South Asia Daily

Facts are sacred, comment is free

Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as they appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show on Monday

(http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090826-tows-aish-rai-ab-bachchan)

It seems silly to quibble with Oprah Winfrey over facts but I am going to do it anyway. This morning Oprah had Indian movie star couple Abhishek and Aishwarya, whom she described as “the world’s most famous couple.”  That’s not the kind of “fact” I would bother to contest because it is neither here nor there. One cannot easily prove or disprove such claims.

However, when Oprah quantifies their fan base to be five billion people I begin to choke. Even hyperbole is not so stretchable. Let me put some factual context around this figure.  As of today the world population stood at 6,787,073,257, according to the US Census Bureau. Going by what the Oprah Winfrey Show claims out of these 5,000,000,000 are fans of Abhishek and Aishwarya. That means practically nine out of every ten people on every continent are fans of the couple. Purely statistically speaking, from a child writhing in starvation pangs in Rwanda in Africa to a suicide bomber strapping explosives on his body along Pakistan-Afghanistan border is a fan of the two in their spare time. I am sure when I put it like that you begin to see the absurdity of such a claim.

I have a problem when shows that make tens of millions of dollars display such laziness about facts. Here is another, albeit it trivial, example of that. The accompanying introduction to the star couple also said, “This booming, Hindi-language film industry turns out hundreds of vibrant films and musicals every year.” Not true. The Hindi-language film industry makes less than 200 films a year. The figure of hundreds of films relates to everything that India produces in all its languages put together.

For that matter even the claim that Aishwarya makes $15 million a movie is questionable.  According to those who track such payments in the Indian context she could not be making more than $5 million a film. They say even Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar, two of India’s highest paid movie stars, do not make $15 million a movie.

One question to self: WTF am I doing factchecking a TV show on a Monday morning?

MIA mumbles, Yunus smiles

M.I.A,left, Mohammad Yunus

Real Time with Bill Maher featured singer M.I.A. last night in what was supposed to have been an attempt to explain the circumstances in which Sri Lanka decimated the Tamil Tigers. There could not have been a less articulate representative of the Tamil cause.  At one point it appeared as if it was Maher who was from Sri Lanka and not M.I.A.

She could not set up the conflict in order to explain the civilian tragedy that unfolded around it. M.I.A., who has projected herself as a sort of ambassador of the Sri Lankan Tamils to the West using her thin celebrity, offered no historical perspective to an audience which may or may not have known that there is a country called Sri Lanka. It was left to Maher to explain that Sri Lanka is the island nation at the southern tip of India. He said Sri Lanka is to India what Sicily is to Italy. M.I.A. just sat there offering less than comprehensible perspective on what the Obama administration should pay attention to what is going on in Sri Lanka.

Maher tried valiantly to make something out the conversation that never really animated. I can understand why shows such as Maher’s or Jon Stewart’s or Stephen Colbert’s feature South Asians who have made an impact on the U.S. to explain much deeper crises that confront the region. The only problem is that most of them are so quickly out of their depth that it becomes an ordeal to watch.

While on the subject of the show, Maher also had microfinance pioneer and Nobel peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus as one of the panelists. Other than on the questions of the current financial sector meltdown, on which Yunus is uniquely qualified to comment, he seemed clearly out of place. On most mainstream American themes Yunus could not do much better than smile or offer some vague platitudes.

The new Jay Leno show

Here is an unpaid plug for the new Jay Leno show.

US has no budget for the Nehru jacket

Speaking of socialism, India and how many Americans fear it is coming to their country, it is now official that it is not the case.

Jon Stewart asked the White House budget director Peter Orszag last night, “How much do we have in the budget for the Nehru jacket?”

Orszag answered zero. So there you have it. Socialism is not coming to the United States -- at any rate, socialism as sartorially represented by the Nehru jacket, which is actually still quite fashionable.

India's Bill Gates and Balgalore's Madonna

I caught Nandan Nilekeni on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. I am willing to disregard Stewart’s unnecessary hyperbole in describing Nilekeni as India’s Bill Gates. The Infosys co-chairman is nowhere close to Gates in India or elsewhere. India has its Bill Gates and that is Bill Gates. During the interview Stewart said Nandan was like Madonna in Bangalore. Everybody knew him. That is somewhat true. Again, India has its Madonna and it is Madonna. But let that pass.

Am I imagining or Stewart does tend to softball his interactions with non mainstream American guests such as his favorite Fareed Zakaria and now Nilekeni? Of course, Zakaria is now very much part media celebrity mainstream. Stewart seems somewhat deferential or indulgent with those whom he is not entirely familiar with. I could see that even when he featured Pervez Musharraf. His humor loses its verve with unfamiliar guests.

I was waiting for the inevitable question about his friendship with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the much told story about how Nilekeni inspired the title of the journalist’s book “The World if Flat.” The Infosys boss clarified that it was during an interaction in his office that he told Friedman how technology had leveled the playing field and that probably inspired the book’s title.

For those who concern themselves with such utterly inconsequential trivia, the idea of technology being a great leveler was first floated in India by information and communications guru Sam Pitroda in the 1990s whose exact quote was “Technology is a great social leveler, next only to death. It puts two unequal human beings or two unequal societies on an equal footing.” That’s that.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Nandan Nilekani

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

World Focus

I just discovered an independent world news source called 'World Focus'. At a time when the mainstream media are compelled to cut down on their foreign bureaus, this could be a worthwhile source of world news.

The Story of India on PBS

“This is the story of civilization older than human history,” declares Michael Wood, the emphatic narrator of ‘The Story of India’ in the six-hour miniseries about the country. The jarring certitude of that declaration notwithstanding the series to be broadcast on PBS tonight promises to be fascinating.

Going by the 5 minute-long teaser of the miniseries it seems Wood is totally sold on India’s history. I have not seen the series for any serious length of time to make any judgment about it but it appears that Wood approaches the subject with the kind of sanguine exuberance that could make serious historians skeptical.

But then this is a television series whose ambition is to capture 10,000 years of history of a civilization as complex and layered as India. So one must overlook a certain degree of latitude and creative license. It appears like the kind of television that makes you want to pack your bags and return to India.

It is always pointless to critique any creative work but I will do so nevertheless once I have watched the whole series. You might catch a teaser here. http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/