Saturday, April 26, 2008

Blogathon Day 3: Entertainment - Need to get Regional cinema beyond Bollywood

India is home to one of the largest film industries in the world. Every year thousands of movies are produced in India.

India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Many of the larger languages support their own film industry. Some of the popular regional film industries in India are Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Punjabi. The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood.

The major challenge that the regional cinema needs to address is of how to widen the audience base”.

Many workers from regional industries, once established, generally move to Bollywood for greater spotlight or opportunity. An interesting example of this phenomenon is the famous music director A.R. Rahman. He started his career in Tamil film industry and later moved to the Bollywood.


Bollywood movies were screened with subtitles in not only the domestic but also in the international market, the same could be done to encourage regional cinema.

Screening of regional cinema at subsidised tickets.

The government should taken measures to promote regional movies like rentals in the film city studios on discount, entertainment tax should be waved off.


It is unfair to compare Bollywood industry with regional cinema since the budgets were different. While a regional film’s budget could be between Rs 40 lakh and Rs 75 lakh, a Hindi movie’s budget could run into crores.There is a serious need for the publicity of regional cinema.

The regional film industry needs to plan for corporatisation, financing of movies, distribution and marketing of films in not only India but internationally as well.

Regional cinema industry should consider new mediums like Internet, international film festivals to reach out to newer audiences.

I believe Regional cinema are more prolific, fertile in ideas and acknowledged by world audiences, but is struggling to survive mainly because marketing is its weakest link.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Blogathon Day 1: Infrastructure - How can we improve the traffic condition in our city?

Let’s take a complete U-turn to make a difference


So called Oxford of East “Pune” for all the good reasons fail to impress common man when ever the talk is about traffic.

Pune’s traffic has gone to the dogs. Total chaos. ………

No one follows the rules as everyone makes their own.

And

Who is to be blamed?

Pop this question to anyone and the answer could be anything from the traffic cops, to suicidal rickshaw drivers, to the youth who zip around showing off to their girlfriends.


"I realized that to come out of this vicious circle of the 'blame game', not someone, but infact all of us as citizens need to take the initiative."

But the question is who will start and how will the image of pune’s traffic change in the coming time

The Answer is - let’s try out the 10 magical tips to improve our city’s traffic

  1. Public Transport: Use public transport and avoid using private vehicle. Travel together if the destination and time is the same.
  2. Improve the public transport: To attract common man towards public transport have an effective transportation plan. Get good buses, make separate lanes for buses and make it easy for people to buy bus tickets, build peripheral walkways.
  3. Bus Stops to be moved away: We have bus stops after every 1 Km. as a result the bus stops at every stop and adds on to traffic
  4. Alternate way of punish for Traffic Violators: Instead of taking fine from them punish them in a different manner. Like asking them to manage the traffic for 20 min or educating people about the traffic rules
  5. Subways / Skyways : Bring up more no of Subways or Skyways on the roads which face heavy traffic every time
  6. Driver must follow strict traffic rules: Major reasons for traffic are when few people do not follow rules for some reasons and others have to face the consequences. Lets us all keep in mind when ever we are breaking rules, that this is going to be at the cost of someone’s life.
  7. Sign Boards: To be added and improved at all places in the city.
  8. Alternate Roads / route: Provide sign boards to tell alternate way to reach different destinations and divert traffic during rush hours. Lay roads especially on alternate routes to distribute the traffic.
  9. Attitude: Build in a right attitude while driving - avoid driving fast, competing and attending calls.
  10. Accidence: Instead of surrounding around the accident place and jamming up the traffic try to help other to move ahead and free up the place.

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I post this in response to a topic provided by Blogathon India. Its an event where Bloggers discuss their ideas and raise their issues and concerns over certain aspects by posting articles on certain topics provided by organizers of the event।



Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Unique celebration of Holi and April Fool day @ my office


Holi: The celebration plan by our Business HR was a big surprise to our department. It was a pleasant evening at KPIT terrace as it was drizzling at Hinjewadi. We all gathered at cafeteria were the holi’s natural colors, sandwiches and cold drinks were waiting for us. Every one was busy applied colors on each other. It was a bad luck for our team as we all were in blue ( every Friday our team decides upon the color for the day ) never mind any thing for the cost of enjoyment.

Got back to work, in that colorful Awatar।

Shiva there, with his great Photoshop work in the pitcher.

My Operations Manager comes up to me with a box of chocolate ( KitKat & Dairy milk )

Wished me “Happy Holi” offered me and asked me to distribute it to every one.

I was feeling good initially but didn’t know it was going to be so risky. As I approached every one started picking up two and shamelessly instead of wishing every one Happy Holi I was asking people to take only one. Some were wishing me Happy birthday ….some were not ready for dairy milk as they wanted Kit Kat.

In all I found this unique – never had i heard chocolate been distributed in an organization and that also for Hoil.

I doubt KPIT having a tie up with Cadbury

April Fool: As usual our business HR coming into our department with pink, blue and yellow chart paper. Offering every one and asking up to pin it up on our back. It was all for a game. Where in any one can leave back a comment on that chart – off course taking good about the person.

The person whose chart has the highest no of comments wins the prize.

Every one was excited started running behind each other to add in there comments.

I went to every ones desk with my black pen left back a comment.

This was a nice game as it helps you in knowing what did you like about this person as a result you share the same work location and feel proud to be called as a college.

I don’t know who will win but yes if there would have been a prize for the person who wrote the maximum comments – there is no one to compete me for this।