Right here, Right now...
Saw a movie at office today. A short 28 min movie… It’s really beautiful to watch such a movie which had a powerful message but was shown in the most creative and subtlest way.
The first shot shows a young man in his haste to go to some place and taking two actions - he screams at his mother for making him late, and he lovingly appreciates his brother's painting. By doing so, he strikes off two cycles - one of frustration and sorrow and the other of love and joy. His mother vents out her anger on her maidservant. His brother gifts the painting to his girl friend. Thus begins the cycles of sorrow and joy, forming a Domino stairway, leading to an unknown doorway. After shaking hands with 15 other characters and traveling through 17 locations, in just two shots, both the cycles meet at the end in an attempt to give a logical understanding to the seemingly absurd human life. It's a humorous look at the bizarreness of the cosmic accident, otherwise known as life.
After watching the movie, we sort of tried to reflect on the message that was being communicated through the movie. One team member said that the lives of all are interwoven while another said that if we have a positive mentality and do good things, they will come back to us. Perhaps what intrigued all of us were the 3 liner songs in this short movie that came at every alternate shot. The song would be in different languages depending on the actor who was in the shot but for line that was common for all….Red Blossom Cherry………
We tried to comprehend what it meant but in vain. One member stretched her imagination a bit and said that if we were to take the first 3 letters – R,B, and C it could mean that when we are happy, the RBC count in our body would be high. Well, that was something which none of us could digest, still we appreciated her imagination. Suddenly out of the blue, one member said that a flower in Japan blooms for only 10 days in a year and it is called cherry blossom. This flower is supposedly a metaphor for transient nature of life, rather ephemeral nature of life. The movie in fact celebrates the transience of life. It says that we shouldn’t wait for the next moment. The moment, right here, right now is your moment and one should be happy during this moment and spread a smile.
Spanning 17 locations, starring 18 characters and taken in mere 2 shots, Right here, Right now, the 28 min movie directed by Anand Gandhi is quite simplistically shot, highly innovative with a subtle, powerful message that has a tinge of philosophy.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Om Shanti Om – Mere noise.
This is not a film review but the manifestation of indignation of a hardcore disillusioned fan…
It was with much anxiety and bated breath that I waited for SRK’s latest release Om Shanti Om (OSO). Being a hard core Shahrukh fan (which I became especially after watching movies like Swades, Don and Chak De), I went and watched the movie on the first day itself even though I knew that the story revolved around the age old tried, tested and decayed concept of rebirth and that the movie was made by none other than the famous director, Farah Khan whose previous movie was Main Hoon naa. Yes, in spite of all this, I went and watched the movie still thinking that there would be some offering from the director’s end which would make the movie viewable.
But hey…hang on. OSO disappoints. The movie is nothing but a mix of all ingredients – few good songs with one song starring almost 31 stars of Bollywood, another one in which SRK matches rhythm with chics in an item no. Dard-e-Disco showing off his six pack, huge sets, which resemble the 70’s era as the first half of the movie is set in that period, and are pretty good (credit goes to Art director, Sabu Cyril) and efforts by the rest of the crew who have put in a lot of hard work to give the movie a look of the 70’s with the heroes sporting side burns and wearing bell bottom pants etc.
But that’s it….A movie can’t be appreciated just because of the sets and a couple of good songs. How different is it from an album then? A film’s usp can’t be a song with 31 stars or a song that features SRK showing off his recently worked out body. But unfortunately that’s what OSO is. There is absolutely no stuff in the movie. Not a single scene or dialogue in the movie is worth remembering. Oh yeah….i remember one dialogue which the thespians keep mouthing throughout the movie, ( If someone wishes something genuinely, the entire universe will conspire and help him/her get that even to the extend of being born again to fulfill certain dreams, :) ). I am sure that Paulo Coelho must be turning in his grave.
It somehow appears that Farah has made the movie for herself. If you have a friend, who is a popular actor and lots of money with you, then you can make a movie and be guaranteed of the fact that you can make money. That’s what has happened. The duo (Farah and Shahrukh) it seems, don’t give a damn to what the viewers think. There was a recent interview in which she said “I don’t want Shahrukh to sit and cry in the movie. He is my hero. I want him to save the heroine, fly like a superhero and smash the villains”. Everybody can have his/her own idea about a hero but is film making just about giving shape to one’s thought however bizarre it may be or is it much more than that?
Of late, Bollywood has witnessed what can be called “media corporitization”. These corporate offices have taken up film production and distribution and hence the dynamics of movie making have completely changed. Marketing holds the key to the success of a movie is the new age maxim. Big production houses like Yash Raj spent a lot of money marketing their movies. Eros International, another big name was perhaps playing big for the first time in India tying up with Red Chillies Entertainment (SRK’s own production banner) and didn’t leave any stone unturned as far as marketing of OSO was concerned. But if you observe, there is a trend that is emerging. Most of these movies which are marketed in a big way lack the spine – a good story and a script. So marketing in fact makes up for all such lapses and helps package the movie in way that enthuses the audience to go and watch. Lo, behold. These strategies aren’t going to work in the long run. The last few Yash Raj films bombed in the box office. OSO might become a hit but definitely it’s not something that is worth emulating. Soon, the time would come when no amount of marketing and commoditization of movies would come to the rescue of movies that don’t have the spine.
PS: My dear friend, Rahul, I am confident that you will make a better movie; hehe. If you lack the confidence, go watch OSO. After all film making isn’t rocket science dude (Courtesy: Farah)
This is not a film review but the manifestation of indignation of a hardcore disillusioned fan…
It was with much anxiety and bated breath that I waited for SRK’s latest release Om Shanti Om (OSO). Being a hard core Shahrukh fan (which I became especially after watching movies like Swades, Don and Chak De), I went and watched the movie on the first day itself even though I knew that the story revolved around the age old tried, tested and decayed concept of rebirth and that the movie was made by none other than the famous director, Farah Khan whose previous movie was Main Hoon naa. Yes, in spite of all this, I went and watched the movie still thinking that there would be some offering from the director’s end which would make the movie viewable.
But hey…hang on. OSO disappoints. The movie is nothing but a mix of all ingredients – few good songs with one song starring almost 31 stars of Bollywood, another one in which SRK matches rhythm with chics in an item no. Dard-e-Disco showing off his six pack, huge sets, which resemble the 70’s era as the first half of the movie is set in that period, and are pretty good (credit goes to Art director, Sabu Cyril) and efforts by the rest of the crew who have put in a lot of hard work to give the movie a look of the 70’s with the heroes sporting side burns and wearing bell bottom pants etc.
But that’s it….A movie can’t be appreciated just because of the sets and a couple of good songs. How different is it from an album then? A film’s usp can’t be a song with 31 stars or a song that features SRK showing off his recently worked out body. But unfortunately that’s what OSO is. There is absolutely no stuff in the movie. Not a single scene or dialogue in the movie is worth remembering. Oh yeah….i remember one dialogue which the thespians keep mouthing throughout the movie, ( If someone wishes something genuinely, the entire universe will conspire and help him/her get that even to the extend of being born again to fulfill certain dreams, :) ). I am sure that Paulo Coelho must be turning in his grave.
It somehow appears that Farah has made the movie for herself. If you have a friend, who is a popular actor and lots of money with you, then you can make a movie and be guaranteed of the fact that you can make money. That’s what has happened. The duo (Farah and Shahrukh) it seems, don’t give a damn to what the viewers think. There was a recent interview in which she said “I don’t want Shahrukh to sit and cry in the movie. He is my hero. I want him to save the heroine, fly like a superhero and smash the villains”. Everybody can have his/her own idea about a hero but is film making just about giving shape to one’s thought however bizarre it may be or is it much more than that?
Of late, Bollywood has witnessed what can be called “media corporitization”. These corporate offices have taken up film production and distribution and hence the dynamics of movie making have completely changed. Marketing holds the key to the success of a movie is the new age maxim. Big production houses like Yash Raj spent a lot of money marketing their movies. Eros International, another big name was perhaps playing big for the first time in India tying up with Red Chillies Entertainment (SRK’s own production banner) and didn’t leave any stone unturned as far as marketing of OSO was concerned. But if you observe, there is a trend that is emerging. Most of these movies which are marketed in a big way lack the spine – a good story and a script. So marketing in fact makes up for all such lapses and helps package the movie in way that enthuses the audience to go and watch. Lo, behold. These strategies aren’t going to work in the long run. The last few Yash Raj films bombed in the box office. OSO might become a hit but definitely it’s not something that is worth emulating. Soon, the time would come when no amount of marketing and commoditization of movies would come to the rescue of movies that don’t have the spine.
PS: My dear friend, Rahul, I am confident that you will make a better movie; hehe. If you lack the confidence, go watch OSO. After all film making isn’t rocket science dude (Courtesy: Farah)
Monday, November 05, 2007
Eccentric Musings of a Hippie…..
The train sluggishly moved out of Mumbai Central station thereby marking the beginning of a spiritual (not religious) journey in what was going to become a remarkable experience.
Hailing from a typical middle class family in the south, my idea about North India was formed mainly by the trips that we undertook to various places as a family during the summers. But then, there comes a stage in your life when you would want to revisit most of those places for which you have suddenly developed an appetite for seeing and appreciating. So that’s how it struck me to visit Delhi, Agra and the twin temple cities of Haridwar and Rishikesh.
Bombay has always been my first love and though Paru often used to tell a lot about Delhi, I never used to agree with her on the fact that Delhi is better than Bombay. I didn’t have any expectations about Delhi but what welcomed me on my way to Kingshuk’s house in Sarojini Nagar was dark, tarred, well maintained roads with trees on both sides forming a canopy which completely captured my imagination and I fell in love with Delhi. A well planned city (credit goes to Edwin Lutyens), Delhi is far better than Bombay at least on a couple of parameters like good roads, lesser pollution and fewer traffic snarls primarily because, this is the place where the nation’s top executive and the judicial institutions are. At the same time, a lot of initiatives have also been taken in the capital to ensure a better environment – by enforcing a rule that made all the public transport run on gas. Credit also goes to the metro that was recently launched that takes away a lot of road traffic.
But Delhi was just a base camp. Calling ourselves hippies, Romit and I set out for the twin cities by road. We reached Rishikesh earlier than we had anticipated – 5 am in the morning. Draped in half sleeved t-shirts and jeans, we moved out of the bus towards the ghat braving the biting cold that was killing us. We spent almost 2 hours waiting for the sun to rise and relieve us from the cold and then slowly we proceeded to Lakshman Joola which is a huge bridge and is one of the major attractions in Rishikesh. The bold and beautiful Ganges flows under the Lakshman joola. Standing on the bridge and gazing at the Ganges with the wind kissing your face is an ethereal experience. A holy dip in the greenish blue waters of the Ganga that were shimmering in the sunlight was another exhilarating experience.
We rushed back to Haridwar in a bid to see the arti (evening prayers) only to find to our dismay that the waters of the river were blocked as some purification was underway and hence the arti wasn’t as beautiful as we had thought it would be.
To what extend a person would go as far his love is concerned? The answer would be Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz and what more, he even chopped off the hands of all the workers once it was completed, fearing that they might build another monument that would be more beautiful than Taj. Being a highly dreamy and romantic person (I really think so.J ) I was quite eager to see Taj but the kind of welcome we received at the Agra station was pathetic. We were tortured to hell by the ric drivers and guides who completely spoiled our mood. It seems like the “Athithi Devo Bhava” campaign by the Tourism Ministry hasn’t quite had its effect on any of these people.
Be it Agra or the beautiful Fatehpur Sikri or Haridwar, as Romit says “Divinity of all these places has gone” and it’s the guides, the people who manage and who work here are the ones to be blamed. In Fatehpur Sikri, a man came running towards us and told us in panting voice that the shrine of the Sufi saint would be closed soon and hence he requested us to go and visit it once before it got closed. The moment we went there, he asked for money. In Haridwar, if you go near any priest who calls you to give you the tirtha (or the holy water), you would need to pay him something because by the time you accept the tirtha and drink it, and he would have started chanting mantras for the welfare of your family that finally you would be forced to give. Such is the plight of the devotees and tourists who easily fall prey to these money sucking men.
The most exciting thing about this journey was that I believe that I have been able to touch the heart and soul of each and every place I went. Be it, taking a dip in the Ganga that flows through the rustic and exotic Rishikesh, or watching the evening Arti in Haridwar, or walking through the Parantha gali in Chandni Chowk (referred to as Old Delhi) and occasionally taking quick bites of the yummiest paranthas in India or taking a bumpy ride in a Mahindra jeep through dusty roads while returning from Fatehpur Sikri followed by an even more stupendous journey in a train that was packed with people…
Its been one enriching, spiritual experience.
The train sluggishly moved out of Mumbai Central station thereby marking the beginning of a spiritual (not religious) journey in what was going to become a remarkable experience.
Hailing from a typical middle class family in the south, my idea about North India was formed mainly by the trips that we undertook to various places as a family during the summers. But then, there comes a stage in your life when you would want to revisit most of those places for which you have suddenly developed an appetite for seeing and appreciating. So that’s how it struck me to visit Delhi, Agra and the twin temple cities of Haridwar and Rishikesh.
Bombay has always been my first love and though Paru often used to tell a lot about Delhi, I never used to agree with her on the fact that Delhi is better than Bombay. I didn’t have any expectations about Delhi but what welcomed me on my way to Kingshuk’s house in Sarojini Nagar was dark, tarred, well maintained roads with trees on both sides forming a canopy which completely captured my imagination and I fell in love with Delhi. A well planned city (credit goes to Edwin Lutyens), Delhi is far better than Bombay at least on a couple of parameters like good roads, lesser pollution and fewer traffic snarls primarily because, this is the place where the nation’s top executive and the judicial institutions are. At the same time, a lot of initiatives have also been taken in the capital to ensure a better environment – by enforcing a rule that made all the public transport run on gas. Credit also goes to the metro that was recently launched that takes away a lot of road traffic.
But Delhi was just a base camp. Calling ourselves hippies, Romit and I set out for the twin cities by road. We reached Rishikesh earlier than we had anticipated – 5 am in the morning. Draped in half sleeved t-shirts and jeans, we moved out of the bus towards the ghat braving the biting cold that was killing us. We spent almost 2 hours waiting for the sun to rise and relieve us from the cold and then slowly we proceeded to Lakshman Joola which is a huge bridge and is one of the major attractions in Rishikesh. The bold and beautiful Ganges flows under the Lakshman joola. Standing on the bridge and gazing at the Ganges with the wind kissing your face is an ethereal experience. A holy dip in the greenish blue waters of the Ganga that were shimmering in the sunlight was another exhilarating experience.
We rushed back to Haridwar in a bid to see the arti (evening prayers) only to find to our dismay that the waters of the river were blocked as some purification was underway and hence the arti wasn’t as beautiful as we had thought it would be.
To what extend a person would go as far his love is concerned? The answer would be Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz and what more, he even chopped off the hands of all the workers once it was completed, fearing that they might build another monument that would be more beautiful than Taj. Being a highly dreamy and romantic person (I really think so.J ) I was quite eager to see Taj but the kind of welcome we received at the Agra station was pathetic. We were tortured to hell by the ric drivers and guides who completely spoiled our mood. It seems like the “Athithi Devo Bhava” campaign by the Tourism Ministry hasn’t quite had its effect on any of these people.
Be it Agra or the beautiful Fatehpur Sikri or Haridwar, as Romit says “Divinity of all these places has gone” and it’s the guides, the people who manage and who work here are the ones to be blamed. In Fatehpur Sikri, a man came running towards us and told us in panting voice that the shrine of the Sufi saint would be closed soon and hence he requested us to go and visit it once before it got closed. The moment we went there, he asked for money. In Haridwar, if you go near any priest who calls you to give you the tirtha (or the holy water), you would need to pay him something because by the time you accept the tirtha and drink it, and he would have started chanting mantras for the welfare of your family that finally you would be forced to give. Such is the plight of the devotees and tourists who easily fall prey to these money sucking men.
The most exciting thing about this journey was that I believe that I have been able to touch the heart and soul of each and every place I went. Be it, taking a dip in the Ganga that flows through the rustic and exotic Rishikesh, or watching the evening Arti in Haridwar, or walking through the Parantha gali in Chandni Chowk (referred to as Old Delhi) and occasionally taking quick bites of the yummiest paranthas in India or taking a bumpy ride in a Mahindra jeep through dusty roads while returning from Fatehpur Sikri followed by an even more stupendous journey in a train that was packed with people…
Its been one enriching, spiritual experience.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
An experience of a lifetime!!!
The dust finally settles down. 3 months of work and the last three days which formed the grand finale of former comes to an end. Moments of action, excitement, anxiety; it’s all over. Key note speakers, session topics, quizmaster, banners, posters, delegate kits, mementos, sound systems etc wouldn’t give a nightmare anymore. It’s all over.
All this wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for my entry into the core committee of Manthan 2007 which happened to be a serendipitous one. The biggest learning of my life has happened in the last 2 months, I must say and that is something which didn’t happen in the last one year. HR, I believe as a subject is more of action and less of learning. It’s all about implementation. The subject per se perhaps happens to be a mere fad with a lot of jargons and I really hate giving the exams. But HR, the function is perhaps the most difficult to implement and practice. Manthan 2007 has essentially given an opportunity to try and practice HR. OB was a subject which I could vaguely understand when taught in class but reinforcement happened time and again when Manthan preparations were going on. It was not a pleasurable learning experience. Its true when people say that success is a bad teacher for whatever I have learnt have been through my own mistakes or through the mistakes of my colleagues in corecomm which I keep track of.
Here are a few learnings from the last 3 months…
a. Don’t give advice where it is not sought. You might have benign intentions but people will tag you as a preacher.
b. Use words carefully especially when speaking with big people no matter how much so ever you get pissed off with the way conversation keeps heading. If you want to put across a message, put it in the form of a suggestion/question rather than making a statement. In that way you wouldn’t hurt the ego of the other person.
c. There are always better ways of conveying the same message and that is not diplomacy. Communication is an art which is very difficult to learn.
d. When people leave institutes they suddenly might become professional. Whenever you address any alumnus always maintain a certain degree of professionalism except with people with whom you have a personal contact, else your request wouldn’t be appreciated.
e. Teamwork - greatest challenge. Its not a cliché, its not a banal competency. It’s perhaps the most difficult thing to do - to work in a team with an intention to contribute. There have been teams where the individuals within it have been stars but the group as a whole has been disappointing. The team members cannot stand each other. Ego hits a high and not the overall goal/objective of the team.
f. There might be moments when you will be down - things won’t happen as you want them to. You need to be patient and not act in a fit of rage. You will only end up losing more. (But I was rebuked by my colleagues for not getting angry.J )
g. Perseverance holds the key. You cannot be a happy go lucky person always. To make things fall in place, you need to slog, stalk people and make it happen. You just cannot sit back and wait for opportunities to come your way. Need to go and seize it.
h. A value is not a value unless a trade-off is attached to it - Quite true. You will be tested to the core. If you strongly believe in you and your values, the entire universe will conspire and help you in getting things you want. (Courtesy: Anirudha and Alchemist)
i. Be genuine - People will appreciate it. A mask at the end of the day is not the real you. It can be removed and people will come to know. Better to be always genuine.
Manthan 2007 might have been a success. But a lot of introspection needs to go into it. Especially from a leader’s point of view or as an HR professional, we always say that we need to create stakes/process ownership. That has been one of the greatest challenges during this event. There have been people who didn’t contribute anything during the last 3 months. Going to classes and giving motivation speeches seems sometimes to me as a big joke. At the same time, there are people who take a lot of initiatives, who slog their asses in making the event a grand success. What is the difference between them is something I fail to understand. Hope to get that answer some day and that would be the biggest learning of all…
The dust finally settles down. 3 months of work and the last three days which formed the grand finale of former comes to an end. Moments of action, excitement, anxiety; it’s all over. Key note speakers, session topics, quizmaster, banners, posters, delegate kits, mementos, sound systems etc wouldn’t give a nightmare anymore. It’s all over.
All this wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for my entry into the core committee of Manthan 2007 which happened to be a serendipitous one. The biggest learning of my life has happened in the last 2 months, I must say and that is something which didn’t happen in the last one year. HR, I believe as a subject is more of action and less of learning. It’s all about implementation. The subject per se perhaps happens to be a mere fad with a lot of jargons and I really hate giving the exams. But HR, the function is perhaps the most difficult to implement and practice. Manthan 2007 has essentially given an opportunity to try and practice HR. OB was a subject which I could vaguely understand when taught in class but reinforcement happened time and again when Manthan preparations were going on. It was not a pleasurable learning experience. Its true when people say that success is a bad teacher for whatever I have learnt have been through my own mistakes or through the mistakes of my colleagues in corecomm which I keep track of.
Here are a few learnings from the last 3 months…
a. Don’t give advice where it is not sought. You might have benign intentions but people will tag you as a preacher.
b. Use words carefully especially when speaking with big people no matter how much so ever you get pissed off with the way conversation keeps heading. If you want to put across a message, put it in the form of a suggestion/question rather than making a statement. In that way you wouldn’t hurt the ego of the other person.
c. There are always better ways of conveying the same message and that is not diplomacy. Communication is an art which is very difficult to learn.
d. When people leave institutes they suddenly might become professional. Whenever you address any alumnus always maintain a certain degree of professionalism except with people with whom you have a personal contact, else your request wouldn’t be appreciated.
e. Teamwork - greatest challenge. Its not a cliché, its not a banal competency. It’s perhaps the most difficult thing to do - to work in a team with an intention to contribute. There have been teams where the individuals within it have been stars but the group as a whole has been disappointing. The team members cannot stand each other. Ego hits a high and not the overall goal/objective of the team.
f. There might be moments when you will be down - things won’t happen as you want them to. You need to be patient and not act in a fit of rage. You will only end up losing more. (But I was rebuked by my colleagues for not getting angry.J )
g. Perseverance holds the key. You cannot be a happy go lucky person always. To make things fall in place, you need to slog, stalk people and make it happen. You just cannot sit back and wait for opportunities to come your way. Need to go and seize it.
h. A value is not a value unless a trade-off is attached to it - Quite true. You will be tested to the core. If you strongly believe in you and your values, the entire universe will conspire and help you in getting things you want. (Courtesy: Anirudha and Alchemist)
i. Be genuine - People will appreciate it. A mask at the end of the day is not the real you. It can be removed and people will come to know. Better to be always genuine.
Manthan 2007 might have been a success. But a lot of introspection needs to go into it. Especially from a leader’s point of view or as an HR professional, we always say that we need to create stakes/process ownership. That has been one of the greatest challenges during this event. There have been people who didn’t contribute anything during the last 3 months. Going to classes and giving motivation speeches seems sometimes to me as a big joke. At the same time, there are people who take a lot of initiatives, who slog their asses in making the event a grand success. What is the difference between them is something I fail to understand. Hope to get that answer some day and that would be the biggest learning of all…
Thursday, April 05, 2007
God's own Country - Golden Jubilee
Kanna ezhunthireda……amma called out loudly from the kitchen loud enough to wake me up but with a sense of reluctance as though she didn’t want me to wake up. I get up from my bed to find a hot steaming cup of filter coffee beside my favorite newspaper “The Hindu” kept on the table. I sheepishly flip through the pages while slurping the coffee when a news suddenly strikes me. Today is the golden jubilee of Kerala’s first government. The first communist government was sworn in on this day before 50 years.
A sudden sense of excitement caught hold of me and I began reading the articles related to the news one after the other with a new found sense of purpose. The reasons are obvious; a lot to do with the history of the state which I had just studied earnestly as part of my semester curriculum. The first government had earned fame in more than one way. It was first communist government that was elected to power anywhere in the world. It was the government which introduced a lot of path breaking reforms and policies which aimed at achieving social justice apart from economic development all of which has eventually gained a name in the form of the Kerala model of development that has attracted the attention of many an economist. It still remains a paradox as Kerala is a first world state in a third world country because it mirrors the US on many of the physical quality of life index (PQLI) except for the per capita income.
While the government introduced many policies that had the benign intentions, it also bought with it the trade unions that made the life of any entrepreneur miserable. Any person who attempted to do business in Kerala broke his back. Trade unions used to resort to strike for reasons as silly as non-availability of a special variety of pappadam (famously known as the Pappadam strike of FACT). All these had become the theme for many a Malayalam movie in the 80’s which depicted the plight of the average educated unemployed malayali youth and the various problems that plagued the state.
The story still continues. Red flags can still be found fluttering in almost all the junctions of the city. Even this time the day I came here to Trivandrum, there was a strike by the lorry drivers against the road tax which was hiked almost after a decade.
At the same time the city landscape is undergoing a sea change. It seems as though a new city is being built with the old edifices being pulled down although as part of the road widening process and nascent buildings coming up in their places. I was completely startled to see a lot of a new buildings cropping up, new hoardings being put up and a hell lot of new cars swarming the city. A lot of this change has to do with the IT revolution that is sweeping across the city. With big companies like Infosys, Mckinsey and a host of other IT/Consulting companies setting up offices here, the lifestyle of the city folks has also started changing. A few years back, a Pizza corner or a Café Coffee day is something that I couldn’t have imagined in Trivandrum, but they all have crept in due course of time.
It is very difficult to say whether Kerala has achieved a level of development that it ought to have achieved partly because of the paradox that still hounds the state. The communist government cannot just sit back and rest on its past laurels (although they introduced a lot of initiatives aimed at social welfare) but try and push for more investment and thereby pull the section of people who are still over dependent on agriculture. But things are changing for sure. Trivandrum as I perceive is all set to join the big league of metros if the number of IT companies that have mushroomed in the recent past is anything to go by. As the communist government is back to power after 50 years it will be interesting to see what policies they take at this juncture when industrialization, liberalization and not redistribution hold the key to the growth and development.
Kanna ezhunthireda……amma called out loudly from the kitchen loud enough to wake me up but with a sense of reluctance as though she didn’t want me to wake up. I get up from my bed to find a hot steaming cup of filter coffee beside my favorite newspaper “The Hindu” kept on the table. I sheepishly flip through the pages while slurping the coffee when a news suddenly strikes me. Today is the golden jubilee of Kerala’s first government. The first communist government was sworn in on this day before 50 years.
A sudden sense of excitement caught hold of me and I began reading the articles related to the news one after the other with a new found sense of purpose. The reasons are obvious; a lot to do with the history of the state which I had just studied earnestly as part of my semester curriculum. The first government had earned fame in more than one way. It was first communist government that was elected to power anywhere in the world. It was the government which introduced a lot of path breaking reforms and policies which aimed at achieving social justice apart from economic development all of which has eventually gained a name in the form of the Kerala model of development that has attracted the attention of many an economist. It still remains a paradox as Kerala is a first world state in a third world country because it mirrors the US on many of the physical quality of life index (PQLI) except for the per capita income.
While the government introduced many policies that had the benign intentions, it also bought with it the trade unions that made the life of any entrepreneur miserable. Any person who attempted to do business in Kerala broke his back. Trade unions used to resort to strike for reasons as silly as non-availability of a special variety of pappadam (famously known as the Pappadam strike of FACT). All these had become the theme for many a Malayalam movie in the 80’s which depicted the plight of the average educated unemployed malayali youth and the various problems that plagued the state.
The story still continues. Red flags can still be found fluttering in almost all the junctions of the city. Even this time the day I came here to Trivandrum, there was a strike by the lorry drivers against the road tax which was hiked almost after a decade.
At the same time the city landscape is undergoing a sea change. It seems as though a new city is being built with the old edifices being pulled down although as part of the road widening process and nascent buildings coming up in their places. I was completely startled to see a lot of a new buildings cropping up, new hoardings being put up and a hell lot of new cars swarming the city. A lot of this change has to do with the IT revolution that is sweeping across the city. With big companies like Infosys, Mckinsey and a host of other IT/Consulting companies setting up offices here, the lifestyle of the city folks has also started changing. A few years back, a Pizza corner or a Café Coffee day is something that I couldn’t have imagined in Trivandrum, but they all have crept in due course of time.
It is very difficult to say whether Kerala has achieved a level of development that it ought to have achieved partly because of the paradox that still hounds the state. The communist government cannot just sit back and rest on its past laurels (although they introduced a lot of initiatives aimed at social welfare) but try and push for more investment and thereby pull the section of people who are still over dependent on agriculture. But things are changing for sure. Trivandrum as I perceive is all set to join the big league of metros if the number of IT companies that have mushroomed in the recent past is anything to go by. As the communist government is back to power after 50 years it will be interesting to see what policies they take at this juncture when industrialization, liberalization and not redistribution hold the key to the growth and development.
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