Hope at last for undertrials

Jagjivan Ram Yadav of Faizabad spent more than 38 years in jail, though his case was never heard in court. He fell into the black hole of being ‘under trial’. He was arrested in 1968 on a charge of murdering his neighbour’s wife, but the police did not have the evidence to commit him to trial. If a court had found him guilty of murder he would have spent 14 years in jail. Instead, he was simply locked up and forgotten.

Yadav’s 38-year penance is the worst possible indictment of the justice system. It is a crime almost worse than murder. He was virtually buried alive. It may be an extreme example, but a great many undertrials — arrested for petty crimes — spend more time in jail than their offence warrants because they are unaware of their rights and lack legal assistance. According to one estimate 70 per cent of the inmates in Indian prisons are undertrials waiting, sometimes for years, to face the court.

Against this background, the Union government’s decision to speed up the release of more than 1.25 lakh under trial prisoners comes not a day too soon. Law Minister Veerappa Moily has asked the judiciary to complete the process within six months. The mission will start on January 26 — ‘Law Day’.

The mission should be commended in the highest terms, but is it possible to secure the release of more than 1.25 lakh prisoners before July 31? The judiciary is stretched thin and understaffed. Given these circumstances it would be a tall order to meet the six-month deadline.

However, there is hope as the ministry has made the suggestions after consulting the CJI and chief justices of the high courts. It should be noted that the CJI had observed last August at a conference of chief ministers and chief justices that “If they had served more than half the sentence likely to be awarded for their crime, such undertrials could be immediately released on personal bond.”

While the release of these undertrials is to be welcomed, it cannot be a one-off gesture to ease the congestion in jails. This has to be about ensuring justice. Jagjivan Ram spent the prime of his life behind bars, and if we are to see an end to such crimes, there must be a failsafe mechanism to ensure that the system will not allow any more Jagjivan Rams to fall into the dark places from which there is no return.

Anna University's unholy liason

‘Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them’. Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle while penning the opening lines of Signs of the Times would not have had Anna University in mind but that seems to be the case in the light of a recent article by our staffer in Chennai. According to the report, second generation victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy along with college alumni have requested the authorities of Anna University to return Rs 5 lakh received from Dow Chemicals as sponsorship for an annual college fest. All attempts by the group to get in touch with the authorities have been in vain. Dow Chemicals currently owns the Union Carbide India Limited factory that caused India’s greatest — even on an international scale — industrial tragedy, which killed an estimated 10,000 people within 72 hours of the leak. Many thousands more have been affected by diseases related to the leak.

More than 25 years after the catastrophe little has been done for the victims and the region is yet to be detoxified, with about 390 tonnes of chemicals abandoned at the factory, contaminating the groundwater and posing a clear and present danger to the lives of people in the area.

Anna University, the report says, has been receiving the sponsorship from Dow Chemicals for the third straight year and has been stonewalling repeated requests to discontinue its association with the company.

It is disgraceful that an educational institution with the reputation of Anna University should take such a stand and bring disrepute upon itself. That the authorities have preferred to take the money and run rather than weigh the costs of an association with such a tainted company shows that they have no thought for their social responsibility or the impact on students. Their avarice becomes even more appalling in light of the fact that the gas tragedy is covered in the university syllabus under Professional Ethics. Whatever the institution believes, it certainly does not include ‘practice what you preach’.

Strict dress codes and regulating the use of mobile phones in the campus do not make for better citizens. For that you need a commitment to right behaviour. Since the management seems so clueless, perhaps when the next Professional Ethics class begins, it would not be a bad idea if the who’s who of the university attend it. Who knows, they might learn a thing or two, even this late in life.

Tharoor finds himself caught in blind alley

It’s a little over 240 days since former United Nations under-secretary Shashi Tharoor chose the Nehru jacket over the three-piece suit, and the heat and dust of India to Manhattan traffic snarls. In these 240 days, Tharoor and the controversies surrounding him have consumed 1,542 reels of newsprint (including the vernacular media) and a good 108 hours of prime time news discussions.

Though many might doubt the newsreel-media hour statistics, not many will disagree that Shashi Tharoor is among the most unconventional of politicians to chance upon the Indian political scene. How many first generation politicians among the present crop have entered the legislature through the hustings after a successful career outside the country?

But this uniqueness has become a double-edged sword hanging over Tharoor’s head. Surprise, by now, is Tharoor’s middle name right from his selection of political outfit. For all the Congress-trashing, Sonia-bashing views he has expressed through his writings, he joined the grand old party. It can be said that the choice of Congress as a means to sit in the hot seat of external affairs was a no-brainer given the Congress juggernaut in the 2009 elections. But he chose to face the electorate, not manoeuvre a ticket to the Upper House and a ‘backdoor’ entry to power. He also fought from Kerala, which traditionally does not favour ‘outsiders’ or celebrity candidates. So Tharoor is not a pushover but someone who knows the threads.

Despite all this, Tharoor is not in an easy place. At 53 he is too old for the much-hyped Gen Nxt in the party and too young for the old-school veterans who are masters at the game called ‘Indian politics’.

The thought of Tharoor hanging out with Rahul Gandhi & Co to be clubbed in the ‘Gen Nxt’ group would be similar to the hilarious scene from Munnabhai MBBS in which when Sanjay Dutt, as a freshman, enters the first year classroom all the students greet him, mistaking him for a professor. Moreover, with his loaded resume Tharoor is not the person who would be studying the ‘real’ India in the remote villages of Uttar Pradesh.

Though Tharoor could be bracketed with the likes of Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Manish Tiwari it seems that seniority, be it of a few hours as is the case in government service, is a factor that does not weigh in favour of the new-kid-on-the-block. His lateral entry seems to have not gone well with many in the party.

The last group to hang out with is the seniors who have ploughed their way to the top through the years. Tharoor is not their blue-eyed boy. They don’t take kindly to his twittering on about travelling ‘cattle class’ or visa norms or Nehru’s foreign policy. The last may have earned him a rap on the knuckles because he is maintaining a low profile but the question is: For how long?

Another reason for the hostility Tharoor is facing within the party is the flamboyance with which he has courted the media and the young urban middle-class using his social networking skills. By being just a click away from the public Tharoor has brought down the ‘multiple layers of obstacles’ with which a politician, more importantly a minister, cushions himself from the aam aadmi. Tharoor has deconstructed the liturgical jargon associated with government communication and policies in just 140 characters. His remarks and style of working have rattled a few old guns in the party and seem to be contrary to the image the Congress is trying to project — an image being carefully woven for Rahul Gandhi to take the sceptre in 2014.

Tharoor’s campaign and election victory gathered so much media publicity that he has become a more familiar name than three-time former Kerala chief minister and current defence minister A K Antony. But he has disappointed those who yearned for a change in government policy and thought he was the answer (not much has changed on the foreign policy front; the Centre’s outlook has not changed from UPA I — it looks to the US for everything and is ditching old allies like Iran).

Fame and power come but at a cost, and who would know that better than Shashi Tharoor who has entered a maze that will take him time to figure out.

A two-decade old dream

Now when many buffs speak with awe about Pazhassi Raja, the director of the multilingual biopic comes up with a wry smile and says that his recently rel­eased work, in a way, und­er­went a gestation period of not less than two decades. A pretty long delay, one might think — but T Hariharan has no regrets. True, the mega venture is a period film, yet its maker believes he has now made it look all the more topical. “I believe Pazhasi Raja has come at the right time,” he says about the film that features the life of a Malabar king who led a guerilla warfare against the imperial British in the late 18th century. “It’s a warning to my compatriots that if we don’t stand united, chances are that another East India Company will conquer us.”

Some 20 years ago, Hariharan, who ente­red the industry way further back in 1965, had toyed with plans of shooting a film on a freedom fighter-king. Around that time, cele­brated litterateur-scriptwriter M T Vasu­devan Nair conjured up a brilliantly tweaked version of a northern Kerala folklore, and Hariharan was simply tempted to finish it first.

The 1989 blockbuster, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, went on to grab many awards — at the national level as well. Hariharan continued making films — some of them won critical acclaim and laurels too. But the key to a watershed of sorts happ­ened in 2006, when Hariharan and MT — as Vasudevan Nair is known — narrated the Wayanad jungle tales of Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja to a prospective producer who had approached the duo with the intention of producing a movie based on a popular legend. Once the story was narrated to them, stifling silence descended on the room. Then, with a broad smile Gok­ulam Gopalan said, “I am more than willing to produce this film.” His Sree Gokulam Movies got into action, and the work soon started. Rest, as they say, is history.

History textbooks, by the way, have it that, upcountry, Mangal Pandey’s refusal to bite the greased cartridge sparked the Revolt of 1857, and it was the first protest for freedom from the British. “But,” as Hariharan points out, “William Logan’s Malabar Manual has a date-wise record of the meetings and enco­unters with Pazhassi more than 50 years prior to the Sepoy Mutiny.”

When it released last month, Pazhassi Raja broke many existing records, including the tag of the costliest-ever Malayalam movie. For an industry that has an average superstar-cast film’s budget pegged around Rs 4 crore, this was way above at an estimated cost of Rs 28 crore. Hariharan believes — and not many disagree — that the money spent reflects in the film that stars Mammootty and Sarath Kumar. “In fact, the film is a document for future references, considering there are many misconceptions about Pazhassi Raja. MT always lamented the absence of good record of the king, and said it had to be done. There are tales that he died choking on a ring. The movie has set the record straight.”

Hariharan agrees that he did incorporate certain cinematic considerations, but adds in the same breath that they “don’t disturb or distort facts”. One record says Pazhassi was killed while fighting, and his body was later spotted by the British troops among the dead. The film has refashioned this legend for visual grandeur.

Pazhassi Raja, in which the characters speak in Malayalam, English and Tamil, is to be dubbed into Hindi, where Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan lends the introductory voiceover. “Shah Rukh was bowled over after seeing a portion of the film,” Hariharan

recalls. “He got emotional, saying that the film struck a chord with him as his father was also a freedom fighter.” (The Malayalam voiceover is by Mohanlal, while Kamal Haasan does it in Tamil.)

Drilling into the technical aspects of the film, Hariharan says the craft of a film depends on its subject. “For a period film, originality is very important. You should get the angles correct, yet ensure that the viewers don’t feel the presence of the camera (Ramanath Shetty is the cinematographer) or be distracted by the editing (Seekar Prasad).” The authenticity of the sounds also matters. Academy Award winner Resul Pookutty “has taken great care to capture minute details”. The renowned Ilayaraja has lent the music.

For all the different faces in the crew, Pazhassi Raja can bring in a sense of déjà vu for people who have watched Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. That’s largely owing to the period-film commonality and the coming together of Hariharan, MT and Mammootty. “While I had to contemplate about the rest of the cast, Mammootty was my only choice for Pazha­ssi,” says Hariharan.

The possible similarities one might notice in certain aspects apart, the director professes that donning the role of Pazhassi

required a completely different set of skills from that of essaying the protagonist Chandu in Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. “Pazhassi was a challenging role; it wasn’t dialogue-orien­ted. You needed to emote a lot — and Mamm­ootty has done it brilliantly,” he says, amazed that the actor’s physique hasn’t changed much from the 1989 film.

Having collaborated with MT on a dozen-odd films, Hariharan notes that the synergy emerges from the depth of their understanding. “A director-writer liaison is very important for good cinema — they are the two people who should ideally control a film.”

Hariharan made six films from 1989 to 2005 — the year he made his last film. But the

return of the ‘trio’ has prompted Malayalam cine freaks to believe that Pazhassi Raja is his comeback of sorts. In the intervening two decades, Hariharan has only matured further and refined his craft. It might not be coincidence, thus, that the tagline for the film is: ‘It’s time to remember’.

“While I had to contemplate about the rest of the cast, Mammootty was my only choice for Pazhassi,” says

Hariharan. The similarities one might notice in certain aspects apart, the director professes that donning the role of Pazhassi required a completely different set of skills from that of essaying the protagonist Chandu in Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha (1989).

“Pazhassi was a challenging role; it wasn’t a dialogue-oriented film. You needed to emote a lot — and Mammootty has done it brilliantly.

A bridge across the Palk Strait

The simplicity of the storyline struck a deep chord in Sreekar Prasad when Prasanna Vithanage narrated its sequences to him ahead of his newest cinematic venture. So much so, Sreekar offered to co-produce it besides taking up what the Sri Lankan filmmaker originally wanted him to do: edit the movie, which is on the comeback of a star actress. After all, this wasn’t the first time the two had come together to complete a work on celluloid — their bond had been strong after Sreekar worked with Prasanna in the highly acclaimed Death on a Full Moon Day (1998). This time, it led the birth of Akasa Kusum (Flowers of the Sky).
If Death on a Full Moon Day received critical acclaim after its release a decade ago, the graph only leaped further skywards in the case of Akasa Kusum. The Chennai-Colombo co-production under the banner of Filmfreaks has gone on gain an official entry into the 2010 Oscars.
Veteran Sreekar is delighted, and attributes it all to the merits of the filmmaker. “Prasanna is extremely talented. Having gotten associated with the Akasa Kusum, we next pitched it at the Pusan Promotion Plan (a pre-market initiative where Asian filmmakers are introduced to potential producers and financiers) — and the script got selected.”
Sreekar recalls that the film thus received a good response in the international festival circuit and also in Sri Lanka. So, did he expect an Oscar nomination? Not exactly. “Well, it was a surprise,” Sreekar gushes about the communiqué he
received from the Sri Lankan government about a fortnight ago. “It’s a recognition for the work we did.”
It’s only nine weeks since the film’s commercial release, but Akasa Kusum has been doing the rounds at film festivals from last year. If at Cines del Sur in Grenada, Spain, it won the honour for the best Asian film, it won the special jury mention at the Vesoul Film Festival in France.
Malini Fonseka, who portrays the protagonist Sandhya Rani, has been nominated to the best actress at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards to be held at Gold Coast, Australia, and has won the Silver Peacock at the International Film Festival of India at Goa.
So would film buffs in India get to see Akasa Kusum? “Surely there is an effort to bring the film to India. In fact, the process is already on. Only that it’s too early to give a date as of now.” Sreekar isn’t apprehensive about the prospects of acclaim that a film made in Sri Lanka would receive in India. He places his faith in the universality of the subject of the film.
“Indeed, I’m confident that the Indian audience would relate better with its theme, given that the history and impact of cinema is vast and deeper in our country than in Sri Lanka,” he notes. “True, the characters in the film are fictional, but then the protagonist could be any of your old actresses. Bigger the industry, more are its chances of Sandhya Ranis popping up. As a creative person, an artiste goes through this phase of fame and neglect. Some people take it gracefully, some don’t — and others succumb to the pressures of being in the limelight. This could be anyone’s story in cinema. Not just an actor, but of a director or a technician.”
Akasa Kusum is the story of how a yesteryear actress Sandhya Rani (Malini Fonseka), who lives a life in oblivion after retirement, is brought back to the limelight. That’s when the police come to know about the sexual escapades of a young actress Shalika (Dilhani Ekanayake) in a rented accommodation that belongs to Sandhya Rani. The police smell a rat and skeletons start tumble out. The rest is how Sandhya Rani’s life changes when she hears about a child she had from a relationship in her heyday.
Andhra Pradesh-born Sreekar, with more than 300 films to his credit starting from Simhaswapnam (1983), reveals with a chuckle that he gets nervous before starting any new project, and Akasa Kusum was no exception. “The film was a challenge as the director had to be subtle in telling the story. I had to ensure my editing didn’t overplay the emotions.” So, he kept repetition of visuals to minimum. “We got over this general feature with off-beat films. We just cut at the high point of a scene; and in the process we were able to tell the story in 90 minutes.”
Another special aspect of the film was that the background music is “almost negligible”. “Here the visuals speak for themselves.” For all its trappings of being a “parallel” film, Akasa Kusum is doing well in Sri Lanka, mainly in the urban centres. When it comes to box-office success, the case isn’t different with Sreekar’s latest release. Mammootty-starrer Pazhassiraja, directed by Hariharan, is doing well in Kerala ahead of its worldwide release even as Sreekar has started working on his next ventures: Mani Rathnam’s Raavan and a yet-to-be-named Telugu project.

‘Telugu films have two-three formats’
With six national awards (yet to get one for a Telugu film), five state awards and several miscellaneous awards, Sreekar Prasad knows his cinema. Is it a reflection of the quality of Tollywood films? “I think, yes,” he says. “For one, Telugu movies are very region-specific. They have probably two or three formats which they switch between; they rarely go beyond that.”
Sreekar maintains they are finding it difficult to break out of the rut. “There is this effort to cater to a particular audience;
so it does not stand a chance at an all-India level. There may be attempts to break this pattern, but are very few and rare.
At one point, Bollywood was like this.”
Obviously, Sreekar speaks his mind — and that from his experience in the industry for more than a quarter century. Over the years, he has made a deliberate attempt to strike a balance between ‘masala’ films and ‘serious’ films. “Initially, I took any project that came my way, but now I am selective. I associate with a film if the story is interesting, and also the director and I need to have similar wavelengths. Only then can I complement the director in the job I undertake.”

Myopia in fighting poaching

That poaching is rampant in India is hardly news and it would be an understatement to say that the menace is on the rise. But a recent news about a one-horned rhinoceros being killed at the Rajiv Gandhi Orang Wildlife Sanctuary, on the northern banks of the Brahmaputra, 140 km from Guwahati, gives pause for thought. Two poachers were killed in a shootout with forest guards on October 19. One of them, Harmuj Ali, had been released from jail just 10 days earlier. He was nabbed last June after killing a 25-year-old female rhino in the same park. The number of rhinos killed so far this year in the park has risen to six, with two dying of ‘natural causes’, against the seven in 2008. For all the awareness camps conducted and hi-tech training provided to the guards, such incidents rob the sheen of the India Rhino Vision-2020 programme, a project aimed at the long-term conservation of rhinos in Assam.It would be a tall order to expect the government to curb the demand for rhino horn, ivory, tiger skin and rare reptiles in the international market, but it could certainly increase the quantum and severity of punishment for poaching. This should be backed by expediting the legal course. Punishment must be quick. Going by the Harmuj Ali experience, four months is small change for the lakhs of rupees a rhino horn fetches in the international market.The case of Harmuj Ali also throws light on the fact that our jails do little to reform a criminal, which is the purpose of these institutions. They serve more as a place for criminals to cool their heels for a while. After they are released they go on the hunt again.Though the government has grander plans for conservation and has tied up with the WWF and International Union for Conservation of Nature, it has failed to address the concerns of the forest guards. Reports say that many of the guards have been working as temporary staff more than two decades. Irregular salaries and non-regularisation of jobs certainly weigh down on the morale of the guards who have threatened suicide if the government fails to recognise their demands.Wildlife protection is a demanding task and the government seems to have realised the importance of it, but it cannot save the remaining endangered animals unless it wins the trust of all parties involved, because the enemy is focused. Greed is, after all, a great motivator.

A distrubing trend of fakes

The report submitted by Metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang on the encounter of four people in Ahmedabad in June 15, 2004 by the Gujarat police would have sure come as a vindication for the Ishrat family who have been pleading the innocence of their daughter Ishrat Jahan. The fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan, Javed Shiekh, Amjad Ali and Abdul Gani by Ahmedabad police commissioner K R Kaushik and DIG D G Vanzara among others, reminds us of the horror that could happen when people who are supposed to protect us take the law in their hands for personal gains such as promotions and goodwill from the political class. The dangers of the anti-terror bill passed by the Modi government, which makes confession made before a police officer admissible in a court, should be viewed in this light.

Names like Sanjit (killed in Manipur last July), Abdul Rehman (’07), Sohrabuddin Sheikh (November ’07), Manorama Devi (July ’04), Sadiq Jamal (January ’03) and Sameer Khan Pathan (October ’02) should not become mere statistical figures in the minds of the public. Such gross human rights violations should be protested, otherwise a Frankenstein of sorts will be created and our indifference towards the issue will have to be blamed. In the light of this it would not be alarming to know that the Gujarat police face allegations of killing 20 people in 11 fake encounters between 2002-’06 - in all cases the ‘terrorists’ had schemed for the life of the state chief minister Narendra Modi.

While extra judicial killings are not a new phenomenon in India where it has been present in the conflict zones for decades, the fact that it is spreading to other parts should have the authorities and the public concerned. That trigger-happy Dirty Harry(s) are a growing tribe is evident in the alarming rise in the number of ‘encounter’ and custodial deaths reported from almost every part of the country. Closer to home is the recent report from Chennai on the death of A Lakshmanan in a lock-up after being subjected to third-degree interrogation.

The affidavit from the Union ministry of home affairs supporting the claims of the state government that the four people killed on June 15 was terrorists is a tell-tale of the lack of co-ordination between various government agencies concerned with the nation’s security.

Revelations such as the one made by Justice (Retd) C Upendra Singh earlier this month that extra judicial killings are a reality only underline a serious lapse and subsequent cover-up on the part of the police and other officials. It is also unfortunate to note that in almost all ‘encounters’ the ‘terrorists’ belong to the minority community - thereby further paving way for alienation and prejudice laden stereotyping. These disturbing incidents should also pan our attention to the fact that for its effective and professional working, reforms in the police has to happen and it should be purged from external involvement - read political - at all levels.

(Edited version of this post is available at:
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=A+disturbing+trend+of+fakes&artid=/Sl57fU/lpI=&SectionID=RRQemgLywPI=&MainSectionID=RRQemgLywPI=&SectionName=XQcp6iFoWTvPHj2dDBzTNA==)