Why I am supporting Narendra Modi?

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Why I am supporting NaMo?

Well, I have been most apolitical person but euphoria of 2014 General Election has got me into it’s wave and after being bombarded with several views and counter views I thought to put my blog as some group of people think I have little bit Power of Persuasion.

First of all let me clarify that principally, I do not support any party and according to me all are same, they just try to position hard by taking one ideological stands but in the background all are same. Like Congress always position themselves as party for Poor, BJP for Hindutva and now development, SP for Muslims, BSP for Dalits, Shiv Sena and MNS for Marathis, AAP for anti-corruption etc, however they all have same hidden agenda except AAP who is quite a new in this game to even have any agenda.

I support BJP or NDA or you can call MODI because I want change and I want stable change. It is tried and tested that if you bow to monopoly or chose same group your leader again and again irrespective of their failure, non performance, inefficiencies, they will have tendency to get arrogant and assume that they have right to do anything they want as they are repetitively chosen one. The last 10 years of UPA government done quite a lot of things wrong which made the country really suffered with various scams, corruptions, backwardness, inflation, as well as social imbalance. In today's time we have to have strong competition to keep the others on the edge that ruling government is not a cake walk and they must have fear to be thrown out. Now the debate comes whether NDA or Modi is best alternative or not; and I feel strongly in favour of them because they are only capable political party at national level who has ability to provide stability and strong leadership which is the need of an hour. Also, if I see individual performance of each states governed by BJP rule like Gujarat, Chhatisgarh, Bihar (most tenure was run with ally), MP, Goa, Karnataka (even Yedurappa fiasco, Punjab etc the state did quite good in another areas); I am optimistic especially when I see dismal performance of state like Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Assam, AP, Kerala who suffered a lot by the misrule.

Regarding AAP I agree as new idea and my mind & hearts are still with them but again democratic political structure is all about numbers where you need 272+ MPs in one side to form a stable government irrespective of even you have fought against each other. AAP may have great ambition, however they are not ready to provide stable majority and on top of that they have to prove them self on all promised and big claims they are making at least first by running any state which they miserably mis-managed when they had opportunity to govern Delhi state.

I think Modi will work well for India only because he has a lot riding on his name and he has to perform to prove how he can fair in those expectation. He has challenge to remove all corruptions that came as legacy from UPA & deliver on his own branded Development model and even if he does a portion of it, it would be good for country in larger interest. He will have tough time to even deviate from anything good as he will have AAP who will be nagging even in minute issues and Congress up in arm to find any mistake. At last NDA has good team to leaders to head ministries and this government would be last chance for them to work as best to stay longer in Power because they like it or not, AAP is going to be more challenging in 2019 which compel them to perform for people.

As far as this so called “Secularism” is concern I do not think any party in India is secular and everyone side their own favourites and every one of them are responsible for some of the other riots and NDA can’t afford to malign themselves in another such fury.

Lastly I believe Change is always good and we need change with stability; be it Congress, BJP or AAP we need National Party with competitiveness and accountability for long term growth for our country.

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Why Indian Loves Piracy !

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This subject is quite much talked about and we have seen our celebrities always comes up with campaign how piracy is bringing their profit down and how this is against creativity & industry at large. I am not talking about Piracy as a whole but I want to write about Movie Piracy and why this will always exist and make quite a sense for all of us to indulge in the same.


I do not think people in this country prefer piracy because of cost of watching or owning a movie; the people here embracing piracy because of non-availability, poor distribution, bad infrastructure and lack of information. 
When I was growing up in Jamshedpur which is known as one of the best planned township of India; Watching a movie in a theatre was a big thing back then and the reason being that among 6 cinema halls we only had two cinema theatre which were decent enough for a family to go to watch a movie and that too after 7-8 days of its release, as the crowd during first few days of any big movie were really wild. Anyone with family, it was a sort of big adventure to get through to watch any movies conevine quietly. I do remember when I used to go to movie in its first day of release during that time- it was war like situation while buying the tickets over the counter and once you get in you just can’t hear a thing for first half hour because of so much of noise by the crowd. Of course Dolby, DTS and all such new technology came very later in town like Jamshedpur. The only source for movie fan to get hands on any movie was Video Cassette and later VCDs. There was a time when movie used to come on Videos within a week of release which given boost on sale of VCD players and DVD Players but then industry thought it losing their revenue share on movie theatre so they came up with rule about not to release movies on videos for at least 4 weeks after its theatrical release date. This is exactly what triggered the piracy as when satellite TV came in picture and people started watching trailers regularly through movie promotions they were quite eager to watch the movie the moment it released in theatre but with limited of cinema theatre across country and most of them with very poor infrastructure the viewer really wanted easy alternatives and Piracy came into rescue. 


Let’s do some number crunching- we have around 7000 cinema theatre across India (most of the same in big cities), the country which has 7936 towns and 6.41 lacs villages (as per census survey in 2011) and we all know our population.  So, while movie maker talking about curbing piracy they are very narrowly focusing only on select audience majority would be metro. Now let’s talk about metro. In any metro watching movie is costly affair; nowadays in every metro the single screen theatre is just for mere it’s presence and cost of watching multiplexes  are quite a high and it comes with much expensive frills where one simple pop-corn cost Rs. 95/- and ticket cost 200-250+ during weekends. For a family this may result in shelling out 1500+ in one go. So for anyone it has become quite apparent they should not end up watching something crappy by spending so much. That’s the reason filmmakers buy reviews, misguide through promos and do excessive marketing coz they know their content is not worth it beyond two weeks. The biggest grosser of 2011 such as Ra.One, Ready, Bodyguard, Singham—you don’t need to read figure they are posting; just open news paper and see if the movie is still there after two weeks of release; only movie with good content survives more than 4-5 weeks on any theatre. When Ra.One was released it was literally on every theatre and with 7-8 shows in one day, I checked Bombay Times after 10 days of it’s release and only few theatre were having Ra.One with only 2 shows. So for filmmaker now the equation is: create hype, excessive promotions, release it in maximum theatre, buy expert’s reviews on different media and make as much money you can in 7-9 days before people’s word of mouth is out about the content of movie At the end it is us as audience who are cheated in the name of entertainment. So, why not buy movie which is readily available at any market along with even vegetable vendors at Rs. 50/- in DVD format and some of them are of really good quality. It is also easy to download movie through various blogs, torrent portal, and files sharing websites. We as consumer depend on film maker and distributors when the movie will release. 


Currently I am eagerly waiting for some hollywood movies such as J Edgar, The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo, Young Adult, A Girl with a dragon tattoo, War Horse, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, A Dangerous Method etc. which are released in USA more than a month back but still not released in India. I have no option but to look out for sources where can I download it from Internet.
Film makers make hue and cry about piracy stating that it is against their creativity which they should be fully paid and it is hampering the industry. I refuse to believe that when especially we all know how much hefty amount even an average film star & leading directors are taking for one movie and now make a ratio if the writers, editors, cameraman and other experts get the same sort of money. 
If film industry is really serious about removing piracy completely then instead of asking people to correct their action they should fix their system. They should focus on source of distribution and ensure it reaches upto all levels. We have 140 million TV household and 90% of them are using cable. Among those 90% around 20% is the share of DTH users which was introduced in 2005 and growing very rapidly. Government of India has also made set top box compulsory for all Cable TV users; this is one big media and distribution network we are talking.


I believe filmmakers must focus on innovating their distribution strategy and giving the consumer various legitimate option to watch their movies whenever they want to with high quality. They should work out a model with DTH & Big Cable networks to release the movie as pay per view in all household along with theatrical release. They should make movie streaming available with Internet right after release just like NetFlix. This will ensure distribution in large scale and any viewers will chose to watch good quality, right at their home as and when they want. This will not deter the theatre going crowd as such fans still prefer movie theatre over piracy. I personally believe this will change the business dynamics of movie industry and finally the end consumer will be happy.


In fact film maker should learn from Movie Pirates about distribution of their movie.

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Abuse, That has faces!

Mumbai, a Maximum City, a city which embrace everyone in it’s chaotic culture. It has quite a lot of thing which always amuses me, one of which is- Political Party Hoardings. An innovative idea devised by all politician to praise them self, their leaders, wish them birthdays, celebrate ganesh puja, any occasions... you will see a dirty looking rectangular/square shaped huge banners and hoarding filled with numerous most ugly people you had ever seen in your life. I am saying it is Mumbai’s idea to put a political hoarding coz Mumbai is the first city I had seen putting it across. I have grown in Jamshedpur and never saw anything like this; I did my engineering from Aurangabad; it had some occasional banner only at the time of some election or rally, and then I lived 1 year in Pune where again this was not that regular a culture. I also occasionally happened to travel places like Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore but again never saw 100s of banners/hoarding on roads showing every tom, dick and harry belong to political parties of that respective locality and yes, never miss the father figure poster of their high command/Boss who are flowering blessing to all these ugly smiling faces in their banner.

It might have started in Mumbai, because Mumbai is Bollywood hub and banners & hoarding been a quite integral part of this city. As a Marketing person my idea of outdoor hoarding is Promoting something which enhances it’s brand image to Audience which lives in that particular locality and it always suppose to look glamorous and attractive. And then we see all these political hoardings, literally from every parties ranging from largest to smallest. The typical format of hoarding is—From top they show their top most leader, the middle order shows regional/divisional leader and bottom are colleagues and key or say strategic supporters and not to miss the bottom right (sometimes it is also on top right corner), a Person with full fledged colgate smile on their face... the sponsor of that hoarding. The Body Copy and Content are usually – Welcome & Birthday Wishes of their leaders even if that leader is not based out of that area. Its their way to show affection and loyality to their leader. Their arrogance can be seen in hoarding when they put for Ganesha Chaturthi, wehere lord itself shown with small picture and all these morons with over sized dick headed images; and ugly ones, really ugly to core. Some with bad beards, with dirty smiles and some try to show glow in face and eyes by doing some photoshop which looks like someone made a desperate effort to look good as they do in some cheap matrimonial service.

Now let me take you through that how as a citizen what I feel, and I am sure the feelings will be same across a lot of people for sure. My feel is to abuse; the moment I look at them I just say or sometimes when I am around with some people, I Just think of abusing them and I think aloud. Earlier I used to be bother seeing all this ugly faces but now I look forward for it. In our typical day-today commuting the moment you take out the car, you are never so sure how long its going to be to reach anywhere you intended to reach. The surrounding scares you, everywhere there is dust constructions, blockages, jams, repair and that too for ages. Its been 10 years for me in Mumbai and stil I see that 4 km. Stretch of JVLR is some of the other construction going on. Sometimes it takes 90 minutes to travel just 10 k.m. From 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. you cant drive because of peak traffics of vehincle and from 11 p.m. – 7 a.m. you can’t drive because of heavy vehicle on your main highways. 


So, what I do- Visualise this- I am stuck in traffic, I see everywhere people stressed and tenses, I see this city getting uglier day by day and then I see at the same time a poster/banner/hoarding of some party and all those morons in that poster smiling (which looks like laughing out loud) as us. Telling us, it’s us who did this to your life. Even after paying tax, not doing anything illegal if this is what I deserve it creates huge anger inside me and I just want to vent off. So what I do- I abuse, abuse as dirty as I can. If I am in alone in car, I look at all the ugly faces in the poster- I abuse loud and I feel much better. It doesn’t make any sense but so does plenty of things happening around also doesn’t make any sense. I am not superstition but would like to believe, if abuse like this affects them I will be more than happy to achieve that sadistic pleasure to curse & abuse them more. Practice it, it really helps you to remove stress and anger.

Lastly, I thanks for putting their Ugly Faced Hoardings, coz it gives my Abuse a Face an identity a target to try my dart.

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