Posted:
hey, i just got forwarded this article -- is it true???? 😲
Is entertainment for the masses increasing deprivation for the masses?
Our Bombay bureau,
International Enquirer, 14 September 2008
Balaji Telefilms must be rueing the day that it commissioned "Kis Des Mein Hain Mera Dil". The six-month old show had a relatively low-key start, and took a while to get it's feet wet. Today, it maintains a steady number two position in the TRP charts. But high TRPs are hardly a source of headaches for the Bombay-based production house. Rather it it is the unusual controversies the show's lead actors get involved in.
Barely two months ago, the FBI was brought in to assist Bombay police in the arrest of the show's male lead on suspicion of international internet bandwith theft. Our sources inform us that now the show team has been hauled in for interrogation by a no-less weighty institution -- the central bank, Reserve Bank of India. This time, the matter involved is one of national, rather than international, crisis - the market price of eggs.
Since Thursday evening, there has been an unprecedented rise in the demand for eggs all across the country. The first signs of the crisis surfaced from bakeries and pastry shops in major cities that had been running empty shelves since Friday mid-morning. By Friday evening, there were queues as long as 100 meters for eggs in front of groceries in most cities. Housewives, who seemed to have caught on the mysterious supply shortage first, had their children stand in these queues immediately after school, hungry and tired. By midnight of Saturday, there were reports of looting of groceries and rioting in far-flung off parts of the country. In places of religious prayer, congregations have been gathering since early Saturday morning looking to the heavens, praying "give us this day, our daily egg". This supply shortage, of course, has had an unprecented effect on local egg prices: a dozen eggs that was earlier available at Rs. 30 (70 cents) are apparently now being sold at Rs. 90 (2 dollars) -- when they are available! This is causing sleepless nights to politicians who are demanding a reason for the problem and demanding it's solution.
As is well known, India has been battling a dramatic rise in inflation since the start of the last year. Rising prices of ordinary goods has caused much concern in the political circles. In fact, underground rumours in the country's capital is that it was not so much proposed nuclear deal with the US, but high inflation, that caused a call for a trust vote of the central government a month ago. The present situation of a three-fold increase over 24 hours in prices of a food item that is consumed as much by the poor as by the large politically influential middle-class will not be tolerated by the powers that be.
While the police and the armed forces have been widely deployed to control the unfortunate violence, the RBI -- the monetary authority in charge of inflation control -- has started attacking the economic implications of the egg crisis, (internally code-named "Operation AndeRoza") starting from locating and stemming the source of the problem. Reliable sources from the RBI's economic investigations department (EID) have been talking to national egg suppliers. Apparently, RBI-EID have analysed phone-records of all the large cellphone companies to pinpoint the time of origin of AndeRoza between 9 and 9:30 pm IST, on Thursday. The team have identified AndeRoza perpetrators as "slightly(*) hysterical young women".
[(*) This reporter had to modify the much stronger language used for thenational press.]
The investigation could've been long and slow if it had not been for two (female) members of RBI-EID, who made the link between AndeRoza and "Kis des...". Our reporter was able to track down how the link was made when our team tracked down the RBI-EID team to the TelAir premises in the Western suburbs of Bombay.
The RBI-EID team were in too much of a hurry to get to the Balaji Telefilms studios in the Northern suburbs to give us a quote. But our sources from inside TelAir revealed that "...when the EID team analysed that the phone-calls to egg suppliers showed a dramatic increase immediately at around 8:55pm, Thursday, one of the (female) EID team members became visibly startled and extremely flushed. She took another (female) EID member aside to hold an excited discussion of whispers where the most perceptible phrases were "omg!!" (repeatedly) and "chemistry cannot effect the price of eggs, damnit!" Ms. X then came back to her colleagues and offered the explanation that the source of the hysterical demand was possibly out of a show that runs on national TV between 8:30pm and 9pm. At first, the rest of the (male) EID members looked extremely sceptical. But Ms. X and her colleague did a demonstration of the show (of which she happened to have a copy on her iPod). It was only after they recounted the previous cases of the show's impact on females and bandwidth that the rest of the EID team was willing to take the investigation to the studio itself..."
We could see that "Kis des..." team had clearly been interrupted in the middle of a shoot by the RBI-EID when we reached their studios. Harshad Chopda, the male lead of the show, was wearing a haunted expression as we approached the group while Aditi Gupta, the female lead, was cheerily demonstrating the relevant scene on one of the male RBI-EID team members. Chopda was casting furtive glances over the heads in the crowd, in between trying to tell Gupta not to say anything until their lawyers got there. He seemed specially anxious about the possible appearance of an Inspector named O. I. Tsestee. (We found later that the it was the brilliant Inspector who had arrested Chopda in the case of the missing internet bandwidth.) Chopda refused to give us a quote, and Gupta was too busy in giving advice to the RBI-EID team on how importing eggs from Singapore would improve the egg supply locally and bring down prices. Since then, the lead actors as well as the creative team and the legal department have been moved to RBI HQ in South Bombay for further questionning.
When asked, the finance head of Balaji Telefilms (male) indicated that the costs incurred in such disruptions as well as the costs to cover the legal cases the lead actors are involved in (the bail amount for Chopda's previous case had to be negotiated down to a reasonable level before he could be released to continue his work) could be a factor in winding down the show sooner than anticipated. However, this did not appear to be a consensus: the vice-head of finance (female) was emphatically of the view that the high TRPs of the show justified all these costs and much more. The management would not give us a quote till they heard back from their lawyers.
We were not able to reach Gupta's parents for a quote on their daughter's involvement with India's inflation and being a possible cause of the collapse of the current government. However, before she was whisked away by her husband and their lawyer, Chopda's mother appeared bewildered and had only this to say: "Now, he's being blamed for the supply shortage of eggs? But he doesn't even eat eggs! I told him that this acting business was a bad idea..."
edit add
hmmm! after reading all the comments, it looks like most of you believe that i, a humble non-economist-type literature-geek, wrote this.
er... i don't suppose there could be a good reason why you should believe that i didn't write it? if you think of one such reason, ... er ... could you tell me??
😆
edit end
Is entertainment for the masses increasing deprivation for the masses?
Our Bombay bureau,
International Enquirer, 14 September 2008
Balaji Telefilms must be rueing the day that it commissioned "Kis Des Mein Hain Mera Dil". The six-month old show had a relatively low-key start, and took a while to get it's feet wet. Today, it maintains a steady number two position in the TRP charts. But high TRPs are hardly a source of headaches for the Bombay-based production house. Rather it it is the unusual controversies the show's lead actors get involved in.
Barely two months ago, the FBI was brought in to assist Bombay police in the arrest of the show's male lead on suspicion of international internet bandwith theft. Our sources inform us that now the show team has been hauled in for interrogation by a no-less weighty institution -- the central bank, Reserve Bank of India. This time, the matter involved is one of national, rather than international, crisis - the market price of eggs.
Since Thursday evening, there has been an unprecedented rise in the demand for eggs all across the country. The first signs of the crisis surfaced from bakeries and pastry shops in major cities that had been running empty shelves since Friday mid-morning. By Friday evening, there were queues as long as 100 meters for eggs in front of groceries in most cities. Housewives, who seemed to have caught on the mysterious supply shortage first, had their children stand in these queues immediately after school, hungry and tired. By midnight of Saturday, there were reports of looting of groceries and rioting in far-flung off parts of the country. In places of religious prayer, congregations have been gathering since early Saturday morning looking to the heavens, praying "give us this day, our daily egg". This supply shortage, of course, has had an unprecented effect on local egg prices: a dozen eggs that was earlier available at Rs. 30 (70 cents) are apparently now being sold at Rs. 90 (2 dollars) -- when they are available! This is causing sleepless nights to politicians who are demanding a reason for the problem and demanding it's solution.
As is well known, India has been battling a dramatic rise in inflation since the start of the last year. Rising prices of ordinary goods has caused much concern in the political circles. In fact, underground rumours in the country's capital is that it was not so much proposed nuclear deal with the US, but high inflation, that caused a call for a trust vote of the central government a month ago. The present situation of a three-fold increase over 24 hours in prices of a food item that is consumed as much by the poor as by the large politically influential middle-class will not be tolerated by the powers that be.
While the police and the armed forces have been widely deployed to control the unfortunate violence, the RBI -- the monetary authority in charge of inflation control -- has started attacking the economic implications of the egg crisis, (internally code-named "Operation AndeRoza") starting from locating and stemming the source of the problem. Reliable sources from the RBI's economic investigations department (EID) have been talking to national egg suppliers. Apparently, RBI-EID have analysed phone-records of all the large cellphone companies to pinpoint the time of origin of AndeRoza between 9 and 9:30 pm IST, on Thursday. The team have identified AndeRoza perpetrators as "slightly(*) hysterical young women".
[(*) This reporter had to modify the much stronger language used for thenational press.]
The investigation could've been long and slow if it had not been for two (female) members of RBI-EID, who made the link between AndeRoza and "Kis des...". Our reporter was able to track down how the link was made when our team tracked down the RBI-EID team to the TelAir premises in the Western suburbs of Bombay.
The RBI-EID team were in too much of a hurry to get to the Balaji Telefilms studios in the Northern suburbs to give us a quote. But our sources from inside TelAir revealed that "...when the EID team analysed that the phone-calls to egg suppliers showed a dramatic increase immediately at around 8:55pm, Thursday, one of the (female) EID team members became visibly startled and extremely flushed. She took another (female) EID member aside to hold an excited discussion of whispers where the most perceptible phrases were "omg!!" (repeatedly) and "chemistry cannot effect the price of eggs, damnit!" Ms. X then came back to her colleagues and offered the explanation that the source of the hysterical demand was possibly out of a show that runs on national TV between 8:30pm and 9pm. At first, the rest of the (male) EID members looked extremely sceptical. But Ms. X and her colleague did a demonstration of the show (of which she happened to have a copy on her iPod). It was only after they recounted the previous cases of the show's impact on females and bandwidth that the rest of the EID team was willing to take the investigation to the studio itself..."
We could see that "Kis des..." team had clearly been interrupted in the middle of a shoot by the RBI-EID when we reached their studios. Harshad Chopda, the male lead of the show, was wearing a haunted expression as we approached the group while Aditi Gupta, the female lead, was cheerily demonstrating the relevant scene on one of the male RBI-EID team members. Chopda was casting furtive glances over the heads in the crowd, in between trying to tell Gupta not to say anything until their lawyers got there. He seemed specially anxious about the possible appearance of an Inspector named O. I. Tsestee. (We found later that the it was the brilliant Inspector who had arrested Chopda in the case of the missing internet bandwidth.) Chopda refused to give us a quote, and Gupta was too busy in giving advice to the RBI-EID team on how importing eggs from Singapore would improve the egg supply locally and bring down prices. Since then, the lead actors as well as the creative team and the legal department have been moved to RBI HQ in South Bombay for further questionning.
When asked, the finance head of Balaji Telefilms (male) indicated that the costs incurred in such disruptions as well as the costs to cover the legal cases the lead actors are involved in (the bail amount for Chopda's previous case had to be negotiated down to a reasonable level before he could be released to continue his work) could be a factor in winding down the show sooner than anticipated. However, this did not appear to be a consensus: the vice-head of finance (female) was emphatically of the view that the high TRPs of the show justified all these costs and much more. The management would not give us a quote till they heard back from their lawyers.
We were not able to reach Gupta's parents for a quote on their daughter's involvement with India's inflation and being a possible cause of the collapse of the current government. However, before she was whisked away by her husband and their lawyer, Chopda's mother appeared bewildered and had only this to say: "Now, he's being blamed for the supply shortage of eggs? But he doesn't even eat eggs! I told him that this acting business was a bad idea..."
edit add
hmmm! after reading all the comments, it looks like most of you believe that i, a humble non-economist-type literature-geek, wrote this.
er... i don't suppose there could be a good reason why you should believe that i didn't write it? if you think of one such reason, ... er ... could you tell me??
😆
edit end
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