Namesake review, P Chidambaram at IIM

“Great men live dangerously, small men don’t take chances.”
~Chinese fortune cookie

Last Friday, I went to see The Namesake with several Indicorps friends.

On the whole, I think the movie was enjoyable, but I was a little disappointed when leaving the theater. I think I had sky-high expectations based on what I’d heard about it from friends, Mira Nair’s other films, or the fact that it was written by pulitzer prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri. Disclaimer: I haven’t read any of Jhumpa’s books, and now I don’t plan to.

One of the things that was slightly annoying is that there were lots of inconsistencies around time periods… like cars of the wrong period or ATM’s in Calcutta in the 70’s… Still, it was a pretty beautiful film. I guess part of it was just that I don’t identify with Gogol’s life, and his upbringing was pretty different than mine. It’s also possible that I’m being overly critical, and that if this movie was about a Taiwanese family, that I’d have more love for it.

Tabu and Irfan Khan were really really good. I think their portrayal of Bengali FOB parents was spot-on. Would’ve liked to see more about Tabu’s change from an Indian girl to an Indian American Mother.

It was also shot really well. There were classic scenes like this one:

I didh’t really care for Kal Penn in a serious role, I think he’s much better suited to comedy. I also didn’t like any of the other main roles (Kal Penn’s white girlfriend and Bengali wife). I think the white girlfriend probably played her part quite well, it’s just that her part was to be annoying.

It was below my expectations, but probably still worth watching, if only for Tabu and Irfan Khan’s great performances.

Saturday, I went to P Chidambaram’s speech at convocation at IIM-Ahmedabad.
Here’s an Mp3 of the speech from deshgujarat.com

Chidambaram is the finance minister of India. He was wearing his trademark white shirt and Dhoti bottom.

His speech was pretty interesting - he mainly focused on the divide between the haves and the have-nots in India. He talked about the 9% GDP growth rate of India, and mentioned that it was below it’s potential because, among other reasons, much of the population didn’t participate in the growth process due to lack of education or skills, jobs, capital or opportunity. I’d qualify education with useful… There are a lot of people with degrees that are pretty meaningless - I actually think that for the poor, skills training is far more important than proper education.

He talked about how far China has come in the past decade, owing its progress to the “one country, two systems.” He said that India follows a “one country, one system and as many interpretations as there are political parties.”

Chidambaram admitted that the government puts big bucks into Government programs for social service, but that the programs fail by design, delivery and implementation. Unfortunate, but so true. He said that development programs only work when there is participation from the people, but over the years in India many developmental programmes have bypassed the people and delivered poor results. People don’t have a sense of ownership on a half-constructed road or a school building in the rural areas even though it was constructed with their own money. The absence of public ownership of development programmes doesn’t ensure the necessary accountability on the part of those duty-bound to implement the programmes.

He said the “disconnect” between the “rich India” and the “poor India” must be bridged, and that “Deficiencies in design, delivery and implementation must be remedied. Time is of essence and the consequences of failure are too grave to leave the task to the Government alone”

The focus of his speech was interesting, especially given the audience of IIMA grads, who for the most part I’ve found to be concerned with little other than how large their post-graduation paychecks will be. He said, “I wonder if some of you, at some stage in your lives, will come forward and volunteer to work as monitors and evaluators at the block or district levels. That is the battle ground where the war on poverty, ignorance and disease will be won or lost, and we need more selfless foot soldiers on that ground.” Perhaps later in life, but I don’t think they will do so in the near future.

The other speaker was Vijaypat Singhania, Chairman of the Raymonds group (big clothing and textile group in India). He also is an acclaimed aviator, and is now Chairman of the Governing Council at IIM Ahmedabad, succeeding Narayana Murthy.

I liked most of what he said - advocating more autonomy for the institution to pursue an uncompromising pursuit of excellence.
He then said:

“With $140 Billion of foreign investment sitting in the Gujarat kitty, talk of Godhra signifies confused thinking that can easily erode a hard-earned reputation.”
So he says that because we’ve gotten a lot of foreign investment, we can forget about the communal rioting that happenned just 5 years ago, with the Hindu rioters getting support from the government that is still in power? The Hindu-Muslim riots were a huge blight on the state, and I don’t think that there is any amount of foreign investment that can erase what was done. It’s also important to continue to talk about it, just as we continue to talk about the civil war and civil rights movements in the US.

Next: Smokeless Chulha & my birthday