--{{ SUBTLE LINES }}--. Review on Swades

"I don't like being called poor. Yes, I don't have a stable income. Yes, I am unable to meet the education needs of my children. Sometimes I have to borrow for my family's medication. But I am not poor. The word 'poor' carries with it a flavor of pity. I don't need pity. I'm not poor. I'm just economically disadvantaged."

-- Nobody said that. I just made it up.

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The central point that the movie RDB was trying to convey is unclear and I give full credit to the ambiguous statements of faith that Amir Khan makes. But the central point that the movie Swades is trying to convey is loud and clear.

"Hey you NRI, get your a$$ back here and do something for the millions of poor people in your country!"

Upto this moment, everything is perfectly fine. Non-resident Indians owe, much like resident Indians, a duty to their brethren. But one has to always ask exactly how many resident Indians fulfill their duties. It is being an avowed snob: on the one hand, domestic Indians do not fulfill their basic duties of paying their taxes on time and on the other hand they write articles after articles about the betrayal of the NRIs. This is the first symptom of a deep-rooted disease of procrastination.

I do not claim to have extensive knowledge about the general sentiment of the NRIs. However, from what I gather, NRI funding to NGOs working in the rural (and especially tribal) areas is considerable. Several NGOs have patrons abroad who wire in fairly good sums of money through their personal accounts and through other organizations involved in charity. These efforts must not go unrecognized as several NGOs acknowledge this source as one of their "important and major sources of funding", almost immediately next to formal funding charities like the Dorabji Tata Trust. Therefore, to say that the NRIs in general have completely forgotten their country is being quite unfair to them.

It is unlikely that the NRI community is unaware of the poverty in India. The impression that foreign countries have about India is that of a country still ridden with orthodox practices and beliefs. Assuming that the young NRI-generation gathers its ideas about India from the countries of their residents, they have a far worse image of our country than it actually is. The UN-survey of the year 2000 classifies India as an "extreme poor" country, meaning that over 25% of the population lives below the international standard poverty line of 1$ per day. In other words, India is classified in the same ranks as Mali, Botswana, Ghana, Ethiopia and the likes. One does not expect the NRIs therefore to be asympethetic to their land.

Our census clearly indicates that India's (resident) population is enormous. One naturally wonders why such a huge army of people is incapable of collectively solving the country's problems that it finds it necessary to turn to non-resident Indians for help. Such a call for plea is understandable if the resident Indians have failed after reasonable attempts to do away with their problems. But the truth is that the resident Indian is just about as asympathetic towards the country as he alleges the non-resident Indian to be. A simple method to verify this will be to go to the neighboring housing complex and to ask each family if they had one hour to spare every month to teach poor children in the slums. I do not expect more than one quarter of the housing soceity to join the endeavor.

It is quite easy to spare 12 hours in a year on helping slum children in learning how to read sign boards if it is easy enough to watch 4 movies a month in the nearby multiplex. Mathematically, that is 48 movies a year, meaning 144 hours a year on movie watching. 12 hours on slum children therefore cannot be called a problem. It does not normally happen.

One wonders why there has been no movie on the asympathetic, blind attitude of the resident Indians towards the problems of their economically disadvantaged brethren. One wonders why it is the NRI community who receives perpetual blame for being blood-traitors of the soceity. Indeed, those who do not do their bit for the country are traitors. I hold that those traitors who live within the territorial limits of the country are worse traitors than those who stay outside it. It is obvious that non-monetary help (which often is stated to be "severally more necessary than dollops of money") is easier to offer for resident traitors.

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As far as the movie is concerned, some more ideological aspects of it attracted my disapproval.

1) The movie shows with far too much emphasis the fact that the NRI is a "superior" person. His decision to return homeward to help his people is born out of pity for their condition. Whenever charity begins with pity, it is not charity but merely extending alms. Charity begins with sympathy, which is very different from pity, because pity undermines the dignity of the pitied while sympathy underpins it.

2) The movie is quite unfair with the poor. To expect all families to send their children to school is not a very proper expectation. If you have read Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one will realize that Education is the second order need. In families where the income is unstable and not assured, the first instinct is to expand income opportunities. Consequently, the first step of the solution of the problem is to work to provide a sustainable and viable income source to the poor families and not melodramatically coercing them into sending their sons and daughters to school to solve an NRIs marital blues.

My take on this movie was not a take on the movie at all. Once again, please give me Not Useful ratings.

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