forces and its discipline aside, these will be youngsters without a college degree and with limited technical skills. How useful will they be to the wider world? Not much if you go by the current record of hiring of retired defence personnel. They will have to study further and acquire specific skills to be employable. To expect CAPF or the state police force to absorb them is a bit optimistic. Also, there are aspirants for those jobs too with their own patronage system who will scuttle these moves. Lastly, for all the josh and jazba that are likely to come free because of this move, it will be useful to understand the repercussions of having a workforce that knows only one in four among them will qualify for the longer commission. What behaviour will this engender in them? How objective will the criteria for selection be? And if the 75 per cent who are released struggle to get jobs and earn their livelihoods, the feedback loop to the future cohorts will be immediate. The situation will turn more fraught at the end of every four-year cycle. The comparison with other countries that have a ToD model is useful but it is important to appreciate we are a US$ 2000 per capita economy with over 40 per cent of the employable labour pool either without a job or underemployed. In other countries, those who want to continue to be in the armed forces almost self-select themselves. These arguments, for and against aside, this is a good example to understand the complexities of policymaking, especially in defence, in India. A Difficult ProblemLet’s begin with the single most important policy objective for armed forces now in India. This is quite stark and apparent - it needs to modernise its defence infrastructure and increase its capacity in areas of modern warfare like the air force and navy. Given the threat perception on its borders, this is an already delayed exercise. You can read a detailed ORF report on India’s platform modernisation deficit here for more. TL;DR: yes, we do have a modernisation challenge on hand. And it is quite bad.Now the key question is what’s coming in the way of modernisation? There are multiple answers to this but on the top of that list is a lack of funds. The defence budget has broadly remained around 2.2 per cent of the GDP over the last decade. India has struggled to contain its fiscal deficit and it has limited ability to allocate more to its defence budget. As we have written on umpteen occasions, the Indian state is spread wide and thin. It does way too many things badly. Therefore, it cannot find money to do things it must. More importantly, pension benefits (24 per cent) and wages (28 per cent) take up over half of its budget. These numbers, especially pension outlays, will continue to grow in the coming years as the full impact of OROP (one rank one pension) plays out. The OROP that came into effect in late 2015 is a known and acknowledged policy mistake that is quite simply unsustainable. But it is almost impossible to walk back on that now. So, the search for circumventing that burden is one of the factors that has led to this scheme. A bad policy decision has a long-term downstream impact and this is a classic case of that playing out. Even if the Agnipath scheme is implemented as it stands today, the easing up of the pension burden will take decades to play out. The need for modernisation of the armed forces is as of yesterday. But the government is hoping through a combination of a 10-15 per cent reduction in the strength of the military and a long-term solution to control the burgeoning pension bill would have given it some room to ramp up on modernisation without increasing defence outlay. There are various estimates of the net present value of the expenditure on a single soldier who joins the armed forces today. At fairly conservative estimates of discount rates, wages and future pension benefits, Pranay estimates this to be about INR 1 crore. In my view, that is the absolute floor for that value and it might be around INR 2 crores if one were to take a bit more realistic assumptions. So, a 1.5 - 2 Lac workforce reduction could mean a significant availability of funds to modernise the defence platforms over time. Growth, Growth, GrowthThat’s likely the thinking that’s gone behind the scheme. Everything else including the messaging on josh and jazba or having retired Agniveers in every village is to make it palatable to the public. It is difficult to acknowledge openly to people that the economy cannot support the defence requirements of India when you have made nationalism and nation-first important planks of your political strategy. This communication plan could have worked except it had to contend with the other real problem of the Indian economy at the moment. Lack of jobs. For reasons that could take up another post, the Indian economy isn’t generating enough jobs for its large youthful population. Roughly, India needs to create between 15-20 million non-farm jobs every year to keep pace with those entering the labour force. The labour participation rate has remained in the 40-45 per cent range for a long time. New job creation data can be contentious but it is difficult to argue that India is creating anything more than 3-4 million jobs every year. The quality of many of these new jobs isn’t great. The merry-go-round of employees switching jobs and getting big hikes in the IT/ITES sector shouldn’t blind us to the reality in the broader economy. There aren’t enough jobs. The two prerequisites for job creation, an 8-9 per cent GDP growth and skew towards sectors like construction, infrastructure or labour-intensive exports aren’t being met. The reason the job crisis hasn’t snowballed into a larger political and social issue is the immense faith in the PM among the youth. There’s a strong belief among them that India is on its way to becoming a superpower. The regular dose of nationalism and jingoism that’s amplified by the media helps continue this narrative. A related issue here that accounts for the violent protests is the lure of government jobs. The public sector jobs at the junior levels have become more remunerative than similar roles in the private sector in the last decade. As much as people love quoting the salaries of the CMDs of PSU Banks or the senior IAS officers and comparing them to the compensation of private-sector CEOs, the reality is that at mid to junior levels the government jobs are better paying. You can dig deeper into the wage bills of listed PSUs and compare them with their private counterparts for evidence. The other supposed benefits of a government job like job security, work-life balance and a possibility of rent-seeking (though low in defence jobs) make the package very attractive. This has meant a dramatic reversion in trend of people hankering for public sector jobs that had waned in the first couple of decades of liberalisation. So, a reduction in the number of such jobs or cutting down their benefits as the Agnipath scheme is likely to be isn't going to be accepted despite the great popularity of the PM and the ruling party among this segment. Their expectation, in contrast, is for the number of government jobs to go up.Considering the constraints, it is difficult to see what else the government could have done here. The need to reduce wage and pension costs to fund modernisation is real. And given the fiscally conservative instinct of this government, it won’t deficit fund the modernisation programme. As is its wont, it has chosen to put a bold announcement with emphasis on other benefits while trying to solve its key problems under cover. There’s this myth that a big bang approach to reform is the only model that works in India. That’s wrong. A lot of what has looked like big reforms in India have actually had a long runway that’s often invisible to people. A more comprehensive reading of the history of ‘91 reforms makes this clear. So, the usual template has been followed so far: minimal consultation, no plans to test it out at a smaller scale and instant big bang implementation. The results are unsurprising. I am guessing we will see a similar script play out for the next few months. There will be rollbacks (a few have been already announced), some concessions that will tinker around years of service or percentage releases, and a few sops thrown in, to temper the anger. If I were to give more credit than is due to this government’s planning chops, I might even say it possibly did this on purpose. Release a more extreme form of scheme, brace for impact and then roll back to the position that you always wanted in the first place. It is one way to game public opinion to your favoured outcome. Of course, a more impactful solution to this is to acknowledge the mistake that OROP is and shift the pension of defence forces onto a voluntary, defined contribution scheme like the NPS which has been implemented since 2004 for all new recruits joining government services, except defence. That is the only sustainable solution to this problem. But dispassionate policy making in defence sector in India is difficult. All kinds of emotions about izzat, vardi, naam and nishaan get mixed up. Nana Patekar gets in the way of clear-headed thinking. * (with apologies and acknowledgement to Harivansh Rai ‘Bachchan’)Addendum— Pranay KotasthaneFor a researcher working on the public finance of defence, the Agnipath scheme is an important milestone. Over the long term, it has the potential to substantially reduce the pension burden. And as RSJ writes, the scheme will have no impact on the allocations for modernisation in the short term. Nevertheless, this scheme is important for the single reason that just as today’s deficits are tomorrow’s taxes, today’s reforms become tomorrow’s savings. Many commentators suggest that India’s defence expenditure problem can be solved merely by increasing defence expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP, from the current allocation of 2.04 per cent. That’s hardly the case. Projecting current growth rates of defence spending components over the next ten years suggests that even if the government were to agree to a 3 per cent spending, pension spending will grow rapidly enough to allow only an incremental increase in the fiscal space for capital outlay.Keeping the public finance angle aside, I took away two lessons in politics.One, the political narrative that can be used to sell a policy solution sometimes matters more than the solution itself.In an article for the Times of India in March, I listed four alternatives before the government to manage personnel costs. The three solutions that were dropped tried to address the pension problem directly. It wasn’t possible to project these solutions as achieving any other objective. In contrast, the solution that was picked up, i.e. Agnipath, was the only one that allowed the government to skirt the fiscal motivations for this reform. The government went in with this stated objective: “attracting young talent from the society who are more in tune with contemporary technological trends and plough back skilled, disciplined and motivated manpower into the society.” No mention of the fiscal angle. At all.This strategy itself had mixed results in the early days. Politically, it allowed the government to make statements such as these: “We never see the Armed Forces through the perspectives of savings. Whatever we need to spend, the government is willing to spend. Our aim is to defend the country’s borders. Whatever needs to be spent, will be spent.” — Mr Rajnath Singh, Union Defence MinisterHowever, not acknowledging the real reason why these reforms were mooted, created an impression that the government has needlessly and suddenly foisted another disruptive scheme on unsuspecting masses.Two, the government failed to align cognitive maps of important stakeholders, yet again. Pension reforms are wicked problems everywhere in the world because there are strong endowment effects of a large, organised collective at play. Some of you might recall that a couple of years ago, nearly 800,000 French people protested and disrupted key services across the country in opposition to the proposed pension reform. That reform merely aimed to consolidate 42 different pension schemes, with variations in retirement age and benefits, into a universal points-based system. Even so, the government had an excellent, indigenous pension reform example at hand. As we’ve written many times before, the civil services pension reform of 2004 was a rare example of introducing a scheme to reduce the pension burden without protests. Despite this example, the government chose to opt for an Agnipath scheme that made some applicants suddenly ineligible for selection. The resulting protests and violence eventually made the government relax the age criteria this time. The government mandarins would surely have anticipated these consequences. To smoothen the transition, the government could’ve done regular recruitment along with the Agnipath recruitment this year. Over the subsequent three-four years, it could have increased the intake for the latter and tapered down the intake in the regular induction in a phase-wise manner. But it chose a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. Global Policy Watch: Social Media’s Rule of Three Global policy issues relevant to India— Pranay KotasthaneSocial media continues to confound us all. By now, we all have read a number of hypotheses on how social media rewards “evil”. In the initial days, social media’s tendency to push us into echo chambers was oft-cited as the mechanism that made people more extreme in their views. Then came the view that the evil lay in the “likes”, “retweets”, and “share” features, which promoted an asymmetric virality. Thereafter came the notion that it was the economic models that were to blame. Advertisement-led services and Big Tech monopolies were the real problems, we were told. And over the last four years or so, it’s the algorithms and recommendation engines of social media companies that have been the target. Despite these arguments, we still don’t have a conclusive answer. Several studies have refuted many of the assertions made above. And so, let’s take a step back from specific social media apps, and instead ask: what are the meta-mechanisms that make all forms of social media a powerful instrument? I can think of three interrelated mechanisms. All three mechanisms are connected to sociological and cognitive behaviours in the Information Age.One, Social Media expands our Reference NetworksReference Networks is a term used by psychologists to mean “people whose beliefs and behaviour matter for our behaviour”. A really small part of our behaviour is independent of others’ actions and beliefs. Most of our behaviour is interdependent, i.e. it depends on what people in our reference network say or do. For most of human history, geographic proximity largely determined our reference network. For instance, our on-road driving behaviour is shaped by people who are around us and whom we consider ‘like us’. TV, radio, books, and newspapers have played a major role in creating new horizontal comradeship (or what Benedict Anderson called ‘imagined communities’), but these media did not supplant the importance of geographically proximate reference networks. Social media, by contrast, expands our reference networks like never before. People across the world can now influence our perceptions instantly and repeatedly. And by this reference network expansion, I do not imply the ‘echo chambers’ trope. Courtesy of social media, our reference network in fact now includes many more people who think unlike us. Sociologist Zeynep Tufecki explains this mechanism using a beautiful metaphor:“While algorithms will often feed people some of what they already want to hear, research shows that we probably encounter a wider variety of opinions online than we do offline, or than we did before the advent of digital tools.Rather, the problem is that when we encounter opposing views in the age and context of social media, it’s not like reading them in a newspaper while sitting alone. It’s like hearing them from the opposing team while sitting with our fellow fans in a football stadium. Online, we’re connected with our communities, and we seek approval from our like-minded peers. We bond with our team by yelling at the fans of the other one. In sociology terms, we strengthen our feeling of “in-group” belonging by increasing our distance from and tension with the “out-group”—us versus them. Our cognitive universe isn’t an echo chamber, but our social one is. This is why the various projects for fact-checking claims in the news, while valuable, don’t convince people. Belonging is stronger than facts.” [MIT Technology Review, August 2018]Expressed another way, every issue becomes global by default because our reference networks are also global. Two, Social Media expands the Overton WindowRepeating what I had written about this particular mechanism in edition #130. The Overton Window framework suggests that for any political issue, there's a range of socially acceptable positions that's narrower than the range of all possible positions. These socially acceptable ideas are seen as being inside the Overton Window — they are mainstream and uncontroversial. On the other hand, policy positions outside it are viewed as shocking, upsetting, and electorally harmful. The key insight of this framework is that, with social pressure, the Overton Window can shift over time; today's radicals may become tomorrow's moderates. In the Information Age, something even more striking has happened. The Overton Window on practically every issue has been stretched such that nearly all possible positions on an issue have become socially acceptable. With that happening, the older institutions, which earlier exuded authority, are shredding legitimacy with every decision they make.With the old gatekeepers no longer wielding the same power as earlier, the range of opinions on any issue can be extremely broad. And combined with the fact that each of those views attracts a new reference network, the Overton Window of social acceptability gets stretched.Three, Disproportional Rewards for Extreme ContentMany analysts say that this mechanism is a result of skewed algorithms and the incentives arising out of an advertisement-based model. While that’s partly true, there’s a deeper reason: information overload. Persuasion is a key power in the information age. Persuading someone requires attracting someone’s attention. And since attention is a scarce commodity in a crowded information environment, the only way to attract it is to come up with something surprising and shocking. Consider this analogous example. If I were to write “Lng Yrs g, W Md Tryst WTh Dstny”, you would immediately identify that I’m talking about Nehru’s iconic 1947 speech, despite me dropping all vowels. From an information theory perspective, vowels carry “less” information content because they occur more frequently. In contrast, consonants contain “more” information because the probability of their occurrence is low.In a similar manner, a news feed post which reads “There was a bomb blast in Kabul”, carries less information, because this has quite unfortunately become a regular occurrence over the last few years. In contrast, a shocking opinion or news like “Russian information ops influenced the 2016 election results” surprises us, and hence carries more information. Over time, not only does the Overton Window expand, it becomes broader at the two poles. My proposition is that many real-life events attributed to social media (positive or negative) can be explained by a combination of these three mechanisms. Consider the work done by an online group DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) in mid-2021. Their work alone changed the conversation on the Wuhan lab origin theory (RSJ wrote about it here). In this case, the expanded reference network allowed a band of interested folks to build on each other’s work. The Overton Window expansion meant that the group could put forward an idea that seemed preposterous at that time. And a skew towards surprises meant that their idea didn’t just die away in a closed in-group, but instead sailed across the globe.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Article] Janan Ganesh has a cracking column in FT, which discusses a favourite topic of ours: economic growth. Sample these lines from the column: “The looming recession will be painful. But it will also drive a certain kind of post-materialist humbug from polite discourse. Growth will be harder to dismiss as a bean counter’s tawdry obsession when there is so little of the stuff to go round.”[Article] Zeynep Tufekci’s analysis of “how social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump”.[Post] Gurwinder from The Prism has this terrific insight: ideologies are memetic superbugs. His words: “The most successful ideology in the West today, wokeism, has succeeded because it’s perfectly configured, not to establish social justice, but to establish more copies of itself. It’s a memetic superbug evolved for contagion rather than truth or compassion, and if contaminating others requires it to delude the senses, twist the truth, and darken the heart, then so be it.”[Tweet] The always-insightful Bryan Caplan’s take on intersecting echo chambers lights a bulb. He says: “If you want to combat error, critique your in-group. You speak their language and they trust you, so you might persuade someone. If you want to raise your status, critique your out-group. They won't listen, but your in-group will love it.” The latter tendency dominates the former by a big margin, I guess. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com
This week we had two movies and a series to review. Though we had a fun time watching the quirky series #Neverkissyourbestfriend2 on #zee5 and droooling over #KaranWahi on loop, we cannot say we had fun watching the movies.Heropanti2 is definitely proof that COVID caused irreparable damage to some folks. And #runway34 was so high on theatrics that the second half became a little difficult to gulp even with the magnificent Ajay Devgn and the towering Mr. Bachchan to devour.On the whole, we had fun and hope you have fun listening to our mindless banter about the heroes of Heropanti and bad ( real bad) jokes about how we all have a crush on Karan WahiloveShriya Miraal
Imagine being able to buy a poster of one of the oldest and popular films in the world- the only one existing right now, or imagine dining next to Super star Mr. Bachchan or Scorsese in a Metaverse.. In this very interesting Ep 104 of THE ARTISTS podcast we have SMM AUSAJA- a historian and a Film archivist, currently a part of an NFT platform that has Film memorabilia items especially the old Indian films. Find him on Linked in. We dig multiple things: 1) Film archiving & memorabilia 2) We haven't preserved our Indian cinema heritage as we should have reason: lack of government support 3) What does only Hindi Cinema memorabilia include. 4) Charlie Chaplin has a museum dedicated in his name, here we barely know Ashok Kumar who was a superstar in 30's & 40's. 5) Process of owning a FILM MEMORABILIA NFT. 6) What qualifies as an NFT. 7) The 3 things that need to be addressed to attract more people towards NFT'S. 8) Metaverse a future for creators. 9) Why you should invest in Film memorabilia NFT and help in supporting film heritage. Njoy! Enjoy!! Email id: metaphysicallab@gmail.com/ You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @eplogmedia, For partnerships/queries send you can send us an email at bonjour@eplog.media Intro Music: "Hard Boiled" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Outro Music: Shades of Spring by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4342-shades-of-spring License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on all the shows produced and distributed by Ep.Log Media are personal to the host and the guest of the shows respectively and with no intention to harm the sentiments of any individual/organization. The said content is not obscene or blasphemous or defamatory of any event and/or person deceased or alive or in contempt of court or breach of contract or breach of privilege, or in violation of any provisions of the statute, nor hurt the sentiments of any religious groups/ person/government/non-government authorities and/or breach or be against any declared public policy of any nation or state. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ep#74. In this episode, we read an inspirational life poem written by Mr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan 'Jo Beet Gyi So Baat Gyi'Find out more listen to the full episode and don't forget to share it as well.Make sure to subscribe to the Podcast. See you in the episode. EnjoyTill the next time.Stay strong, Stay focused, and Be legendary.If you want to reach out to me hit me up on my Instagram handle. The link is given belowhttps://www.instagram.com/the25ghante/
It's that time of year again when we venture across the Pacific Ocean to India to the world of Indian Cinema! We kick Indian Cinema month off with a look at one of the classics that also happens to feature Big B himself, Deewaar. Starring the incorrigible Bachchan as Vijay, a criminal by happenstance, whose own brother becomes a police officer. It inspired A Better Tomorrow along with cementing Big B's status as India's resident "angry young man". Pulp-Serenade's Cullen Gallagher joins Chris to talk about the film, Big B's performance, and the many films it inspired. You can follow Chris Stachiw at @Casualty_Chris and the Kulturecast @kulturecast. You can also subscribe to the Kulturecast on iTunes here. Also, don't forget to check out our official Facebook page for news, upcoming reviews, contests, and new content, along with our Patreon page.
"My school friends really cut me to size" - Abhishek Bachchan & Nimrat Kaur are on Spill the Tea with Sneha Menon Desai talking about their life in their film Dasvi, their rapport with their school friends and a piece of advice to their 16-year old self. Bachchan talks about the sentiment behind the emotional post by his father and why he believes 'audiences are far less forgiving today.'
Hola FolksWith extended Holi celebs still going on, we bet you are still partying to your hearts content after two years of being home bound.We had a heavy stack of watching this week and had a lot of fun doing it !Starting with Eternally Confused and Eager for Love on Netflix, where a man child is trying to figure out how to talk to women with unwanted help from his parents.Then there was the powerhouse performance packed Jalsa with Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah killing it on screen with performances that kept us hooked. Streams on Prime.We then review Bachchan Pandey, which was a big Nadaidwala stereotype. Argh... Do we need to say more. Hear it all.And then the explosive Bloody Brothers, who we fell head over heels in love with. More of this please Zee5.Hear it on our website or anywhere in the world that you get your POD.Till next weekWe love y'allM and S
State collapse, breakdown, or downfall, is the complete failure of a mode of government within a sovereign state. Sometimes this brings about a failed state, as in Somalia and the final decade of Yugoslavia. Mr Anish Bachchan is a final year law student at Amity Law School, Noida. He is also a freelance author for Times of India Blog, LiveWire, Youth Ki Awaz and Vidhi Aagaz.
Albert Camus believed that the absurd—life being void of meaning, or man's inability to know that meaning if it were to exist—was something that man should embrace. His anti-Christianity, his commitment to individual moral freedom and responsibility are only a few of the similarities with other existential writers. Mr Anish Bachchan is a final year law student at Amity Law School, Noida. He is also a freelance author for Times of India Blog, LiveWire, Youth Ki Awaz and Vidhi Aagaz. Mr Garvit Bansal is a 2nd year law student.
Welcome to Sizzling Samachar of the day on OTTplay, I'm your host NikhilNews first up,Kamal Haasan's new film titled Vikram to release in theatres this summerThe highly anticipated release of the upcoming film Vikram, starring Tamil legend Kamal Hassan is set for a June 3rd release. Directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, the film also has Vijay Sethupathi and Fahadh Faasil in lead roles. The action thriller, backed by Raaj Kamal Films International, also stars Antony Varghese, Kalidas Jayaram, Narain, Shivani Narayanan, and Arjun Das in supporting roles.RRR digital release remains unchangedS S Rajamouli's next potential blockbuster, RRR, starring Ram Charan, Jr NTR, Ajay Devgn, and Alia Bhatt, will not change its release schedule for both theatrical and digital releases. The film is set to hit theaters on March 25, and the OTT releases are expected to be around 75 to 90 days after the theatrical release. Veteran Hollywood actor William Hurt dead at 71Academy Award actor, William Hurt, passed away on Sunday due to natural causes. The actor is known for his acclaimed roles in films such as Kiss of the Spider Woman, A History of Violence, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, The Village, and Syriana. Most recently he gained popularity for his role as the uncompromising military leader Thunderbolt Ross in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Abhishek Bachchan's next film, Dasvi, to release on Jio Cinema and NetflixDasvi, Abhishek Bachchan's upcoming film is set to skip its theatrical run and will release on Netflix and Jio Cinema on the 7th of April. The film is helmed by Tushar Jalota which also stars Nimrat Kaur and Yami Gautam, with Jio Cinemas producing. The film is expected to be a comedy satire surrounding Bachchan's character Ganga Ram Chaudhary.Malayalam actor Unni Mukundan to make his directorial debutMalayalam star Unni Mukundan, who recently celebrated 10 years in the industry is set to helm his own film. The Meppadiyan actor will commence work on the project as a director once he has fulfilled his commitments on a couple of Malayalam and Telugu films. Nirmal Sahadev, who penned Prithviraj Sukumaran's thriller Ranam is expected to work on the script. The Power of the Dog wins big at the Critics Choice Awards Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog continues to win big as it heads towards the Oscars. The film starring Benedict Cumberbatch has won Best Picture and Best Director at the Critics Choice Awards. West Side Story star Ariana DeBose has also continued her impressive run at the awards circuit with yet another triumph after winning Best Supporting Actress at the Critic's Choice. Apple's comedy series Ted Lasso and HBO's Mare of Eastown also continued to dominate the television category with major wins. Well, that's the Sizzling Samachar for today from the world of movies and entertainment. Until the next podcast, it's your host Nikhil signing out.Aaj kya dekhoge OTTplay se poocho
Harivansh Rai Bachchan jee poems well said about common man. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Aaj k TGIF episode mein review karenge Bachchan Pandey movie k taza taza trailer ko.Akki bhai aur Kriti Sanon ki jodi kya dhamaal kr paayegi box office par?Janne k liye sunte rahiye Namastey India!
GIVEAWAY ALERT - LISTEN TO THE EPISODE AND ANSWER 3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS LINKED BELOW TO STAND A CHANCE TO WIN UDBHAV'S TRAVEL MEMOIR “A FOR PRAYAGRAJ - A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF ALLAHABAD” https://forms.gle/nrqEkP9iQuzWtkpA8 This week, The Musafir Stories speaks with Udbhav Agarwal, a PHD candidate and author of the travel memoir - “A for Prayagraj: A short biography of Allahabad” Today's destination: Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh Nearest Airport: Allahabad Airport, IXD Nearest Railway Station: Prayagraj Junction, PRYJ Prerequisites - NA Packing - As needed Time of the year - October - February Length of the itinerary: 2-5 days Itinerary Highlights: Udbhav takes us on a journey back in time as we talk about the city of Allahabad, now known as Prayagraj that has been the cradle of livelihood and is believed to be one of the longest inhabited cities along with Varanasi. Udbhav talks about his connection to Allahabad and how he rediscovers his city over many journeys back to the place where he grew up. We talk about the history of the city, erstwhile Prayag, that was set up on the bed of the river confluence of Ganga and Yamuna and inhabited by rishis and munis; how the big empires of the Mauryas and Guptas overlooked the city while setting up capitals in nearby regions and finally how the city comes back to prominence during the time of the Mughals, when it gets renamed to Ilahabas or Ilahabad. Udbhav gives the listener a sense of the ganga-jamuni tehzeeb , a unique confluence of religion and people, and how festivals and events are shared by the community. We also discuss the importance of the Kumbh Mela, its origins and some of the changes that Udbhav has experienced over time. We touch upon the important personalities of Allahabad, right from the freedom movement to the erstwhile Prime Ministers, to the wide range of authors, diving into the literary landscape of the region and how it has changed over time. Finally, we chatted about some of the popular food joints of Allahabad, right from the Chowk, to Khaogali to the Allahabadi paan. Enjoy! Links: Link to Udbhav's book: https://www.amazon.in/PRAYAGRAJ-SHORT-BIOGRAPHY-ALLAHABAD/dp/9390652723 Link to Aleph's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlephBookCo Link to Aleph's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alephbookco/ Photo by at infinity on Unsplash Follow the Musafir stories on: Twitter : https://twitter.com/musafirstories?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themusafirstories/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musafirstoriespodcast/?hl=en website: www.themusafirstories.com email: themusafirstories@gmail.com You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios, or any other podcast app. You can check out our website at http://www.ivmpodcasts.com/
100th EPISODE OF THE ARTISTS PODCAST- We couldn't be more elated- THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF THIS JOURNEY. And, this episode has a special guest- Anupama Chopra- needs no introduction- we talk about her book, "A place in my heart" and, a bit of her:) Find her on Linkedin and Instagram. Digs: 1) Selecting 51 artists- filmmakers, films, events, festivals from a millions of things out there. 2) An industry and profession that seduces millions but remains elusive. 3) SHOLAY the blockbuster and a tiny fact that it was predicted to be a blockbuster way before it got released. 4) In showbiz no one knows anything eg Pushpa the film 5) Mr. Bachchan- a tiny anecdote on Mr. Bachchan and why he is still GOD. 6) DIL CHAHTA HAI- Another tiny fact that the actor Priety Zinta predicted it to be a cult film but a few distributors backed out after seeing the cut. 7) Polarized views and the making of a cult; also do we need test screenings- a little fact about the actor/ producer- Aamir Khan and his way of working . 8) Sai Paranjpe, Zoya Akhtar, Mira Nair- women filmmakers 9) What did Scorcese say about Ray 10) South Indian films and why we need to look up to them. Njoy. Email id: metaphysicallab@gmail.com/ You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @eplogmedia, For partnerships/queries send you can send us an email at bonjour@eplog.media Intro Music: "Hard Boiled" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Outro Music: Shades of Spring by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4342-shades-of-spring License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on all the shows produced and distributed by Ep.Log Media are personal to the host and the guest of the shows respectively and with no intention to harm the sentiments of any individual/organization. The said content is not obscene or blasphemous or defamatory of any event and/or person deceased or alive or in contempt of court or breach of contract or breach of privilege, or in violation of any provisions of the statute, nor hurt the sentiments of any religious groups/ person/government/non-government authorities and/or breach or be against any declared public policy of any nation or state. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We start with a poem that serves as a warning message on Corona pandemic. The title of the poem is – “Mat Nikal” (मत निकल - Don't go out), a poem written by Sharad Gupta but wrongly recognized as one written by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, probably because of its similarity with Agnipath (अग्निपथ). Every word of the poem is spot on for today's situation, sample this:संतुलित व्यवहार कर, बन्द तू किवाड़ करघर में बैठ, इतना भी तू ना मचलमत निकल, मत निकल, मत निकल Then we read a poem written by Harivansh Rai Bachchan – Andhere ka Deepak (अंधेरे का दीपक - a lamp in the dark). This is a poem of optimism and hope, which gives a message of lighting a lamp however dark one's time may get. A ray of hope in the face of difficult and changing times. Some hard-hitting lines, such as these:किन्तु ऐ निर्माण के प्रतिनिधि, तुझे होगा बताना,जो बसे हैं वे उजड़ते हैं प्रकृति के जड़ नियम से,पर किसी उजड़े हुए को फिर बसाना कब मना है?है अँधेरी रात पर दीपक जलाना कब मना है? Welcome to the firstDhai Aakhar – a Poetry Podcast”. This is a podcast of upbeat Hindi Poems about hope, life and optimism.We have one more Podcast, exclusively about the stories and poetry of Bachchan's Madhushala. Please check out here. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple iTunes.Thanks for listening :-) stay safe. You can connect with me:Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | www.arisudan.com Credits:Poems written by Sharad Gupta and Dr Harivansh Rai Bachchanpi e
Navbharat Gold – Hindi Podcast | Hindi Audio Infotainment | Hindi Audio News
Hindi News (हिंदी समाचार), Breaking News in Hindi: How did the Bachchan family name appear in the Panama Papers? पनामा पेपर्स मामले में ऐश्वर्या राय बच्चन से हुई पूछताछ, आखिर इस मामले में कैसे फंसी बच्चन फैमिली? पूरा एनालिसिस सुनें नवभारत गोल्ड की कवर स्टोरी में
इधर भी गधे हैं, उधर भी गधे हैं जिधर देखता हूं, गधे ही गधे हैं...घोडों को मिलती नहीं घास देखोगधे खा रहे हैं च्यवनप्राश देखो....An ode to Donkeys. This is a sarcastic poem written by Om Prakash Aditya back in the day, always relevant and a reminder of Harishankar Parsai's writings. I have added a couple of couplets to the original poem, which are relevant in today's time :-) And some commentary on how good Donkeys actually are.Welcome to Dhai Aakhar - a podcast of upbeat Hindi Poems about hope, life and optimism. To connect with me or to review this podcast: www.arisudan.comI host one more podcast on "Bachchan's Madhushala". Listen here: https://spoti.fi/2TaCqpDJoin us for an online chit-chat on poetry on our meetup group here: https://bit.ly/3f0ZSxPOther links to connect:Apple: https://apple.co/3hlGhGPInstagram: https://bit.ly/3hDyOXcFacebook: https://bit.ly/3f46UCkLinkedin: https://bit.ly/2T8CZApYouTube: https://bit.ly/342wYHzVoice: Arisudan
Recorded in Delhi, 2014 this TV interview was first shown on Rajya Sabha TV. Irfan talking to the actor Jaya Bachchan in the longest running celebrity talk show Guftagoo About Guftagoo Guftagoo (Conversations) is India's only uninterrupted, unscripted and unhurried celebrity talk show. Running since 2011 the show has a rich repository of 400+ TV shows varying from 30 to 160 minutes. It's a unique show interviewing distinguished personalities from various fields of arts and culture. The celebrated anchor Syed Mohd Irfan is host of the show whose distinctive style of conversation forms the essence of the show allowing guests to express their raw emotions. The in-depth interviews provide the viewers an intimate look in the inner worlds of the guests invited to the show. It helps them understand the guest`s life experiences, emotional conflicts, inspirations and struggles that brought out the artist in them and shaped the way they perceive the world. This documentation of the life journeys of various artists, also serves as a popular audio-visual archive for anthropological studies. Earlier aired on Rajya Sabha TV for a decade by the name of Guftagoo, show presented to its viewers, the journeys of personalities from various fields, such as Tom Alter, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Irrfan Khan, Jaya Bachchan,Naseeruddin Shah, John Abraham, Jackie Shroff, Nandita Sen, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Milkha Singh, and Shyam Benegal to name a few. Stay tuned. Audio bounce of a TV interview. The entire Guftagoo playlist on YouTube Link Image Courtesy Irfan's Archive --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sm-irfan/message
21 April 2002, Poet's residence, New Delhi Poet and retired senior civil servant Dinesh Kumar Shukla revealed his process of creativity in the realm of poetry in the year 2002. Deeply rooted in his poetic tradition Dinesh Kumar Shukla's poems confronts with the contemporary sensibility. In this interview he questions the shrinking readers base of Hindi poetry which was never the case during poets like Nirala, Bachchan, Shivmangal Singh Suman per say. A quite thought provoking and relevant conversation which encompasses North Indian popular poetry and hold responsible the power centers of academia in Hindi heartland. Photo courtesy Bharat S. Tiwari --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sm-irfan/message
It's the millennium and Amitabh Bachchan is broke – but his good mate and director Yash Chopra gives him a role in upcoming movie Mohabbattein and in a one fell swoop, AB is back at the top - this time not as the leading man but the leading man's father. More iconic dad-roles follow that introduce the magnificence of the Big B to a whole new generation. This on-screen rebirth also sees Mr Bachchan spreading his wings and doing roles which have changed the course of mainstream cinema.
In the 80's, Amitabh left his Angry Young Man phase behind to take on some romantic roles in movies like Silsila and Kabhie Kabhie. The team discuss his romantic roles as well as talking about some of their favourite pairings with actresses like Rekha, Parveen Babi and Zeenat Aman.
Known as the Shahenshah of Bollywood, actor Amitabh Bachchan is without a doubt, Indian cinema's biggest ever star. 200 films later over 50 incredible years including genre defining Deewar, Sholay and Coolie, Amitabh Bachchan is without doubt The Biggest B. In this podcast, two Bachchan fans (Haroon & Amn) and one fanatic (Shehzaad!) trace his prolific career by starting at the very beginning and explain why the living legend is such a hero to twentysomething year olds.
Bhawana Somaaya is a renowned film critic, journalist, and film historian. She was honored with the Padma Shree in the year 2017... Chk her at www.bhawanasomaaya.com We question: 1) The changing role of a film critic 2) Picking up content from a heap of content 3) The value of stars given for a film 4) Is a popular content a good content? 5) Who is watching all this content? 6) Cinema is dead? 7) There is no other Bachchan! Music- "Hard Boiled" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) Licence: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Vector Image- FREEPIK.COM You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @eplogmedia, For partnerships/queries send you can send us an email at bonjour@eplog.media. DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on all the shows produced and distributed by Ep.Log Media are personal to the host and the guest of the shows respectively and with no intention to harm the sentiments of any individual/organization. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Rich sits down in Mumbai with one of India's biggest stars, Amitabh Bachchan, to discuss Indian cinema and the actor's legendary career. Bachchan, who began acting in 1969 and has since continued to maintain A-list status,
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To listen to us online you can visit: https://audioboom.com/channel/bollywood-project Don't forget to subscribe to us on iTunes and leave a review and rating! You can tweet us at: https://twitter.com/bollyproject Like us on: https://www.facebook.com/TheBollywoodProject/ for more updates! That's also where we put all new videos, pictures, and updates about the latest Bollywood news! If you have business inquiries you can email us: bollyproject@gmail.com #Bollywood #RanbirKapoor #AishwariyaBachan #AnushkaSharma #FawadKhan #HarshKapoor #SaiyemiKher #SonamKapoor #VarunDhawan #ParineetiChopra #PriyankaChopra #ShahRukhKhan #DeepikaPadukone
In this episode we talk about: Katti Batt trailer Nikhil Advani, Sultan, Oculus, and Nitya Mehra casting Gangajaal 2 Update Rangoon update with Kangana Ranaut Bachchan Drama Rishi Kapoor's tweets Don't forget to subscribe to us on iTunes and leave [...]
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