Page 92 - EducationWorld January 2023

Postscript

Killjoys running amok pleasantly surprised and engaged by Netflix and Amazon
Prime-commissioned movies such as 83, Thar, Khakee,
notable for their realism and rootedness in the prevailing
MULTIPLYING TRIBE OF KILLJOYS IS ruin- socio-economic milieu. Simultaneously despite some
ing the social life of India’s teenagers and young notable flops, conventional Indian cinema has also
A adults whose number is estimated at 300 million become technically better and continues to draw huge
countrywide. crowds in the rural hinterland and in countries of the
This lament is provoked by a news report in Middle East. This combination of new age and traditional
Bengaluru’s Times of India (December 15) that a search of cinema opens up the prospect of breaking the soft power
the handbag of a young woman student of a junior college monopoly of Hollywood.
in the coastal town of Mangaluru by exam invigilators The entrepreneurial drive and risk-taking capabilities
looking for cell phones, revealed a love letter written to of OTT producers who have grasped that India’s educated
her by an amorous youth of “another community”. This middle class is a huge market in terms of numbers, even
grave moral lapse provoked a fracas which prompted if not as a percentage of the population, has inadvertently
the administration to disbar 18 students from attending generated prospects of our socio-economically laggard
classes, except to write exams. Earlier, in another college republic emerging as a global soft power nation. That’s
in this once jolly town with a buzzing entertainment one advantage we have over China, if our indigenous
scene, four college students who performed a dance morality police doesn’t throw a spanner in the works.
wearing burqas, worn by conservative Muslim women,
were also suspended from college. Serious offence to the
religious sensibilities of the minority Muslim community. Extraordinary ego
On the other hand in the good ole days in my top-
ranked boarding school in Bengaluru, the school CHRISTMAS EVE VIDEO INTERVIEW between
administration routinely organised socials and dances articulate and incisive interviewer Karan Thapar
with the neighbouring girls school, and boys inviting girls A and celebrated NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar has
to the pictures (cinema) and romancing them was not a elicited much appreciation within the chattering classes,
criminal offence. Later as a young law student in the UK particularly leftists and liberal fellow travellers. Kumar’s
half a century ago, I was pleasantly flabbergasted to learn claim to fame is that as an anchor of NDTV’s Hindi
girlfriends were permitted in our rooms until 11 p.m, a channel, he had established an excellent reputation for
facility that one availed liberally. fearlessly speaking truth to power, particularly to the BJP
The purpose of this sermon is not to recount one’s government at the Centre. Your editor can’t comment on
good fortune, but to advise oppressive elders and the Kumar’s capabilities because I unapologetically patronise
country’s morality brigades to refrain from blighting English language TV news channels.
the lives of teens and youth obliged to suffer censorious Be that as it may, the Thapar-Kumar interview
patriarchy, the insolence of office and the daily spurns was remarkable on several counts. One for Kumar’s
that merit takes, by also denying them romance, extraordinarily large ego. Without adducing any evidence,
exuberance and socialisation opportunities.
he claimed that fast-track business tycoon Gautam Adani
purchased the majority stake in NDTV Ltd valued at
Soft power opportunity Rs.493 crore with the primary purpose to silence him.
Therefore, he pre-emptively resigned from the bought
out company. Moreover, he plainly stated that Adani
HE ADVENT OF OTT (OVER-THE-TOP) choice- who is “close” to prime minister Narendra Modi did so at
based cinema and television series from around the latter’s instigation because Kumar is the sole, even if
Tthe world has given a new lease of life to India’s unelected, champion of poor and marginalised citizens.
floundering film industry, Bollywood in particular. The mutual admiration interview is typical of the
With well-scripted and intelligent movies produced by anti-business and private enterprise prejudice of Cadillac
cinema and entertainment corporations such as Netflix, communists of the Prannoy Roy and Thapar genre who
Amazon Prime, Hotstar among others accessible to a dominate the media and academy. They indulge lavishly
new generation of Indian film producers and directors, in the goods and services produced by industry but hold
the stranglehold of old-style Bollywood moguls churning risk-taking entrepreneurs who produce them, in hatred,
out musicals typecasting outsize heroes and implausibly ridicule and contempt. Quite unlike Mahatma Gandhi,
pasty-white heroines has been broken. Suddenly anti-business lefties in the academy and media have little
expensive big-budget movies featuring supermen, understanding that successful industrial enterprises of
helpless heroines, and fantastic special effects — Samrat the Adanis and Ambanis generate direct and indirect
Prithviraj, Lal Singh Chaddha, Liger and Dhaakad — tax revenue aggregating an estimated 5 percent of GDP
have started failing at the box office. On the other hand, apart from providing employment to millions while also
one can stumble across some well-conceived movies with producing goods and services that consumers want.
intelligent plot lines which often capture the gritty reality, Therefore, it’s quite normative for free-spending prime
crime, corruption and grim lives that the overwhelming ministers and princes to respect wealth creators and big
majority of citizens are obliged to endure in this sham taxpayers. Kumar’s presumption of guilt against a highly
socialist society. successful businessman and duly elected prime minister
Recently, your editor who neither had the time nor is illustrative of a runaway ego.
inclination to endure Bollywood melodrama has been

92 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2023