India #1: What do Karan Johar and Amaratya Sen have in common?

As I mentioned I have been reading books by so called Indian born intellectuals touting India. I stopped watching Bollywood flicks that tout Indian values and Indian culture some time back.

For those fortunate enough to have not watched the Bollywood blockbusters, here is how it works. A typical movie would be set in London where there is this Ferrari driving kid of Indian origin whose dad had humble origins. He loves India and anything Indian. So he decides to travel around Europe. Women fall on him and there are songs that show skimpy women gyrating to some Bhangra/hip-hop beats. He dances with them but remains an “Indian” at heart. He meets this Indian girl who works for the Sydney Symphony. She too is in Europe because she loves India. A couple of songs follow, one set in Sydney and the other in Amsterdam. They might even discuss the utter lack of morals in the west and how they love India. Anyway, after a lot of twists and turns, they have a lavish wedding in Paris and settle down in Geneva. He is now a banker and since she wanting to do something for the kids on the streets of India, decides to teach ballet to kids of wealthy Swiss bankers. This is usually referred to as a “script” in Bollywood parlance. This refreshingly new script could have been developed by India Lover Karan Johar who spends most of his time outside India since he loves India so much and is a patriot. The name of the movie could be India #1.

Now, for those of you who have been lucky to not lay your hands on Nobel Prize winning economist Amratya Sen’s rant titled “The Argumentative Indian”. This usually involves an Indian with multiple degrees preferably one each from Oxford and Harvard, or Cambridge and Yale or any other combination. He has spent around 30-40 years in the West either as a successful executive, but mostly as a tenured professor. He then decides to get a gig in India and gets a bungalow and a chauffeured A/C car. He gets a hefty pay and keeps travelling to conferences abroad. He may even be on the chair of a couple of NGOs and may have an opinion column in a leading newspaper. He will spew some jargon which is a mix of his take on some archaic ancient Indian texts and the current GDP of India, similar to what is in his bestselling book. He will somehow make a connection between the two in a column and fill it with other meaningless numbers and figures, more of which you could read in his aptly titled book, "India #1".

As for me, I have spent more than a month here. I do have a chauffeured A/C car at my disposal. The driver earns Rs 4000 a month (around $100). He lives with 4 more drivers in a room. Their families are in their native villages as he says they would have to move to a slum if they bring them to Mumbai. I get to read my newspaper during the hour or so it takes to travel 5 miles in Mumbai these days. I am still trying to figure out if I got a little lucky or everything is so great here that India is indeed #1.