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Click on the title to listen and watch Hey Ram by Jagjit Singh, one of the great spiritual songs. It’s always a great experience when you have so many different religions in one country. You can listen to great spiritual songs and share your thoughts with everyone.

The Delhi Prevention of Property Defacement Act 2007, introduced in the Delhi Assembly recently, makes a depressing reading. According to its provisions, a mere act of putting posters on the walls or writing anything with chalk, paint or any other material can make you liable for a punishment of one year in jail. Additionally, you can be asked to pay a fine of Rs 50,000.

 

The proposed Act is said to be an improved version of the earlier Act in operation in the state, which was considered lenient. Now, any defacement will be a cognisable offence, which means you can be arrested without even getting into the formality of preparing a warrant.

 

The Delhi Government had adopted the West Bengal Prevention of Defacement of Property Act 1976 to penalise those people who were found to be engaged in ‘defacing public property’. It duly arrested around 2,802 people during a short span of two years (2001-2003) while 1,925 people were punished for wall writing, putting posters, stickers and banners.

 

Looking at the stringent provisions in the proposed Act and the way in which a mere act of putting posters would be bracketed as ‘cognisable offence’, one can easily see a spurt in the number of people getting arrested or punished.

 

Interestingly, the period during which this draft Bill was put before the House for discussion, one came across another decision of the government that talked of the government’s move to allow putting ads behind auto-rickshaws. The government expects that it could see a quantum jump in. its revenue. A few months back, the local Municipal Corporation had also decided to allow putting of ads on the radio taxies to increase the size of its coffers.

 

 

 

Any layperson could comprehend the rationale behind the contrary approach adopted by the people in power. While on the one hand, it seeks to penalise those people under the spacious plea of ‘defacement of public property’, it has no qualms of any sort about propaganda, if you are in a position to pay for it.

 

It is clear that only moneybags or big corporate houses would be able to avail this opportunity of putting across their message by paying for it and a large majority of the working population of the city who has to struggle hard to make both ends meet would be denied any such opportunity. In the changed ambience, where one is finding ‘criminalisation’ of the right to t freedom of expression granted by the Constitution, it would be increasingly difficult to express one’s disenchantment with the state of affairs.

 

One cannot expect ordinary people would ever find themselves in a position to express their stand vis-a-vis the custodians of democracy. Few years back, thousands of people working in different factories in Delhi were asked to either shift to new a places of work or get ready to leave the job altogether, as the powers that be had decided to close the factories t1 supposedly to ‘control pollution’.

 

One also saw the well-planned drive n by city authorities to demolish slums and ‘decongest the cities’. A senior judge had no qualms in comparing slum dwellers with pickpockets denying them any alternate accommodation claiming that it would be ‘rewarding the pickpockets’.

 

Imagine a similar situation where the people on the margins of society want to express their discontent about the state of affairs. How do they do it if they are denied even the opportunity of putting posters? Do they have any way out before them than getting ready to get arrested and pay a hefty fine for daring to put a handmade poster?

 

 

Anybody can see that the situation that seems to be emerging cannot be said to be a sign of healthy democracy, which is considered to be a ‘rule of the people, by the people and for the people’. How can it be called a ‘real democracy’ if its citizen are even denied the opportunity to exercise their political rights?

 

Everybody knows that the concept of citizenship has evolved down the ages and being a citizen of any country imbues you with political rights. And if we limit the idea of political rights to mere right to vote occasionally, then one is making a travesty of the definition.

 

The key thing to be noted in this debate is that under the present phase of neo-liberalism - where market forces have been given a free play and the state seems to be withdrawing from key sectors of running the government - the very move ‘to ‘criminalise’ right to’ freedom of expression is a sign of the hollowing out of the idea of citizenship.

 

It is evident that by putting someone in jail for putting posters would not only deny the citizen the right to be freedom of expression, it would deny her/him the ‘ethical and moral duties’ of a citizen.

 

Questioning the manner in which ‘public is being differentiated into a hierarchy of individuals’ under a neoliberal regime and also substituting ‘citizen with consumer’. But can we have democracy without ’society without a modicum of equality of status and condition, secured by universal public services, and a significant degree of social solidarity based on this? It seems unlikely.

 

To save itself from the charges of throttling the right to freedom of expression’, the Delhi Government plans to develop around 150 notice boards (5 ft long and 15 ft broad) spread over Delhi whose population is moving rapidly to touch the 1.25 crore mark. Anyone can comprehend that it is a mere formality.

 

To conclude, all these moves are a part of a wider game plan of ‘beautification of the city’ to prepare itself for the Commonwealth Games to be held in 2010. There could be no doubt that they may help ‘beautify’ the city outwardly by removing ‘unwanted/illegal structures’, but it would also help reveal the larger anomalies inherent in the society and the party.

 

 

 

The Union Government is not in the habit of explaining all its decisions that have a bearing on vital public interest. If the confidence motion that Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio won on December 13 last was controversial, President’s rule now imposed by the Centre in the state is no less contentious.

No wonder, Mr. Rio and his supporting parties like the BJP are shouting blue murder. They have a point when they say that if the decision of the Speaker to debar three Independents and nine dissidents of the ruling NPF from taking part in the December 13 voting was wrong, then so was a similar decision taken in Goa some time back. But there the Congress government has been allowed to function smoothly.

 

 

There cannot be separate sets of rules for states ruled by the Congress and other parties. It is really intriguing why the Congress has again opened itself to allegations of gross impropriety by dismissing Mr. Rio just about six weeks before his term was scheduled to end in any case and Assembly elections were due.

 

Not only that, former Lok Sabha Speaker P.A.Sangma has alleged that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Center did not consult its partners while recommending imposition of President’s rule. His party and the Left parties had vehemently opposed this move. In fact, the Union Cabinet had taken up the matter last week and had devoted considerable time to it. It was felt that the imposition of President’s rule would be politically incorrect as the decision of the Speaker should not be confronted by the Central Government. But later, it succumbed to the pressure exerted by the State Congress leadership.

 

The turbulence caused by the decision has added substance to the allegations by the ousted Chief Minister and Mr. P A Sangma that the Congress is planning to rig the elections. After all, the dissidents of the NPF had sided with the Congress-led Nagaland Progressive Alliance. That made a mockery of anti-defection law.

The bigger worry is that the uncertainty brought in by the decision will affect the law and order situation in the highly sensitive North-Eastern state.

 

 

 

Akshay Kumar doesn’t sign a film these days unless the script is absolutely brilliant, the banner top-class and the director ultra successful. In all other cases, he either says “no” or quotes a ridiculous price like Rs 15 crore. If the producer is willing to pay him that kind of money, Akshay would be mad to turn it down. And so, if he does go ahead and sign a film for Rs 15 crore, that becomes his fee for all future assignments.

Akshay can afford to be pricey he’s a star. In an industry that has an output of about 150 films a year, he’s one of only five actors who are genuinely entitled to that designation. Despite the hordes of Bollywood heroes whose faces we see in every newspaper, magazine, news channel and product endorsement campaign in the country, only Akshay Kumar and four others have what’s called pulling power. They can sell their films on the strength of their names alone. That makes them more special than other actors and greater than other filmy celebrities. That makes them genuine stars.

Even if in this article, we happened to feature a quiz on Bollywood (which it doesn’t), you wouldn’t get so much as a plastic ballpoint pen as a prize for naming the four other actors who qualify as real stars. Yes, they’re the usual suspects: Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan. 

Think about it: Movies that star Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar or Hrithik Roshan almost always run to packed houses at least for the first show of the first day of the film’s release, if not the whole day itself. Why? Because the audience wants to see them at least as much as it wants to watch the films.

And when it comes to Shah Rukh Khan, that reaction is doubled. He’s the star of stars, the superstar. (Once that title belonged to Amitabh Bachchan, but now he shares it with Shah Rukh. Now that Amitabh has shifted to character roles he is no longer a hero, but the ’superstar’ title has remained because he is the busiest character actor Bollywood has ever had.)

The audience reacts this way to these five actors because they’re the only ones who, over their years in the industry, have consistently delivered hits - and several super hits - often on the strength of their performances alone. While there are many actors in the industry, it’s these five alone whose work in film after film remains with the audience for far longer than the work of other actors - often, even more than the films themselves. This is what makes them stars. And with stardom comes an aura that that makes an actor special.

Since the film industry is an industry like any other, only one thing matters for a producer: the bottom line. And so, from the producer’s point of view, signing a star implies that he does not have to bother about the sale of his film. A true star’s film would be sold on announcement itself, and it’s only on rare occasions that a producer with a film with one or more stars does not make a handsome profit on his investment. This profit comes from the distributor who, with no completed or even partially finished film to view before he decides whether to buy it or not, makes his decision based on the cast.

Which is why, if Akshay Kumar tries to put a producer off by quoting an absurdly high fee, chances are the producer might actually take him seriously. With Akshay in his film, he knows he will at least recover his money. Salman Khan works on the same principle and in fact, so do most actors. When offered a film they’d rather not do, they turn it down by quoting a crazy price. And once that price is quoted, it becomes the fee associated with the actor.

So what decides the price an actor gets? Plainly put, as with the pricing of any other commodity, it is the law of demand and supply. The greater the demand for an actor and/or the lower the supply (meaning that he doesn’t have shooting dates to offer the producer in a hurry), the higher the price he commands.

Today, the film industry seems to have gone into overdrive, so while a large number of films are produced every year, actors, whatever their calibre, are in short supply. This automatically pushes up their fees across the board. But an actor gets paid for more than his talent. His price also depends on his track record and his ability to sell a film. The more successful he is, the higher the price he commands.

That explains the obscenely high prices that are being paid to heroes like Akshay; Salman and Hrithik by producers eager to start their films. Though Shah Rukh is a superstar and, by that reckoning, is in a position to quote and accept a truly terrifying fee, he doesn’t do so because, he says, he doesn’t like to “fleece” the industry which has made him the star he is today. “It is the film industry which has given me name, fame and status, so I don’t overcharge my producers,” Shah Rukh has famously said. “I make a killing in endorsements and stage shows.” Aamir Khan doesn’t let his star status go to his bank account either, if he feels it isn’t justified. Reportedly, Aamir recently turned down an offer of Rs 20 crore only because the corporate production house making the offer did not have a script ready for him to read. For Aamir, it’s the film that matters, so no matter how hard the people at the production house tried to sweeten the deal first they offered the entire amount upfront on signing the film, and then, when that didn’t work, offered him the same amount to work on a script of his choice - he refused.

If Aamir had signed the film, it would have been the highest remuneration any Bollywood star has received so far. But Shah Rukh and Aamir are two of a kind. As SRK says, “I’d rather that my producer put all that money into the film. How can I demand Rs 15 or 20 crore? Isn’t the film supposed to be more important than the actor?”

Not many actors are as conscientious as Aamir and Shah Rukh. The price war has always existed between actors and actresses. But the double digit crore war started around Diwali 2006 when Hrithik Roshan was signed by Adlabs in a composite three-film deal for Rs 30 crore. Before that deal, a multi-film tri-partite deal was being worked out between Akshay Kumar, Adlabs (financiers or presenters) and Vipul Shah (producer), but the deal was never finalised. (Other heroes, who had never been paid Rs 10 crore for a film before, upped their prices after the Hrithik Adlabs deal. And so, between last Diwali and this, star prices have touched dizzy heights. In the ’80s and early ’90s, Amitabh Bachchan was the only actor to be paid a crore of rupees for a film.

Every other actor spoke in lakhs. But today, even Emraan Hashmi demands - and, more important, gets Rs 1.5 crore for a film. Shiney Ahuja will not even listen to the story of a film if the producer doesn’t have a budget of Rs 2 crore for him. John Abraham doesn’t bat an eyelid before asking for Rs 5 crore. So what if No Smoking could not collect even Rs 5,000 in the first show! Akshaye Khanna can be lured with nothing less than Rs 2.5 crore, never mind if distributors are wary of touching his films because they don’t command a handsome opening. Bobby Deol may have forgotten what it is to be associated with a hit film but try signing him for less than Rs 2 crore! He won’t work. Zayed Khan may have made his producers and the distributors of his films poorer by crores, but can anyone sign him for less than Rs 1.5 crore? His secretary will not even pass on a producer’s message if that a sum is not promised. As Karan Johar sums up, “The new lakh is a crore.”

 It is not just heroes and heroines who ask for a crore and more. Even t character artistes like Paresh Rawal and Irrfan Khan have started to charge such crazy figures. Amrish Puri, at the fag end of his career, had dared to ask for Rs 75 lakh, but today, a character actor doesn’t bat an eyelid before quoting crores. Says a producer, “Only that actor whose name helps in selling the film deserves a crore or more. No other actor should be paid such obscene amounts.”  

 But, because of the law of demand and supply, these actors can ask for this kind of money - and get it too. Because, let’s face it, there are only five actors in the industry whose names can sell a film, while roughly 150 films are made every year. Heroines, however popular they are, have never been able to sell a film, whether to the audience or to the distributors.

So who are the people who act in these films? Well, thanks to the media boom, there’s a whole new class of ’stars’ in the filmi firmament - actors who have none of the pulling power of the industry’s real stars, but who, simply because they’re so visible in the media, appear to be stars.

As newspapers, magazines, TV and radio channels, and websites try desperately to sustain themselves in a crowded market, they write and show anything about Bollywood artistes because Bollywood sells. The print media has to fill its pages, the electronic media its air time and stories about actors get the most mileage among readers and viewers. That’s why many actors today have personal publicists whose jobs are to feed gossip about their clients to the media. And these snippets of information often have little to do with these actors’ films.

Upen Patel may not have been seen in any film of consequence in the last six months but his picture is all over Page 3 of newspapers as though he were the one of Bollywood’s most happening stars. John Abraham is written about more for his romance with Bipasha Basu than for his affair with films. Emraan Hashmi’s kisses on screen take more media space than his histrionic skills, whatever he possesses of them. Zayed Khan gets written and spoken about for the cool dude he is, but does anybody remember his acting in any film? And five years ago, Arjun Rampal used to turn down acting offers because he didn’t consider himself less of a star than one of the Khans. His demand for a fixed price of Rs 1 crore saw many a film producer scurrying out of his house.

John, Zayed, Fardeen, Arjun, Emraan, Shiney Ahuja - these are all media-made stars. They make more news for their affairs, scandals, wardrobes, link-ups and break-ups than they do for their films. The media has become such an important part of people’s lives that it can make stars overnight. But media-made stars are like artificial flowers that don’t have a fragrance. They don’t have the pulling power of the real stars.

Even though their names and faces are all over the media, none of these actors has managed to get more than a lukewarm response from the audience when one of their films releases. Yet, with all the attention they get from the Bollywood-crazy media, they come to believe that they actually are stars. And so they behave as though they are stars. As though, they have the same power as SRK or Salman, as though their presence or lack of it in a movie can make or break the film.

As we all know, that is far from true. Yet, because of the media and the law of demand and supply; most actors, whatever the level of their talent, get paid what they ask for. That’s because the film industry itself is booming. Over the last 10 years, corporate houses have begun to produce movies on their own. For these corporates, funds are unlimited. They have public money; funds from private placements and venture capitalists. And with so much money at their disposal, logic takes a backseat.

But in the final analysis, the bottom line for any industry is money. And the film industry is no different. For every rupee expended, the corporate has to show the returns.

Once the profitability starts telling on the investment, the corporates will run for cover. But it may be too late then. Crores of rupees will have been lost and scores of corporates will have downed shutters, but the media-made stars will have laughed a1i the way to the bank.

Click on the title to view the ad. Shahrukh Khan and Dhoni together in Videocon Ad. Shahrukh looks little in front of Dhoni, he should put on some weight (muscle).

This video defines India culture and diversity for me. I have been in USA for 10 years now but I still remember when I saw this the first time. It brings back the old memories and it’s good to know that India has the same values now also.

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Yuvraj Singh smashed Stuart Broad to become the first player to hit 6 sixes in an over for Twenty 20 match. Yuvraj scored 58 of 16 balls with seven sixes and 3 boundaries.

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