Check out Tyler Cowen's provocative twin posts on Mrs Gandhi and the irrationality of the Indian Voter. I have very different views on the Indian voter, But I would get to that later.

But let me direct you to his more interesting remarks on Bollywood.

From what I see around me, there seems to be two largely distinct and seperate audiences. The urban, English speaking population that likes Hollywood films is not much into mainstream Bollywood films (And of course I am excluding parallel/art films from my definition of Bollywood). Likewise, the mainstream Hindi film consumers in India watch very few American films. There is certainly a subset of the audience that watch a lot of both (and cable has increased this audience substantially), but I do not think that it is still a significantly large number)

There is also very little distribution for good English movies outside the metros. Only soft-porn and action blockbusters usually get into the smaller cities. (Again, cable tends to short circuit these easy assumptions)

Can it change? Of course it can. I feel ambivalent about (what I think of as) cultural exports to and from India. I wrote a longish post on this here. My views have not changed substantially since then.

A few additional points to what I said there:

1) Bollywood has a vast consumer base outside of India in Central Asia, Middle East (including Iraq!) and China. We have done a terrible job of exploiting that.

2) I always thought that Bollywood films tend to reflect existent social mores more than they shape social mores. As a high school student, I enjoyed reading Pritish Nandy's back page commentary in the 'Illustrated Weekly'. He used to make the same point very well. (although he is now producing duds as a producer of Hindi films)

Over the last few years, Bollywood films have been becoming more open and secular in their treatment of sexuality. It is possible that they only cater to metropolitan India and to the broader diaspora living abroad that has more far purchasing power than it did a decade back.

3) I am not very familar with films coming out of the South. It doesnt sound like I am missing out much (obviously, there are always exceptions like Adoor Gopalakrishnan). Similarly, there are exceptions in Bengal too. But mostly, watching new Bengali films these days is torture.

I think the really interesting stuff is happening in the realm of low budget films made in English. The current generation of art filmmakers in India often think in English. Unlike the previous generation which grew up under the shadow of colonialism, they are far more comfortable with the idea of creating in English language. Unfortunately, by doing so they are giving up on a large audience.

I feel slightly squeamish about linking to kiss and tell stories or to stories about the workplace misfortunes due to blogging indescretions. But Blog Interrupted by April Witt, in today's Washington Post, is particularly well-written and raises interesting questions about the broader sociocultural changes.

Rediff has a dynamite interview with Sekhar Kapur here (Link via Edward in IEW and Om Malik). I have always been a big fan of Sekhar Kapur's films. But I did not know that he packs so much intellectual firepower .....

I am with him on the size of the prize at stake. But I have serious reservations about the ability of Indian entertainment industry to exploit it. I think Kapur is seriously underestimating the ability of Western advertising-image making-entertainment complex to co-opt and influence local pop culture and sensibilities to meet its programming needs.

The effect of Western visual culture on Asia is subtle and incremental. Occasionally, its impact on an unsuspecting and otherwise unprepared people can be devastating. I read a depressing account of it in The Guardian sometime back. The kingdom of Bhutan was the last Shangri La of South Asia. The king has not allowed television into Bhutan till about a year back. Some people contend that what happened after cable got unfettered access is not a direct effect of TV. It was bound to happen anyway. But an increasing number of people are tying the ensuing wave of crime, drug problems and unexplainable violence to the pent up unmet wants created by cable.

In Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, Pankaj Misra narrated the tragicomic stories of the wants created among the noveau riche of suburban India in the eighties. This was right after Mofussil India got 'Dallas' and 'Santa Burbara'. In the decade preceding that, Pico Iyer went looking for Asian culture and instead found Video Nights In Kathmandu.

Now, I am not claiming that similar cultural export from the east is impossible. Just consider Japan's gross national cool. Its worldwide influence can be seen in everything from animation to religion. But it is rather hard and too often it results in superificial iconization for Western consumption rather than resulting in a dialogue.

My question is more over the ability (or even the creation) of an Indian entertainment complex that can successfully exploit the market for Indian entertainment products in the diaspora and at the same time cater to a larger International market. My doubts are because of two different reasons. One is the increasing creative bankrupcy of mainstream Bollywood filmmakers to develop products that the market wants (which should not be construed to mean Indian creative bankrupcy). "In 2002 Bollywood lost $50m and in the first four months of 2003, another $15m has gone" (link).

Then there is the question of building an infrastructure that can create such products. One of the reasons, Bollywood can continue to churn out such an amazing number of loss making films is because there is so much underworld mafia money going into the film industry. In a story published some months back, Hindu Business Line found that despite RBI's best efforts, less than 5% of financing in the vast majority of mainstream films are coming from institutional, organized financial sources. As it says, structural difficulties of streamlining the filmmakig financing in India is considerable. Unless that is sorted out, Bollywood would continue to be in a mess.

In the mean time, television has been growing at the expense of cinema and music. And where do you think that growth is going?

Enter Mr. Rupert Murdoch. He runs the second largest media company in India now. Most of the popular soaps are on Star. It is now stuck in the middle of all sorts of regulatory wrangles in India (The Economist has good ongoing coverage of the fight over StartTV and the perennially emerging Indian broadcasting regulations. But those stores are all priced. But here is an angry Hindu editorial ).

So, yes, I would like to believe in the vision that Sekhar Kapur showed us. But India is simply not prepared. And I find his optimism slightly scary.

Lastly, I am not even sure about the desirability of such an entertainment complex. The changes that we see in India now are not because of any deliberate attempt by an organized band of cool merchants to influence public taste. It kind of happens. The US is different. I am not sure that popular taste here is really bottom up. It gets influenced in myriad small ways by various arbiters of popular taste. Are we sure that we want that to happen in India?

This is one of those areas where I have not sorted out my thoughts. But the subject is of enormous importance and will determine more than anything else the future shape of South Asia.

Somehow, I find the idea that Columbia collectibles are already soaring on eBay faintly disgusting. (via antipixel). One aspect of a modern Western society that I can't internalize is how it can sometimes rob people of dignity. They now sell trinkets where Kennedy died.

I liked the profile of Kalpana Chawla in NYT. You can almost always count on Amy Waldman to write a balanced story.

greg.org has an interesting, eccentric post on powerpoint as a creative medium.

I totally, absolutely relate to it.

I spent the the past one week obsessing over a presentation that I finally made this morning. Rest of my life ground to a halt while I was thinking about it. This is usual whenever I have an important presentation ahead of me. Mind you, I was not working on it all the time. Mostly, I was simply fretting about it and debating internally about rephrasing a particular bullet point or simplifying a Vision diagram. I NEVER wake up early. This morning I was originally up at 4.30 AM. This is not normal.

I love the quality of Matt Jones' slides.

Marx's intellectual legacy is an appraisal of Carl Marx in the most unlikely of places. It is quite well argued.

I remember meeting Kaushik Basu once in his booklined study at his home in New Delhi. Basu then was an economist in Delhi School of Economics and was one of the most vocal supporters of Manmohan Singh's liberalization in nineties India. Two things you noticed immediately when you entered his room; stacks of Bertrand Russels in his shelves, probably all the books that Russel ever wrote and a water color of Carl Marx on his study table. I was a little intimidated, but could not stop myself from asking him how come such a passionate supporter of economic liberalization had a drawing of Marx on his table. He said. "There are actually two reasons. Firstly, it is the only drawing that I have made which looks even remotely like the person it is supposed to represent. Secondly, Marx was one of the most brilliant economists in the world. If he had access to the kind of empirical data that we have access to these days, I don't think he would have proposed communism." I suppose it also had the effect of disarming a lot of people!

There is an interesting article by Art Kleiner on Stephenson's Quantum Theory of Trust in the current issue of Strategy+Business. Stephenson is working with the 'Information Awareness Office' to help them understand and undermine the nodes, links and trust in Al Qaeda?s network.

It is now fairly well understood that that ideas, trends, technology can spread in nonlinear fashion with certain people acting as the network hubs / connectors / vectors.

Stephenson says that there are 6 kinds of networks. She holds the view that network health can be measured and improved. She "doesn?t suggest replacing hierarchies with networks. She sees organizations as a sort of double-helix system, with hierarchy and networks perpetually influencing each other, ideally co-evolving over time to become more effective."

Update: Wired has the best reading list on emerging networks that I have seen so far. (via Field notes) 'Emergence' is an exciting reading. I am hearing great things about Smart Mobs.

This excellent post about mail order degrees in USA puts into perspective the degree related abuses (In reprospect I still feel bad about the degree related frauds in India).

I tend to avoid commenting on op-eds written on hot button issues. They are usually written by fundamentalists of one hue or other. I am uncomfortable around fundamentalists of any kind.

But 'Charlie's ghost' is a poingnant story. I too think that "As a matter of law and politics, ...this (abortion) is not a decision I would entrust to courts and legislatures". But some of the issues that Bill Keller raised in that article are disturbing. As he mentioned "The ideologues on both sides, those who view abortion as an absolute wrong and those who view it as an inalienable right, too often treat these decisions as if they were clear-cut and pain-free." This week's 'Economist' noted that in China, the male female ratio is getting badly skewed. Given the choice of one kid, most parents are choosing to wait for a boy. I had read in 'Times of India' (quite some time back) that in Mumbai some of the more affluent families (those who have access) are quietly aborting the girl fetuses in their families.

I hope I am not being gullible in finding relief in Musharraf's statement. Folks back home are unstressed. Thanks to years of abuse of public trust by the politicians, Indians have gotten inured to the rhetoric. While I am not a fan of BJP, I have more faith on the humanity of Vajpayee's defence team than of Musharraf's. India also has overwhelming superiority in conventional forces. I don't really know whether a structured nuclear command structure exists inside Pakistan. If India escalates beyond a certain point, the temptation to do to lasting damage to India can be very high amongst some sections in Pakistan. So, Musharraf's statement is a huge relief, though I don't know to what extent one should trust the General.

I read depressing news all weekend. I read the incredibly sad story (by Bruce Feldman) of a fifteen year old prodigy whose life was pretty much destroyed by the college football team, apathetic college authorities and clueless parents (via metafilter). It is when I read stuff like this; I feel that in a lot of ways people in India are much, much better off. I read this devastating indictment of Robert Mugabe's reign in Zimbabwe (via Lakefx) by Philip Gourevitch. I urge you to read it even if it churns your stomach. The world needs to know what is going on out there. I have also started reading Robert Kaplan's 'Soldiers of God'. The first chapter is called 'Walking through a minefield' and is depressing as hell.

I need some cheerful news!