Faces of Future Lost In Virtual Reality Palash Biswas ( You may publish the article if you like. Contact: Palash Biswas, Gostokanan, sodepur, Kolkata-700110, India. Phone: 033-25659551(r).)
I, personally, feel the tense communication gap with the youth force around me. My only son Tussu will be twenty one years old on 3rd september next. I have not any link with him . However he lives with us. He avoids every opportunity ofdialogue. He is busy with his personal computor and does not like any talk at all. This isn't the tension derived from differing expectations regarding communication, professionalism, and organization. This isn't even the normal parent/child relation. And I feel parents all over the world, particularly, in India face the same intriguing problem with their post modern children. The faces of future seem to be lost in virtual reality. Mobile, video games, hollywood films, wwf and chatting and downloading with personal computor is the whole world for this helpless lot. They never care for relationship or liabilities. We the parents have to pay for whatever they want. Some of them are , no doubt, very brilliant. But they believe very strongly that the history is dead and dead is the ideology. Thus they have to do nothing as far as the society and the nation are concerned.Have you come to the stark realization that most parents interpret their worlds and faiths through the lens of modernity while their children see the same landscape through postmodern lenses? Maybe you realized this fact and figured out that you must rethink some of your convictions and retool your methods in order to disciple today's teens. But we also see the career oriented generation to shout slogan on streets, demonsatrate against statepower with as much violence as allowed, clash and scuffle with police, sitting on indefinite hunger strike and even, joining Naxals or any antistate group as they do in the entire north east. They are not anarchist. Not nihilist. Not idealist. but, sometimes, they come out and challange the state power, establishment and we, the parents. But it seems to me that they are still far away from reality and live in virtual reality.We saw the French government to rectify the objectionable labour law enacted as entire student force in France rose against. We also know the history of students movements in countries like US, China,Indonesia, Nepal, Germany, Mexico - where do our own students stand? We have seen the latest development of anti quota movement. Where do the brillient students hide , untiland unless their own career is not in danger? Reservations in educational institutions have become a tool in the hands of all political parties to garner votes among the socially and educationally backward classes of Indian society.The recent statement made by the HRD Minister Arjun Singh on implementation of 27 per cent reservation in central universities and even in institutes of academic excellence, such as IITs and IIMs is highly regrettable.Institutions of academic excellence should be free from any sort of reservation. Only academic merit should be the criteria for admission to such institutions. The student force cry helplessly that domestic vote bank politics should not be allowed to deteriorate the standards of these institutions of academic excellence, but the bill was passed in the Rjya Sabha and presented in the Loksabha. Now it happens to be decided in the Parliamentary standing committe. Witout the mass participation of student force and urban yaouth, rising Naxal violence over the years is now emerging as the single largest internal security challenge for India, as the ruling classes put it. They seem to be satisfied this time as their own brillient children have nothing to do with this revolt agianst the state. The demand for crushing Naxalites have become a hype already and recently Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted that growing Maoist insurgency was fast emerging as a big threat for the nation. According to reports the 'Naxals' as Maoists are addressed to in local parlance, have now spread to huge swathes of the country's hinterland in south, central and east India in recent years.The insurgency, named after the town of Naxalbari where it emerged in 1967, is thought to affect 165 of the country's 602 administrative districts in a "red corridor" stretching from the southern tip of India all along its eastern half and up to Nepal. Thousands of people have died in nearly 40 years of Maoist violence including hundreds of policemen. Reports say 157 people had been killed in Maoist-related violence this year alone, up from 114 in the first quarter of 2005. Last November, Bihar authorities were shaken by a Naxal attack on a Jehanabad prison. Some 250-rebel prisoners were freed, and a paramilitary leader was executed. There were several major incidents in the first quarter of 2006. In early March, rebels hijacked a train in Jharkhand and held 40 passengers hostage. There is hardly any ideological debate in this matter. The youth of today is not concerned whatever the naxals say. But in sixties and seventies, students did cosist as the major force of the agrarian revolt in India. We had a hero named Amitabh Bachchan , popularly known as angry young man. He had been an odd personalty, fighting against his time and environment. Those were the days of seventies, just after the thunder of spring failed in West Bengal. We had also a romantic superstar rajesh Khanna with his films like Aanand and namakharam, Aaradhana and Amar Prem. We had enjoyed the melancholly of selfdestruction in Devdas with the self destruction of Dilipkumar as Devdas. This generation is also involved with Devdas without the classic black and white tragedy. Tragedy is there with full of colour. This generation seems to be colorblind. They may not identify all the colors , but they ars always busy with color monitor. We have an excellent film Rang De Basanti with the tagline : Awakening generation and we see the generation involved with an issue like mig accidents.the Bollywood film industry of India. It was released on 26th January 2006; it was directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (of Aks fame). The film stars Aamir Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Madhavan, Kunal Kapoor, Siddharth, Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni, British actress Alice Patten, Waheeda Rehman, Om Puri, Kiron Kher and Anupam Kher. The music is by A. R. Rahman and the album went on to become a chartbuster. the story line is excellent and the treatment is very good. The director does not sidetrack the issue at all. But in reality , there is no student movement in India dealing with the burning question the nation or the people face. Anti corruption movement is absent since the decline of JP movement in seventies. The Naxals and anti establishment elements of yesterday are well established in the wings of power. The JP movement vanished with the Janta government and we see Laloo, Nitish, Sharad Yadav, Sushil Modi, all heroes of JP movement in Bihar clash with each other in power politics. Struggling British filmmaker Sue (Alice Patten) comes to India after she reads the diary of her grandfather, who served in the British Force during India's struggle for Independence. She comes to India in order to make a short film about some of the heroes of the Indian Independence Movement, including legends such as Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad. The hitch at this point is that the youth of today do not read the history and they know nothing about the heroes of independence. On the other hand, the history of independence has been made irrelevent. So that ,with the help of her friend Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) in New Delhi, she sets out to find actors suitable for the roles. Sonia introduces Sue to some of her male friends: Daljeet Singh aka "DJ" (Aamir Khan) Sukhi (Sharman Joshi) Karan (Siddharth) Aslam (Kunal Kapoor) Sue convinces them to act in her film. Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni), a political party activist, later joins the group though he is initially disliked by the other boys on account of his Hindutva beliefs and contempt of Aslam, who is a Muslim. This scenerio is picked up with the prevailing communal equation of India with the background of Gujrat riots. We simply forget that since the first struggle of Independence in 1857, Muslims have been equally involved with Hindus. In Rang de Basanti, It seem to be a quota only. As the young men learn their lines and learn more about the history of the Independence movement, they realize that, unlike the men they are playing, they have lived completely for their own pleasures and have ignored India's pressing problems. They lack the spirit of patriotic self-sacrifice.Just as they are beginning to form some higher ideals, they are forced to deal with a real-life tragedy in their midst. Sonia's fiancé, Ajay (Madhavan), is an Indian air-force pilot. He is killed during routine practice when the MiG he is flying, crashes. The friends soon come to realize that Ajay, in fact, chose to steer the plane away from densely populated Ambala city instead of ejecting himself from the plane to save his own life. The government proclaims that the crash was caused by pilot error. But Sonia and her friends know that Ajay was a seasoned pilot, also that there have been many MiG crashes of late -- too many to be due to pilot error. They discover that the crash was due to a corrupt defence minister (Mohan Agashe), who had signed a contract for cheap, spurious MiG spare parts in return for a large kickback. Not content to accept this as "just the way things are done", the group decide to protest peacefully. Police forcefully break up their protest. The young men decide to emulate the exploits of their new heroes, Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad, fighting corruption just as Singh and Azad fought the British. Violence ensues. *************************************************************************** Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia *************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ Mohon Perhatian: 1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik) 2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari. 3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi 4. Satu email perhari: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 5. No-email/web only: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6. kembali menerima email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
