Ah! The tears and joys of this country! I am simultaneously inspired by her great ability to embrace almost anything and everything conceivable and bullied by her inability to transfer aspirations and wanna-dos toward anything concrete has-been-dones. On this page, I will post several different kinds of videos related to India and provide my comments about them. It has long been understood by India’s citizens that China is enjoying its current status in the world economy because of its government, while India, in spite of her’s. This means that we Indians have pretty much given up hope of expecting greats from our political leaders and the governing parties. We all live our daily lives knowing well that if anything needs to be done, on whatever level, it has to be the result of individual or community initiatives. No wonder a movie like Viruddh where Amitabh Bachchan’s character completely disillusioned by the failure of the governmental bodies including the non-existence of any support from law enforcement officers toward finding his son’s murderer, decides to take matters into his own hands, and shoots the antagonist himself.
Let’s take another example – the absolutely beautiful, extremely realistic video of Lead India where the little kid takes it upon himself to lift the huge tree while the politician quietly disappears and the police officers catch a nap letting the people inconvenienced by the tree to look out for themselves or until someone else does it for them. What an inspirational video!
Amidst all this, I really like the initiatives taken by newspaper giant, The Times of India with their immensely in your face campaigns such as Lead India, India Shining, A day in the Life of India, and so on. Kudos to the creative minds behind these campaigns. After decades of whining and resigning to the fact that “is desh ka kuch nahi hone wala hai,” ToI’s brilliant strategy to show Indians a mirror has been nothing short of brilliant. How effective these campaigns and strategies have been? I would love to learn more about that and see how ToI measures its outcomes.
For now, enjoy these videos:
School Chale Hum – Inspiring the need for education
India Rising
India – Fastest growing economy (around 9.5% annual GDP)
India poised – Our time is now – Lyricist Gulzar – in Hindi/Urdu
India Vs. India – Actor Amitabh Bachchan – in English – Must see!
Lead India – Actor Abhishek Bachchan – in English
Abhishek asks us what it is that we are doing for our India while claiming that he certainly is doing something. Now I agree that celebrities’ acts of charity are not publicized in Indian media as much as they are in the US. Then again, who’s to say that they are actually doing something for charity. When Aishwarya Rai donated her eyes to the eye bank several years ago, that certainly made some news but given today’s context, I wonder what any of our celebrities are doing for India. Abhishek is busy endorsing products almost making that his primary career now that none of his movies seem to be doing well. Like I alluded to in the introductory paragraph, the only people actually working toward any change at all seem to be ordinary Indian citizens. Now I didn’t follow the Lead India television program closely but I wonder what happened once the show was over. Everything is half baked, we all have good intentions without the will to follow through. Most people would probably turn a blind eye and a deaf ear toward our country’s situations while not hesitating one bit to criticize those same situations. Most would rather let someone else do something than be that someone doing that something and bringing about a change for the better.
What can I do for my India?
Musical virtuoso A R Rehman’s composition of the Indian National Anthem featuring some of the greats of the Indian music industry (including singers of course)
Kenya Sings India (the Indian National Anthem – Jan Gana Man) – Part of Pangea Day (May 10) campaign
