By now everyone is talking about it… From the slums of dharavi to the CBD in LA. The Dan Boyle directed Slumdog millionaire has been a smash hit in terms of success it has achieved at the Oscars as well as various film awards all over the world.
And of course, the Indian Maestro A.R.Rahman has swept all the categories he was nominated for…Jai ho is indeed a good number, but one of the questions that immediately comes to my mind is , why this one ?? Rahman has certainly produced music which have been far better in their quality and richness starting from his first number – Chinna China Aasai.
That brings us to an interesting question – what is it that is different in Slumdog millionaire compared to thousands of movies that have been produced in India in the past ? why has SlumDog been able to achieve such a roaring success which no other film produced in India has been able to?
While the media have been talking about how novel the story line is, how brilliant the actors were – the one thing that remains true is there have been better movies produced in India. But the key difference is, because SlumDog millionaire was originally produced for an English language audience (essentially as a Hollywood movie), it was able to nominate itself for most of the categories at the Academy awards..whereas typical Indian movie can enter only in one category - “The best Foreign Language film” where the competition seems pretty tough among all the non English movies all over the world !!
I think the key difference is this – SlumDog millionaire is perhaps one of the very few Hollywood movies produced in Indian setting with a cast and story that is tellingly Indian and with a story line which has a strong indianness to it – that’s why everyone in India right from our Rashtrapathi ji has adopted this as an Indian success…
Coincidentally, last time a famous movie about India was produced in Holly wood- “Gandhi”, it also won Oscars !!
So key to note here is this – its not as if India has been lacking in talent all these years and with one SlumDog millionaire, India has announced its arrival at the world stage. Its rather the other way around, it has taken all these years for Hollywood and the rest of the world to realize the true potential and talent in India to shoot a movie with a complete Indian cast based in India– and when they did, the Oscars came along..its really as simple as that.
Another funny fact is how Politicians in India have claimed that the movie is their national pride !!! – This is like native people of the land that calls itself Hollywood today, feeling proud that they found Columbus in 1492 AD– Columbus had more to gain from the discovery, not the natives !!!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
May we banish Poverty from our Mother Earth !!
“You can’t solve the world hunger in a day”- this is a saying that’s mostly used with a tinge of derision to shoot down anyone who attempts for a meaningful resolution for one of the most vexatious problems in this world. While the saying itself is true, it’s also true that for achieving true progress for the human race, the problem of hunger and the larger issue of Poverty which drives it has to be resolved, if not in a day, some day .
It is truly abominable to even think that someone in this world of plenty has to go to bed without having his share of a square meal – I truly wonder what other pressing problem can be so great for our society and its leaders, that it should ever distract us from resolving the most basic of all problems . And to me Poverty is the root cause of all the social evils in this world.
A common approach that everyone takes is to provide “Free” anything to the poor – free lunch, free money, free shelter etc. But is this any effective? Economic theories suggest that anything without a cost has no value. Donations such as these are a very convenient way for the conscionable among the rich to justify to themselves that they have done their bit to solve this problem. However from the poor person’s point of view, it’s hardly a lasting solution.
For he is given the free gift without ever being told how he can use it to bring himself out of Poverty irrevocably. And often times the free gift never even reaches its intended destination, usually lost along its tracks to some form of corruption.
Anything given out free helps only breeding laziness which further takes away any remaining tenacity in the poor to fight their condition. It makes them addicted to the “free gifts” just like addiction to drugs. No wonder then that despite billions of dollars that are being routinely spent in this world, there is hardly any improvement in the alleviation of Poverty.
But there is hope.
I recently read a book by the Noble Laureate, Dr Mohammad Yunus from Bangladesh. It’s amazing what Dr. Yunus, an economic professor at Chittagong University, has done for poverty alleviation through his “Grameen” project.
he started what is arguably the first Micro credit movement in the world - system of lending small amounts as loans to the poor. The system is as elegant in its simplicity as any other micro economic model that they teach in the leading universities, but at the same time productive in its delivery of the much needed capital to the poor.
He instituionalised this system by starting a bank (called Grameen Bank), which at a profit, Provides credit to Poor. But there is no credit check, no paper work, nothing. All that is required is for the poor to come in a group of 5 and ask for a loan to do any economic activity that will generate income.
Now poor has access to capital which he/she can use to do something useful on their own and keep the profit for themselves (after servicing the loan of course). And the loan doesn’t come cheap– Grameen charges a whopping 20% per annum (but still milder than the usurious 10% per week that some of the money lenders charge these poor people in Bangladesh). And No loan is ever waived off – even if there is a calamitous flood, fire, earthquake, disease – anything. The bank will agree to extend the term, but never waive of a loan.
When you are reading this, you would be wondering how this system has any chance of working. We are all naturally trained to think that poor people are poor not just with what they have but also with what they can do!!! This Grameen system is a simple system which trusts the poor man’s (and woman’s) capacity to work hard, with any skill that they are endowed with. Poor, often, only have their honor and self respect as their only assets which they will never want to give up. They will rather work doubly hard to pay back their loans than default on it and lose their honor in the society. Grameen smartly uses this peer pressure as the Psychological security for loans rather than the usual material collateral and loads and loads of Terms and conditions that the traditional banks use, often with appalling results, to protect their loans.
And this trust hasn’t gone waste – Over 30 years of their existence, Grameen has a remarkable loan repayment rate of more than 98% with more than 2.5 million borrowers and more than 2 bn USD in loans. It is a fully self sufficient and a profitable organization – More profitable than any other commercial bank which conducts its business with the most sophisticated risk management through collaterals and credit checks..
Grameen is more notable in another sense. More than 97% of its borrowers are Women. This is another layer of security for its principal. Traditionally, poor women are more conscientious than men (even though this can be claimed to vary in different cultures, this has been proven to be true in several Grameen replications all over the world). This experiment, thus is more than economic upliftment, it’s also social upliftment for the sections which have historically been the most abused and most vulnerable among poor – poor women.
There are several lessons to be learnt from this – While a capitalist system based on free market may be the most efficient way to allocate resources, it often fails to allocate the resources equitably. And often there is a tradeoff between the efficiency and equity in resource allocation. Society often delegates the responsibility to achieve equity to the governments. But as governments can hardly survive without the support of the richer sections of the society, they are often disincentivised to implement a truly equitable allocation of resources, which would mean taking away resources from their supporters – the rich.
In Dr Yunus’s words, the solution to this is to make sure that the corporation’s objective in a society is not just to maximize the profit for their owners (as the capitalist system stipulates) –but also to maximize the “social returns” for the society.
Note that it’s not practical for corporations in a society to sacrifice profits just to improve the social return. Profits are vital for the very survival of corporations. Without an expectation on profit, nobody would invest anything and there would be no development and the free market would just collapse. This is where the traditional notion of communist systems got it terribly wrong. They tried to forsake the need for individual successes (or Profits) in trying to achieve the success of the whole society. And in the process producing some truly autocratic regimes.
What we want is not a trade off of one against the other. We want to be able to achieve both in an inclusive manner!!
And the need for this tradeoff as a lame excuse to put a shackle on efforts to uplift the poor and as Dr Yunus has shown through the Grameen experiment, there need not be a tradeoff between these two objectives. Both of them can be achieved together.
If this is somehow achieved, then the corporations will have a vested interest to not exploit the poor – they will have a vested interest – for their own benefit – to invest in innovation which will improve the social returns for the society as a whole and not just to improve their own profits.
I know this is easier said than done – but with more experiments like what Dr Yunus has done in Bangladesh and dozens of other countries, this is not impossible.
Cheers
Deepak
Ps: I would like to gratefully acknowledge that some of the ideas presented here are inspirations from Dr Yunus’s book “The Banker to the Poor”.
Visit Grameen Bank at http://www.grameen-info.org/
It is truly abominable to even think that someone in this world of plenty has to go to bed without having his share of a square meal – I truly wonder what other pressing problem can be so great for our society and its leaders, that it should ever distract us from resolving the most basic of all problems . And to me Poverty is the root cause of all the social evils in this world.
A common approach that everyone takes is to provide “Free” anything to the poor – free lunch, free money, free shelter etc. But is this any effective? Economic theories suggest that anything without a cost has no value. Donations such as these are a very convenient way for the conscionable among the rich to justify to themselves that they have done their bit to solve this problem. However from the poor person’s point of view, it’s hardly a lasting solution.
For he is given the free gift without ever being told how he can use it to bring himself out of Poverty irrevocably. And often times the free gift never even reaches its intended destination, usually lost along its tracks to some form of corruption.
Anything given out free helps only breeding laziness which further takes away any remaining tenacity in the poor to fight their condition. It makes them addicted to the “free gifts” just like addiction to drugs. No wonder then that despite billions of dollars that are being routinely spent in this world, there is hardly any improvement in the alleviation of Poverty.
But there is hope.
I recently read a book by the Noble Laureate, Dr Mohammad Yunus from Bangladesh. It’s amazing what Dr. Yunus, an economic professor at Chittagong University, has done for poverty alleviation through his “Grameen” project.
he started what is arguably the first Micro credit movement in the world - system of lending small amounts as loans to the poor. The system is as elegant in its simplicity as any other micro economic model that they teach in the leading universities, but at the same time productive in its delivery of the much needed capital to the poor.
He instituionalised this system by starting a bank (called Grameen Bank), which at a profit, Provides credit to Poor. But there is no credit check, no paper work, nothing. All that is required is for the poor to come in a group of 5 and ask for a loan to do any economic activity that will generate income.
Now poor has access to capital which he/she can use to do something useful on their own and keep the profit for themselves (after servicing the loan of course). And the loan doesn’t come cheap– Grameen charges a whopping 20% per annum (but still milder than the usurious 10% per week that some of the money lenders charge these poor people in Bangladesh). And No loan is ever waived off – even if there is a calamitous flood, fire, earthquake, disease – anything. The bank will agree to extend the term, but never waive of a loan.
When you are reading this, you would be wondering how this system has any chance of working. We are all naturally trained to think that poor people are poor not just with what they have but also with what they can do!!! This Grameen system is a simple system which trusts the poor man’s (and woman’s) capacity to work hard, with any skill that they are endowed with. Poor, often, only have their honor and self respect as their only assets which they will never want to give up. They will rather work doubly hard to pay back their loans than default on it and lose their honor in the society. Grameen smartly uses this peer pressure as the Psychological security for loans rather than the usual material collateral and loads and loads of Terms and conditions that the traditional banks use, often with appalling results, to protect their loans.
And this trust hasn’t gone waste – Over 30 years of their existence, Grameen has a remarkable loan repayment rate of more than 98% with more than 2.5 million borrowers and more than 2 bn USD in loans. It is a fully self sufficient and a profitable organization – More profitable than any other commercial bank which conducts its business with the most sophisticated risk management through collaterals and credit checks..
Grameen is more notable in another sense. More than 97% of its borrowers are Women. This is another layer of security for its principal. Traditionally, poor women are more conscientious than men (even though this can be claimed to vary in different cultures, this has been proven to be true in several Grameen replications all over the world). This experiment, thus is more than economic upliftment, it’s also social upliftment for the sections which have historically been the most abused and most vulnerable among poor – poor women.
There are several lessons to be learnt from this – While a capitalist system based on free market may be the most efficient way to allocate resources, it often fails to allocate the resources equitably. And often there is a tradeoff between the efficiency and equity in resource allocation. Society often delegates the responsibility to achieve equity to the governments. But as governments can hardly survive without the support of the richer sections of the society, they are often disincentivised to implement a truly equitable allocation of resources, which would mean taking away resources from their supporters – the rich.
In Dr Yunus’s words, the solution to this is to make sure that the corporation’s objective in a society is not just to maximize the profit for their owners (as the capitalist system stipulates) –but also to maximize the “social returns” for the society.
Note that it’s not practical for corporations in a society to sacrifice profits just to improve the social return. Profits are vital for the very survival of corporations. Without an expectation on profit, nobody would invest anything and there would be no development and the free market would just collapse. This is where the traditional notion of communist systems got it terribly wrong. They tried to forsake the need for individual successes (or Profits) in trying to achieve the success of the whole society. And in the process producing some truly autocratic regimes.
What we want is not a trade off of one against the other. We want to be able to achieve both in an inclusive manner!!
And the need for this tradeoff as a lame excuse to put a shackle on efforts to uplift the poor and as Dr Yunus has shown through the Grameen experiment, there need not be a tradeoff between these two objectives. Both of them can be achieved together.
If this is somehow achieved, then the corporations will have a vested interest to not exploit the poor – they will have a vested interest – for their own benefit – to invest in innovation which will improve the social returns for the society as a whole and not just to improve their own profits.
I know this is easier said than done – but with more experiments like what Dr Yunus has done in Bangladesh and dozens of other countries, this is not impossible.
Cheers
Deepak
Ps: I would like to gratefully acknowledge that some of the ideas presented here are inspirations from Dr Yunus’s book “The Banker to the Poor”.
Visit Grameen Bank at http://www.grameen-info.org/
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A Truly momentous Occasion !!!
In my living memory, I cant think of a singular event that had collectively lifted the hopes and spirits of so many millions around the world as this one on 20th Jan 2009 – the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of USA.
Different people attribute different reasons for the significance of this event – most common one being the fact that Obama is the first Black man to ever call the White house his home – but to me Obama’s meteoric rise means much more than a defining milestone in America’s quest for racial equality. It’s a re-affirmation of what one can achieve through instilling positive hope rather than fear in millions of people.
And its in this aspect that Obama stands in stark contrast to his predecessor President Bush and infact, to scores of other politicians all over the world in what they routinely do when faced with a truly challenging crisis of any kind. They choose to manipulate millions towards their way by whipping up fear and paranoia – its truly difficult to unite people though positive hope and collectively solve the issue at hand.
When America was in grave crisis after Sep 11, 2001 Bush tried to invoke the prospect of Mushroom clouds hanging over American cities to advance his cause and gain consent for his disastrous wars. He time and again invoked the same fear to push to Americans in to a collective state of numbness and convince them to surrender their freedoms one by one. This was evident in numerous episodes - torturing scores of prisoners in Guantanamo bay and other secret prisons all over the world, spying on millions of Americans without their knowledge or proper legal means, letting thousands of young Americans die in a meaningless war started to settle personal scores. These and other unpopular policies had caused people within and outside America not only to hate Bush but more importantly to diminish people’s faith in democracy and free society.
However Obama presented a positive message of hope, a message of reconciliation – a promise to go back to all that America ‘s founding fathers wanted America to be – a land which would guarantee life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Obama should be acutely aware of the fact that the people now have very lofty expectations that he will back up all those inspirational speeches with concrete actions. However In one area he already has been the beacon of hope to millions around the world and a welcome departure from all shades of polity all over the world – when it comes to solving complex problems, its better to unite people through positive energy rather than invoking the negative emotions of fear and insecurity.
And I do fervently pray god that HE guide Obama towards success without swerving from the path that he has chosen for his journey.
God Bless America and President Obama ..and all of us!!
Different people attribute different reasons for the significance of this event – most common one being the fact that Obama is the first Black man to ever call the White house his home – but to me Obama’s meteoric rise means much more than a defining milestone in America’s quest for racial equality. It’s a re-affirmation of what one can achieve through instilling positive hope rather than fear in millions of people.
And its in this aspect that Obama stands in stark contrast to his predecessor President Bush and infact, to scores of other politicians all over the world in what they routinely do when faced with a truly challenging crisis of any kind. They choose to manipulate millions towards their way by whipping up fear and paranoia – its truly difficult to unite people though positive hope and collectively solve the issue at hand.
When America was in grave crisis after Sep 11, 2001 Bush tried to invoke the prospect of Mushroom clouds hanging over American cities to advance his cause and gain consent for his disastrous wars. He time and again invoked the same fear to push to Americans in to a collective state of numbness and convince them to surrender their freedoms one by one. This was evident in numerous episodes - torturing scores of prisoners in Guantanamo bay and other secret prisons all over the world, spying on millions of Americans without their knowledge or proper legal means, letting thousands of young Americans die in a meaningless war started to settle personal scores. These and other unpopular policies had caused people within and outside America not only to hate Bush but more importantly to diminish people’s faith in democracy and free society.
However Obama presented a positive message of hope, a message of reconciliation – a promise to go back to all that America ‘s founding fathers wanted America to be – a land which would guarantee life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Obama should be acutely aware of the fact that the people now have very lofty expectations that he will back up all those inspirational speeches with concrete actions. However In one area he already has been the beacon of hope to millions around the world and a welcome departure from all shades of polity all over the world – when it comes to solving complex problems, its better to unite people through positive energy rather than invoking the negative emotions of fear and insecurity.
And I do fervently pray god that HE guide Obama towards success without swerving from the path that he has chosen for his journey.
God Bless America and President Obama ..and all of us!!
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