"Sikindar" (Telugu)/ "Anjaan' (Tamil) Film Review

"Sikindar" had raised unprecedented expectations and got bid for a whopping crore count in Tollywood with Lagadapati Sridhar buying it wholly. The film has Superstar Suriya, reigning Diva Samantha, Yuvan Shankar Raja as music director and a director N Linguswamy who made some of the coolest movies in South. Not any more. "Sikandar" sucks and proves the biggest I-day bore of all movies.

Set in Mumbai with gang-wars as backdrop, the story opens well with a studious Suriya getting out of a train in search of his brother Raju. His enquiries take him to all the folks who are suspected to be involved with his missing brother. It brings him eventually in contact with the right and wrong people who entered Raju's life. Some say he got murdered by rivals, some say he has gone missing. Most people believe Raju Bhai was a do-gooder with a large heart who put his life before buddy Chandu (played by Vidyut Jammwala). Plenty of flashbacks later, the truth comes out - Who is Raju? Where is Raju? Why is his brother Krishna seeking him out? Is it dual role? Or are they the same? The flashback also throws in the glamor of Samantha who exposes herself like never before, more desperate than an item girl. Samantha is the original lover of Raju bhai in the film. We got to infer that since there is no other title justification - "Sikindar" is a sobriquet for Raju Bhai. The saga moves briskly in the first 20 minutes and then halfway in the first half loses the fizz with one of the most hackneyed plots and lazy treatment. The end is in sight  - the unravelling of the villain gang starting from Dileep Tahil, Manoj Bajpai and others - but not before an agonising 170 minutes. It appears director Linguswamy has lost his marbles in presenting a superstar at the peak of his career in different moods and styles. Generally, Linguswamy has created stars out of characters that are rustic at heart and unchiselled bag of surprises. In "Run" he unleashed Madhavan. In "Pandem Kodi" he gave the solitary superhit for Vishal. In "Awara", he gave Suriya's brother Karthi his best shot as a cool dude. But in "Sikindar", he gets carried away by the persona of Suriya and wastes many characters and technical talents in giving one of Suriya's lackadaisical films. Imagine when you had Santosh Sivan, Yuvan Sankar Raja and a starcast like this, you got to over-invest in better storyline and depth in narration.

All we  see is mindless violence, and frames that show Suriya as stylish as ever. He comes out good because he is a natural good-looker. Samantha also carries off her girlish demeanor with ease. Brahmanandam has an act as an unmelodious vocalist but doesn't fire with full impact. Infact, the artist who gets more laughs is the guy who drives Suriya all around Mumbai in his search for his brother. The day the stars realise that it is not important to have gang-wars and item girls like Chitrangada Singh to look heroic, directors have half a chance to make meaningful cinema. But one senses that after the mixed success of "Singham part two" and  experimental debacles like "Maatraan" and "7 Ariyu", Suriya is desperately seeking success. In the march to superstardom and the pointless struggle to retain it, superstars eventually go from hubris to debris. Suriya hoped to see a luck-turn by changing release of his movies from Diwali weekend to I-day weekend. Too bad, this won't work out again. But he has the range of acting, the talent and the patience to re-invent himself better than many other Superstars in Kollywood. At quite a few places, worn out scenes and fatigue in presenting sequences dullen your senses. Otherwise this could have been atleast averagely watchable film. Yuvan Shankar Raja needs to reduce his techno mixes and concentrate on straightening his tunes alone. He has the talent and the gene pool to give great music. Why doesn't he get it? On the whole, a film that tests your patience despite all the respect and admiration we may have for the team that has given us great films.

My rating: 2.25/5.

"Run Raja Run" (Telugu Film Review)

RRR is a classy and crisp film, perhaps the best Telugu film of 2014 so far and must be a trophy film for all the talents associated with it. Sharwanand, the boy next door who debuted as a drug addict in "Vennela" and later starred as a rocket scientist in "Amma Cheppindi" and lastly as a don in "Prasthanam" has hit bull's eye with a winning script and an affable story - a story that combines the genres of action, romedy and revenge drama in a commercial format that will turn many heads in Tollywood. Sujith, a new director, makes a stylish debut inter-mixing many elements of story-telling borrowed from short films, joke books, novellas of crime fiction and action films. But he makes a grand entree' with story-dialogues-screenplay and directing skills.Two gutsy producers offer this film under the banner of UV creations; they literally bankroll the film to emit production values usually reserved for superstars - so rich is the film that also casts a motley gang of artists oozing out talent - Sampath as a maverick cop, Adivi Sesh as an out-of-box-thinking cop, Jayaprakash as a delectable dad with uncharacteristic affection for son Sharwanand and a petite new starlet Seerat Kapoor with cute demeanor but not beautiful by convention. The director wastes little time in introducing characters and establishing their quirks while moving the story at a frequency that oscillates between two parallel narratives - one is a saga of a kidnapping spree in the city by groups wearing masks of the ruling superstars of Tollywood, the other narrative is the lighter, fun-filled version of a romantic track between Sharwanand and Seerat with a track that has an under-current of police machinations and tensions.

These two stories move in enchanting ways giving us a run a minute in unchartered territory - a breakup with a cute girl, a situational comedy with unsuspecting artists, flashbacks that clarify the motives and the messages and a game of Russian Roulette between the hero , the anti-hero and the heroine that goes right down to the wire. The only thing that distracts is the occasional attempts to humorise a situation when actually tensing the scene might have been better. But you realise the director has a funny bone in presenting the story - he digs out wit, romanticises little and weeds out any scene that smacks of cliched treatment. Because of this thinking, concise and no-lazy-thinking, Sujith infiltrates your viewing experience with images and expressions that can make you watch many times over without fatigue. The movie's content appears fresh and yet larger-than-life  - a combination that even ace directors can match upto. In 138 minutes, Sujith showed us that Telugu Cinema can surprise you, entertain you without making a PG version and wow you.

Technically, the film is brilliant in cinematography - most shots are picture-perfect, show the artists especially Sharwanand in fine fettle, do not strain your eyes with awkward movements and angles and leave a lasting impressions. Great work by Madhie in the visual department. The film's alluring appeal, rests largely on the shoulders of music director Ghibran - familiar to Tamil audiences. Ghibran's sound of music certainly has range, class in arrangement, melody and presentation. Though his music seems inspired by the Western influences, there is huge promise and excitement in his output. All the songs elevate it to a status of hummability - and his repertoire of songs with varying lengths and rhythms must get him new fans in Tollywood. "Bujjimaa... is a rarity that haunts you because of the beats and the timbre in a new singer's voice. Ghibran's background score is  uplifting - it doesn't have orchestral brilliance like that of K or Ilayaraja but enhances the  crux of a sequence. Over-instrumentation can be a temptation but it doesn't jar.  Almost all songs are preceded by the instrumental version of the song precursing it - a technique to burn your music deeper into the audience's minds. Ghibran, dear Tollywood fan, remember this name and you  will fall in love with the music more after watching the film's mesmerising song picturisation. What is different about his music is also that the songs do not always follow a typical format - and use instrumentation that sounds novel. That makes the unpredictability more welcome  - in music as well as in the frames back-ended with the music.

The film makes use of in-film advertising subtly with Naturo foods and studio settings provided by Ramoji Film City and Golconda Fort effectively. Quite a few scenes are shot in Golconda Fort, I wonder how the authorities have allowed even the room where Sriramadasu was imprisoned. The climax has a dramatic twist that must not be missed. For Sharwanand, Adivi Sesh and Sampath this film will be a harbinger of new offers. Sampath is intense and comical at times - sure, it will usher in many roles in comic villainy a'la Prakash Raj and Sonu Sood. Sharwanand is in his element and deserves a pat, he improved his screen presence. Content like this is hard to back up on first instincts, so the entire team has to be patted for an effort like this; it energises the audiences who lap it up, gets the cash registers ringing for the producers and equalises the arena for artists and technicians for a while. Sujith must take a bow for redefining how clean, entertaining films can be made, hope he gets a long haul. That he can write dialogues that pack a punch is a bonus.

My rating: 4/5

"Kick" (Hindi Film Review)

Salman Khan returns again in 2014 with a swashbuckler of a film "Kick". The last one "Jai Ho" was a great story remade from Chiranjeevi's "Stalin" about a Good Samaritan who starts a chain reaction of good actions. "Kick" has been in the works for a long time and easily the most awaited film for Salman Khan fans and Eid weekend entertainment-seekers. Remade from a blockbuster Telugu film "Kick" released in 2009, the film was a sensation earlier which created stardom for atleast four people - Ileana D'Cruz who never looked better since, Music Director Thaman who got offers for atleast 30 films after that, director Surinder Reddy who is hailed as the new Red-Bull action film-writer-director and hero Ravi Teja who is the raunchiest, naughtiest star in Indian films - a deadly combo of Dada Kondke and Amitabh Bachchan. Given that background and record, "Kick" had to deliver for Salman Khan who is waiting for a hit after his last film got washed out under fatwas of all kinds. It delivers on many counts.

"Kick" (Hindi) faithfully builds on the original plot of the Telugu film and then alters a few angles here and there - a medico/psychiatrist Jacqeline Fernandez bumps into an aimless prankster Devi Lal Singh (Salman Khan) who loves her. Devi is driven by adrenalin and loves the "kick" of things - he joins and chucks jobs, dates and breaks up and seeks adventures of the kind that even blissed out creatures under the sea don't venture into. Jacqueline loves him and loathes him and soon dates Randeep Hooda, a police officer at her father's behest. She narrates her story to Randeep to pass time. Randeep, in turn, tells his story of a fugitive who is still at large - a "Devil" who hoodwinks him all the time while decamping with ship loads of money. Who is the man in Randeep's life? Is he the same as in Jacqueline's ? The twists in the film take you far from Delhi to Poland and back with hyper-action sequence after hyper-action sequence - that remind you of the dare-devilry of a "Krish" or a "Dhoom" franchise.

What makes the film mostly watchable is the tempo of the plot which is essentially two flashbacks and one forward-moving story. In 148 minutes, the film starts as a fun film, just like the original and gets into top gear around interval time with a dramatic bang. To adapt the original nativity to the Hindi sensibilities, three people worked  on the screenplay including Rajat Aroraa and then Chetan Bhagat was asked to chip in. Atleast twice, Salman Khan asked Chetan to rewrite a better screenplay. His effort to nativise can be seen in few places - one in the interplay between the characters of the heroine's family and second in the treatment of the gang of villains and creation of a few more plot points which give depth to an otherwise frivolous fun film. The raw appeal gets short-changed with deja vu motifs borrowed from "Dabbaang". Comic scenes like the police station where father-son collide  (which could have been over-extended) or the hero reprise as a memory-loss patient would have created a cloudburst of uproarious laughter. There are few sentimental scenes with the kids which is the crux of plot. Instead, we see many scenes which make way for  in-film advertisements for Mother Dairy and NISE Gel - wonder why UTV had to resort to such, not seen this kind of stuff in a long time.

Performances-wise, Jacqueline paired well with Salman although she lacks emotional play. Randeep Hooda gets a meaty role against Salman Khan and remains in the zone throughout. But the surprise packet of the film is Nawazuddin Siddiqi. He gets the loudest snares and the best lines in the film. His swagger, his dangerous giggle preceded by a tongue-lashing sound and his menacing looks leave a lasting impression. Salman's generosity in sharing screen space with one of the iconic actors of our times is rare. Music by Himesh Reshmiya is average, wonder whatever happened to his melodies. Even a song with Nargis Fakshri is wasted in mindless gyrations and noisy rhythms. What elevates the movie though is the exceptional background score by Julius Packam - and one number by Yo YO Honey Singh which comes in the second half. Dialogues are racy and crisp - and many had the original touch, if not better impact thanks to the collaboration of the team which usually writes for Milan Luthria movies. Hyderabadi fans will rejoice that their most-favorite Hindi superstar utters three dialogues in pure Telugu - as a tribute to the Telugu original. Mithun Chakraborty as Salman's father shines yet again - wonder why we are not having enough of him in the role of a hero's father. The original disco dancer shakes a leg with a crow-feet superstar and the screen outcome is hilarious. A welcome trend in Salman's films is the absence of statutory warning for cigarette smoking - it saves three minutes of a grotesque warning and saves millions from undue influence. But why, I wonder was a warning for booze was not given when Mithunda and Sallu drink like fish at a party?

On the whole, a clean and watchable film with paisa vasool action and entertainment built on the bedrock of a blockbuster plot. The originals can't be compared here as both Tollywood and Bollywood have learnt to adapt winner scripts better to native sensibilities. For example, "Dabbanng" the original was remade into "Gabbar Singh" with better comic sensibilities to deliver the biggest blockbuster in Tollywood at that time. "Kick" (Hindi) is fully adapted to the HIndi audience with sentiment, action and comedy. With over 4000 screens, and a long weekend till Tuesday, "Kick" may rake in like never before.

My Rating: 3.5/5

"Drusyam" (Telugu) Film Review

"Drusyam" is an ambitious remake of the original Malayalam film by the same title - which hit national headlines with simultaneous bidding by leading film industries to reckon with - Bollywood, Tollywood, Sandalwood and Kollywood. With Ravi Chandran playing the role of Mohanlal in Kannada, Kamal Hasan in Tamil and Venkatesh in Telugu, expectations soared before the release. As usual, Telugu producers rushed to the fence in releasing the film. D.Suresh Babu backed Sripriya to direct the remake originally made by Jitu Joseph. Sripriya is that sizzling actress who starred in some unforgettable films of the 70s and 80s - "Anthuleni Katha" and "Vayasu Pilichindi".

The starcast is impressive - Venkatesh, Meena, Saptagiri, Kruttika, Ravi Kale, Nadiya and Naresh - and all of them have given great performances except Nadiya and Kruttika who were inconsistent in their performances and sometimes unconvincing. The story has been sensational and revolves around a six-sigma event - a highly improbable event in the way the ending goes.  According to what I read, the story is an autobiographical adaptation by the original director Jitu Josph; it happened to him and his family and hence he approached a producer. After shooting for the first thirty minutes, the producer threw in the towel and in stepped Superstar Mohanlal who backed it to the hilt. "Drusyam" in Malayalam collected over Rs.50 crores and became the first film to cross that kind of a milestone reserved for big-brother film industries of erstwhile AP and Tamil Nadu. The original film runs for two hours and forty five minutes with minimum props and gripping intensity. The current remake runs for almost two hours and fifty minutes. The original film shows Mohanlal in a status of humble economic conditions. The remake shows Venky as a serial entrepreneur and  reasonably affluent farmer-entrepreneur.

To tell the story will be to give away the plot. And to analyse the treatment and faultlines in the story will also unveil the storyline. But we have to make a beginning somewhere and talk turkey. So the story begins with Venkatesh and Meena and their two lovely daughters, one a teenager Kruttika and the other a pre-teenager. Venkatesh runs a cable TV business which goes well into the graveyard shift. His world at work revolves around movies - and he watches them every waking minute at work which starts around noon and stretches till the morning dawn. His assistant Saptagiri helps him out at work and they take the calls from customers at whim. At home, Meena is the boss and runs the household with the daughters and her indulgences in shopping. Its a happy world for Venkatesh and family even if they quibble and crib about the world until one fine day an intruder disrupts the  peace. The intruder who takes lewd video of the teenaged daughter gets tackled in the most appropriate manner when he comes to Venky's home and makes fresh advances against Kruttika.

The crux of the film revolves around how Venky rallies behind his family. What really happened to the boy? Is he dead? Missing? Killed? Action speeds up with the boy's parents, Nadiya and Naresh stepping in. Nadiya is IGP and uses her full force to investigate the matter. Naresh is a doubting Thomas who always feared his wayward son was spoilt and had to end in a mess like this. The biggest support for Nadiya comes from a vengeaful constable of the local police station - Ravi Kale who    was rubbed on the wrong side by Venky. The film goes in a different direction of suspicion, witness-examination and probe into the antecedents of the boy's travel to the village. This part, the cross-examination part and the preparation by Venky in psychologically steeling his family's nerves is the most exciting part of the film. The treatment is more nuanced and works on aspects seldom highlighted in films about the elements of criminality - mind-body coordination, body-language, evidence and its destruction and reconstruction, the art of dodging cross-examination, and the psychology of a crime-implicated person. The ending of the film takes one or two extra turns before it leaves you with lots of food for thought - on how the justice system works in India and what happens when someone were to subvert it.

Surely, the second half throws in a basketful of surprises but the first half lags because the director takes a lazy approach to establishing the characters and their idiosyncracies. Despite a valiant attempt to remake the film, the film's original script seems to have some flaws which can't be overlooked. But if you see the film in its flow, these faults may not be relevant because the treatment of the story takes a different direction but still they are plausible. For instance, on one hand, Venky works in the night shift as a cable TV owner but there is no reason to stay out of home when the whole world is sleeping when you have an Assistant and customer calls are few. If Venky really loves his family so much, as they show later in the film, why does a father of two girls and a loving wife spend his nights out watching silly movies? Not once do they show either Venky or Saptagiri, his assistant taking customer care calls seriously. Secondly, in Malayalam film, Mohanlal has a pitiable economic background but here, Venky has a five-acre plot with a lovely pathway and an opulent house but still cribs when his wife shops or demands an extra ice cream? Third, the police who beckon his family for interrogation do not  check out his vast plotted house even once with sniffer dogs to find out if something's fishy. Fourth, almost every other character in the film uses a mobile phone including the delinquent boy but Venky doesn't use - which world is the director thinking of? If it is cable TV business, why do they show Venky all the time watching latest movies with channel logos shown once or twice? Does it mean that the customers also spend the night out watching the films all night? And not once do we see Venky using a remote while his assistant is shown photoshopping lovely females. Fifthly, the clues and alibis used by Venky during the interrogation - they don't really add up  on closer watch - which is what Nadiya alleges. (For example, no bus ticket  is issued without a date printed). Sixth, the interrogations done in a guest house are unlawful - they even interrogate a child and manhandle the womenfolk. And not once does a lawyer show up anytime during the in-camera interrogations. If watching films like "Ankuram" gives one knowledge about such subtle legal aspects as "habeus corpus", pray, why such a slip up? Seventh, in the Malayalam film, even the cable films watched by Mohanlal are intelligently assembled to stay relevant to the basic plot of the film. But here, they show films for populism - a Pawan Kalyan film here, a Mahesh Babu or a Sobhan Babu film there. But the beauty is why, the hero doesn't know that a naked SIM Card is less dangerous than a SIM inserted into a carbonn mobile phone. Lastly, since the film's perspectives are entirely shown from Venky's angle, enough care hasn't been taken in the characterisation of Nadiya - the mother in her dominates the policewoman in her way beyond the endurance levels of the audience. Which is why, she misuses the system of interrogation blatantly until she pays a price with her post. The ending is quick and brilliant as you leave the hall with a mixed feeling - Can everything be manipulated in the name of love and selfishness?

Performances-wise, Venky and Ravi Kale stand out with contrasting beauty. Venky is shown glamorously even if it is a dull character. The last several films of Venky have been forgettable flops and everytime he experimented in the last decade - "Nagavalli" or "Eenaadu" the audience rejected him. Despite the flaws, this is his best comeback film. It is not perfect film but it is watchable and draws you in despite inconsistencies. There are not many films that Tollywood can boast of in this genre. I didn't get goosebumps watching this film. But I didn't feel bored either. Music by Sharath is good in atleast the two songs. Cinematography by S.Gopal Reddy looks good. Comedy by Saptagiri alone is good the rest do not just fire up. Yes, visuals can be deceiving but to take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the film's title, it should not have been named "Drusyam". "Adrusyam" is better!

My Rating: 3/5.

"Bobby Jasoos" (Hindi) Movie Review

You are Vidya Balan, lovingly called Bobby. You live in Moghalpura, Hyderabad, a pincode that has a density of over 100 people per sq.meter. Narrow lanes, dingy corners, claustrophic separator roads and noisy people. You have a doting mother and two younger sisters but your dad has an eerie coldness to you and doesn't treat you like the eldest child in the family - that regrettable male fixation thing. Still you pick a reputation as a quick-fix spy - someone who noses in on neighbourhood girls with "excusable" traits to help out reluctant bridegrooms or help aunties with "reliable" information. One thing leads to another and you soon become a sleuth to reckon with your own "adda" and assistants. One of them, played by the charming Ali Fazal becomes your unwilling lover and eventual supporter of all risky undertakings. One such undertaking, the riskiest one, comes calling in metastazing instalments from one Anees Khan, played with uneasy grit and intensity by Kiran Kapoor who comes in limousines and oozes out royalty unlimited. What does Anees Khan want? He comes and goes in a jiffy everytime but leaves Bobby with two brown envelopes, one gives cryptic details of the girls he wants Bobby to track down and the other envelope gives a hefty advance sum. The pattern repeats, Bobby succeeds in getting to the "X" or "Y" and the stakes get bigger. Then, at interval time, Bobby gets a doubt. What is happening to the girls she is ferreting out for Anees Khan? What if there is a twist in the tail, for the girls? What follows is a different drama with hugely unintended consequences and a cool ending.

Made by a debutant director Samar Shaikh, "Bobby Jasoos" is not a regular spy-thriller fare. It is a quirky, raw attempt at blending the genres of thriller with emotional drama and desi humour from the street corners of the bustling old city of Hyderabad. If you want to savor the charms of Charminar with a candid camera  that peeks into what a half of Hyderabad are all about - stuck in simple ways, hard living and countless paradigms of male stereotypes and "chalta hai" attitudes while eking out a honest day's labor, "Bobby Jasoos" serves you right. Vidya Balan is one woman too many in the film as she straddles many roles and costumes to come up trumps on her assignments - using innovative and sometimes bizarre ways of ensnaring her "target". There are emotional angles - the father-daughter angle between Rajendra Gupta and Vidya Balan and the romantic angle between Ali Fazal and Vidya Balan which make the film evocative amidst the distractions of a boisterous i-spy game played by Vidya throughout. The film's weaknesses lie in its treatment by Samar Shaikh. Director takes a flippant route to the protagonist's job description and makes mockery of how many folks get fooled by the maverick methods of Bobby Jasoos in getting to her targets - even as she covers humongous ground in uncovering them. She covers her constituency of Moghalpura better than what the local MLA does - covering the range of her target universe with her own sampling techniques - doing a census of an audition for a serial her aunts watch for smoking out the girls of the desired age-group or making elbow room in Spoken English tutorial classrooms to figure out the right birth marks of the girl. All that gets sometimes trite and outrageously irritating - because not a voice is raised in the neighbourhood against such antics.

Be that as it may, the redemption of the film lies in its many strengths - its starcast that is too perfect from Supriya Pathak, Tanvie Azmi, Kiran Kapoor, Vinay Varma (what a cameo by Suthradhar Agency's Vinay!) and the lovely pairing of Ali Fazal with Vidya Balan. Music, especially the BGM and the two cute songs uplift the film's dull moments. One of the songs, composed like a ghazal duet with an unusual rhythm stands out. Dialogues liberally sprinkle the notorious "Hurdu" slang of Hyderabadis with killer effect - "Hau", "Nakkho" abound enough to tickle you. Undoubtedly, Vidya Balan is the greatest strength of "Bobby Jasoos" as she effortlessly delivers a range of emotions with her spontaneity and charm. Neither obesity, marriage nor recent flops deters her confidence as she exudes perfection in her roles of a focused spy or as a misunderstood daughter or as a paradoxical lover. This may be an imperfect spy thriller by Samar Shaikh but "Bobby Jasoos" wins your hearts with positivity and sincerity to the plot. At 121 minutes, "Bobby Jasoos" is a family entertainer that deserves cosmopolitan adulation.
My rating: 3.25/5

Indian Railways - Why the Passenger fare hike was necessary

The Passenger Far hike is a bold decision by the NDA government that remained a work-in-progress by itself in its previous innings from 1998-2004. While the communists have already taken to the roads against the Railways decision (pun intended), the truth must be told.

What is the truth? Except for 2012, there has been no hike in passenger fare since 2002. India's largest employer - the Indian Railways - faces many battles even as it is constrained in capacity and resources. Expenditure on Railways as a share of transport expenditure has dipped from 56 per cent to 30 per cent by the Eleventh Plan. Share of railways in freight transport is down to 36 per cent from 89 per cent in 1961. Despite the highly subsidized passenger fares, passenger transport is losing out to alternative modes of transport - low cost airlilnes and road transport. Traffic is clearly moving away from Indian Railways due to poor quality of service already made worse by capacity congestion and extremely high rail freight tariffs. India's rail freight tariffs are among the highest in the world - perhaps the result of intense lobbying by the road and cargo transport operators. And how did we get there? Because freight revenue is used to cross-subsidize sub-inflationary and politically driven passenger rail fares. Indian passenger fares are 1/4th of those in China, 1/9th of those in Russia, and nearly 1/20th of those in Japan. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, they are at only 37 per cent of tariffs in China, 15 per cent of those in Russia, and 11 per cent of those in Japan. Whereas freight tariffs in China are only 72 per cent of the tariffs in India in nominal terms and 58 per cent when adjusted for purchasing power parity.

Now look at the other travesty. Because Indian Railways struggles to generate surpluses, coupled with the government's fiscal constraints, there has been significant under-investment in rail. Passenger trains, and more of them keep getting added in budget after budget use up nearly 65 per cent of network capacity (rail network that is) but contribute less than 30 per cent of the revenue. Every year, more and more unremunerative routes of passenger trains are added for various political appeasements. All this ensures IR keeps getting sicker by the day. And we now want bullet trains too at subsidized prices. According to Businessworld magazine article, I read a few years back, at current costs, a bullet-train ticket from Mumbai to Delhi will cost anywhere from $1450-1680 per head or thereabouts. And talk about so much pain with a passenger fare hike of 14.5 per cent, literally after a decade. There are more issues at hand that need redressal before Indian Railways gets up and going  - get freight traffic back, stop subsidizing passenger fares, use the network to atleast 40 per cent (we are using less than 15 per cent) and have a collaborative approach to address intermodal transport issues and connectivity. According to one estimate, countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Russia and the US which collectively carry more than 90 per cent of the world's rail freight outside India, all now have unitary transport ministries. China too has consolidated all transport ministries except railways. But for now, the free lunch on passenger fares has thankfully stopped. This is one of the best key messages that the NDA government has given out - something that it has ducked itself from taking in 2002.

#Indian Railways #Passenger Fares #Railways #Fare Hike #Bullet Trains

The Politics of the Hindi Language

The Politics of the Hindi language must never be extended beyond paying just lip-service. And there are many reasons for this even if you are tempted by the shenanigans of "national language", "national integration" and all that jazz. Nonsense.

To begin with, you cannot impose Hindi language as if it is a god-send or it has to be spoken by all of India's population. There are as many national languages in India as Hindi which are as beautiful, lyrical and classical, infact, more classical than Hindi. It is not heaven's exclusive license to Hindi to be spoken of highly and get multiplied manifold times. Down South, Tamil is one of the world's oldest languages and beats the pulp out of many others in the sheer volume of literature. Infact, it is more than 2000 years old language with wide variety and cultural richness. Telugu is equally old, dating back to atleast a thousand years of rich lineage. In a survey of the world's most beautiful languages done in 2011, judged primarily by three reasons - lyrical beauty, elegance of letters as they are written/printed and the richness of the alphabet, Telugu came second only to Korean language beating most languages in the world including Modiji's second-favorite language, Hindi (the first one must be his mother-tongue, I am just guessing). The Telugu film industry is India's largest segment in the number of films made per annum. Malayalam is another mesmerising language that has a cult followership across and outside India, aided by a race who have been migrant yet proud of its heritage. Malayalam's movies, warts and all, continue to dominate the film industry in India on matters of story-telling essentials. Malayalam's language itself resonates with most of the words derived from Sanskrit. Kannada, considered a mirror language to Telugu has a history that is co-terminous with that of Telugu. Scratch the surface and you will find many other languages in South India which are vibrant, exciting and alive - Konkani, Tulu are few examples of tongues which are equally vibrant and celebratory of the richness of life and language albeit without formal written scripts. Then you have the languages of the west and east - from Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Bihari, Bengali and Assamese - all have their own niche.

At the height of the Mauryan empire which ruled for three generations the whole of the Indian subcontinent from the edge of eastern Iran to today's Bangladesh, portions of South would remain outside its direct control. For most of the Mughal rule and the British rule, the Southern peninsula always enjoyed a halo of respect, identity and privilege to thrive in its atypical avatars and myriad hues. When the British ruled India, they understood that South cannot be reined in by imposing HIndi, so they indoctrinated English into the veins of trade and employment, creating a class of administrative army that kept their linguistic identities yet breathed fire into English. The intercourse with English created a renaissance but Hindi's rise was slow but not uniform. Given a choice of three languages, many South Indians still prefer to learn English rather than Hindi and there are historical reasons for that which have to be understood and empathised with. Even a docile prime minister Nehru understood the language divide that exists between North and South India. He created a Deputy Prime Minister post exclusively for catering to the interests of South - a tradition that continued until Shastri's rise.

Experts who do not understand this divide jump to conclusions that South is anti-nationalistic or anti-patriotic. Nonsense. It is just that language has always given a rare indemnity from colonial invasions and tortures to the South Indians; on some occasions it provided them quasi-independence or even satellite status while allowing a socio-economic resurgence on a scale that seldom was surpassed. Traditionally, it was the South that opened to the sea routes, developed maritime trade and allowed comprehensive mapping of the Indian Oceans between the Arabs and the Portugese, and later the next European powers that came calling to India - the Dutch, the French and the British. The South also adapted easily to Western influences faster than the North. When Vasco Da Gama came to India and hit the coast of Kerala first in 1498, he thought the people of Kerala were closer to Christianity than Hinduism because he felt the buildings looked like Christian churches rather than Hindu temples. Infact, the "Hindu" itself was a word the Europeans coined to describe the race from the valley of Indus. So much on the South-Indians.

PM Modi should realilse that Hindi has earned its spurs more from the proliferation of Hindi-speaking people who permeate the country and the world and the cultural exports of Hindi into Bollywood, the cuisine and the television. But it hasn't grown to become the language of the country in totality. Hence, that cannot be the reason to impose Hindi on the rest of the country. Hindi is a pulsating and lively language that is beautiful and simple but imposing it as a mandatory language has its down-syndrome. Yes we all love Hindi films and Hindi actors and Hindi writers and Hindi singers but know that no Indian language can be singled out as the lingua franca. For good or bad, the jury is out on which language is the best. Again, for good or bad, English has become the language of convenience and the language of business which cannot be replaced in many lifetimes. It is unwise to thrust your limitations of language on everybody else and re-invent the wheel. There is no long-term good now in learning a language at the cost of development and growth. Sooner or later, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians and the Chinese will realise that winning the battle against English is not the same as winning the war. It feels great to know that Spanish is the fastest growing language in the Americas, thanks to centuries of spanish invasions. But who cares for Spanish unless the world switches to Spanish. Ditto for the Mandarin. You may speak in Hindi addressing the Bhutanese and the Americans but the impact will never be the same as speaking in the language that rules the air waves.

Talk about language chauvinism, you must know this, DW - Deutsche World and RT - Russia Today, two of the state channels of German and Russian governments broadcast in English language are growing faster than the English channels of CNN and BBC - proof that language chauvinism serves little purpose in a world that almost became a global village with English. Also proof that the Germans and the Russians are eager to playing English. Play to your strengths but don't let language be a barrier to communication. The best way to build national pride is through building up levels of literacy, build up self-reliant people who are productive, skilful, employable or entrepreneurial and get global recognition not by getting chauvinistic about languages. The politics of Hindi language has always proved costly for a Union Government committed to restoring federal balance in India. I fail to understand why this time has to be different.