When Economic Bubbles Burst

Norwegian documentary film When Bubbles Burst (Når boblene brister) by director Hans Petter Moland is about a small town called Vik in Norway that loses its investments, and about their efforts to understand the workings of global economy that led to it. If you are a small investor or a person suffering the impact of global economic crisis, watch this film to understand the issues and to put pressure on your Governments to regulate the banking and financial sectors.

"When Bubbles Burst" will be a part of the International Documentary Film Festival "Mondovisioni" to be held at cinema Kinodromo in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

The global economic crisis has had a crippling impact on the world's economy since 2008. That crisis is not yet over. It has involved countries like Iceland, Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland. It has resulted in a prolonged period of recession with loss of jobs and closure of factories in different parts of the world.

This crisis was initiated by the crash of American banking systems due to accumulation of bad debts. At that time, there were talks of saving these banks since otherwise the bank-crash would have wiped out the savings of millions of small investors. At the same time, it was said that banking system was rotten with high level of financial speculation, risky investments, junk bonds, and billions of dollars siphoned off in bonuses to the bankers.

At the end Governments had paid millions of dollars' worth of aid to the banks. However, the proposed reforms of the banking system never took place and many of the major international banks continue to behave as if nothing has changed.

For ordinary persons, it is not easy to understand what had happened and what to expect in future. "When the Bubbles Burst" tries to take an in-depth look at the global economic mechanisms to explain this crisis and to pose some future scenarios, by talking to experts like Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Lewis, Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Carlota Perez.

Film

The film starts in the village of Vik in Norway, an idyllic rural community that dreams of building a tunnel and a road to connect to the nearby town. In 2007, the municipality of Vik had invested the funds for building the road and tunnel in Terra Securities, a "triple A guaranteed savings", through the American Citibank group. However, Terra Securities had turned out to be valueless junk bonds based on bad subprime loans and the municipality had lost all the money.

Two persons from Vik, involved in the investment, travel to USA to try to understand what had happened. The whole film is about their meetings with different experts who explain the why and how of the disconnect between the "financial economy" and "real economy", and how the technological progress has provided the foundation on which speculative financial markets can play "casino" with the banks and economies of the whole world. "Financial economy or the speculative investments are needed and necessary", they say, "because they provide the power to new innovations and development, but they have to be regulated. If financial economy becomes 50 to 70 times real economy, then it is not sustainable and leads to a crash."

They also visit and talk to persons crushed by the financial crisis. The house loans at very low interest rates were given to fuel the financial bubble but with the financial crisis, the value of those houses has decreased by 2/3rds, while people are forced to take loans to pay the bank interests.

They also visit Detroit, a symbol of the economic crisis with its closed and abandoned factories, decaying buildings with broken windows, an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Comments

The film provides an understanding about the diverse and complex factors that influence the creation of economic bubbles and their crashes. The economic crisis is not yet over - it will last another 7-10 years, one expert says. The closure of the crisis will also require regimentation of the financial sector that is resisting to be regulated in any way. Thus the situation may get even worse before a solution will be found, the film says.

One of the most interesting part of the film is the explanation by Carlota Perez about the cycles of expansion and crash of economic bubbles as essential part of our society. Thus economic crisis are "creative destruction", she says.

This is the fifth cycle of technological advancement and economic crisis in modern era, Perez explains. Each cycle takes us into a new golden age of progress. The first cycle was linked to industrial revolution around 1850. It was followed by progress-crisis cycles linked to railways and steam power development and then to the cheap steel linked development that had led to the wall street crash in 1929, followed by the golden age of progress due to constructions in the suburbs, cars, plastics, appliances and cheap oil after the second world war which led to the economic growth of 1960-80s. It had also led to dismantling of financial markets' regulations by persons like Reagan and Thatcher.

Perez explains that each cycle starts with an installation phase, where a new technology comes with the help of few small investors and slowly gathers steam to expand into a financial bubble, leading to the bubble crash and the crisis. This is followed by a golden age of development that requires use of that technology in transforming the society. Her hypothesis is that green economy could be the future for bringing the golden age following the present crisis. However, it would depend upon upon the initiatives of specific Governments to regulate financial economy and to provide support to the direction of the new developments through appropriate policies.

For the construction-car-oil-appliances cycle USA government under Roosevelt had taken lead by providing appropriate policies. For the new cycle of golden age, the experts seem doubtful if the appropriate policies can come from USA or will take place in another part of the world. Thus, the film ends on a hopeful note of a new and better future.

I found the film fascinating for explaining an area of life that I find difficult to understand and also for the way it explains the links between crisis and development.

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The defector - Leaving North Korea

"The defector" is a documentary film by Korean-Canadian director Ann Shin that follows a group of persons who escape from North Korea in their search for freedom. It is like a thriller as it follows a journey across different Asian countries. The film also makes you reflect on ideas and words like sovereignty, defection, illegal emigrants and human traffickers, usually heard on TV news and perceived as abstract concepts.

"The defector" will be part of Mondovisioni, the International Documentary Film Festival that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

Every year hundreds of thousands of persons leave their countries for dangerous journeys in search of a better life. Many of them lose their lives during these journeys. Some of them are caught during transit in other countries and exploited or imprisoned. Some other are caught in their destination country and sent back. Finally some of them, manage to escape in their destination countries and hide as "clandestines", hoping for some way of legalizing their presence sooner or later.

The clandestines and those who somehow manage to get a legal status in their new homelands, inspire hundreds of other hopefuls from their villages and cities to follow their paths.

There are opportunities for making money from these journeys - at every step of the journey, through each of transit countries and finally in the destination country, some monetary transaction occurs. The persons who organize and help the journeys are called agents or guides by the emigrants and "human traffickers" by the destination countries. They may be linked to organised crime networks. They are known to be ruthless, exploitative and brutal. At the same time, they need to ensure that at least some emigrants reach the destination, otherwise the word of their non-reliability spreads and they lose business.

The emigrants, usually from lower strata, who do not have the qualifications or the resources to become legal emigrants or student-emigrants, need significant amounts of money for these journeys.

Despotic regimes, wars and conflicts also force large numbers of persons to leave their homes and thus increase the pressure on illegal emigration. "The Defector" follows one such journey.

The film

"The defector" follows a small group of persons from North Korea during their journey in China. From north of China, they travel to Xian, accompanied by their guide Mr. Dragon. Then they travel from Xian to Kunming. Finally, they are taken over by another guide who takes them through parts of Laos to northern Thailand, where they can come out as refugees. After spending a few months in Thailand, they enter South Korea, their destination country.

The film focuses on the stories of three persons - the guide, Mr. Dragon and two North Korean women - Sook Ja and Yong Hee.

Mr. Dragon, with a past in North Korean army, had crossed into China more than 10 years ago and is guide/trafficker for other North Koreans. Sook Ja wants to escape from the repressive regime in North Korea and to find her sister, who had escaped seven years earlier and then disappeared. Yong Hee, sold as an illegal bride to a Chinese farmer more than 10 years earlier, wants to escape from the illegal life.

A small part of the film is about Mr. Heo, a north Korean refugee in Canada and his efforts to help other north Korean refugees.

Comments

The film has been shot with hidden cameras and you never see the full faces of any persons escaping from North Korea. Most of the film is about the journey in China - from the north to Kunming. It shares some details about how to escape the control systems in China, but most such information that can be used to trace specific persons or the escape routes is not there. As spectators you are quickly drawn into the stories of the three main protagonists of the film and you can feel their fear and tension, wondering if they are going to make or will get caught and sent back to face prisons and torture in North Korea?

The film has some scenes from north Korea about the general poverty but the stories of the three protagonists are not so much about poverty as they are about repression in the country and their search for better life opportunities.

Talking about the making of the film, Ann Shin had written:

One of the North Koreans not chosen by Dragon was Kyung-shil, a pretty young woman wearing a sparkly sweater and black high heels. She had defected several years ago and ended up in the hands of traffickers in China. Now she worked as a call girl and sent money to her family back in North Korea. Estimates are that eight out of 10 North Korean women found in China are trafficked and sold to men as brides, or sold into the sex industry. (The one-child policy in China had created a demand for North Korean women.)

I wondered if Sook-ja’s older sister had been trafficked.

Dragon told Kyung-shil and the others that he would come back for them on his next trip. For now, he, Sook-ja and my camera crew had a long journey ahead of us where we would travel and film covertly.

We journeyed day and night on buses and trains, jumping off at certain times to avoid inspectors. Dragon knew the schedules like clockwork and we all grew to trust him implicitly. Making documentaries is a leap of faith; That faith is built on the trust a filmmaker establishes with his or her subjects. It’s remarkable how quickly trust builds when lives are at stake.

The most heart-wrenching part of the journey was when the defectors were only miles away from freedom. Trekking through the Laotian jungle, having evaded police patrols and crossed two mountains, Sook-ja suddenly broke down in tears. The realization had just struck her: she was utterly alone. She could see now that her elderly mother would never be able to make this physically demanding journey. The whole purpose of her trek was to reunite her family, but she hadn’t found her sister, and she would never see her mother again.

“I want to erase my name,” she wept. “I want to forget the memory of being born and growing up.”

The journeys of the emigrants are all about loss and alienation - dreaming of better futures and losing families and friends, fearing for families and friends, and living clandestine lives in alien lands where they are just a commodity for sale and exploitation. The nightmares do not end even when they reach the lands of their dreams - in South Korea, they need to go through a process to ensure that they are not north Korean spies. The fear for their family and friends left in north Korea never ends and making a new life is tough, because prejudices run deep.

Personally I found Dragon to be the most interesting character in the film - for the law in China and Laos, he is a "human trafficker" - exploiting the escapees for earning money, but he sees himself as a human rights fighter, helping his country-persons to find a new life and risking his own life. "I am brutal" he agrees, "but it is the only way to save their lives and my life."

In the new globalized world, the rich are welcome every where, money and goods can move freely across borders but not other human beings. Thus people from the south, try to cross the Mexican-USA border, while immigrants to West Europe face dangerous journeys across eastern Europe and Mediterranean sea.

Each of them follows a dream but most of those who survive, live lives of exploitation and discrimination, holding on desperately to life, willing to settle for a precarious security, hoping for better lives for their children. "The defectors" gives you a glimpse into their lives.

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Down the musical memories lane

This post has been stimulated by the book “How music works” by David Byrne of the Talking Heads music group. It is about my musical memories as well as, presentation of some of my music related images.

David Byrne’s book has been a revelation – bringing an understanding about an area about which I had never thought before. Most persons like or even love music. Yet, we have no idea about how music is made and appreciated today. In the book, Byrne writes:

“Just as theater is an actor and a writer’s medium, and cinema is a director’s medium, recorded music often came to be a producer’s medium, in which they could sometimes out-auteur the artists they were recording.”

This surprised me very much - would you have thought that recorded music is a producer's medium and not the medium of the artist singing or playing that music?

When films had changed from the silent era to the talkies, there was a big change and suddenly actors who had dominated the silent movie era, were left without work. Similarly, each technical change related to the music recording and distribution – from radios to gramophones to tape recorders to CD players to MP3 players, affected and changed the way the music was played, recorded and understood, Byrne explains in his book. Where you played the music, from a jukebox in a noisy bar or in a concert hall, also influenced it. For example, why does an average song’s duration is around three and a half minutes all over the world and across different languages and cultures? Read Byrne’s book if you like music, it gives you an insight into things about music that today we take for granted.

My musical memories

My first memories of music are linked to the Bush transistor my parents had bought in 1963. It was the time when Laxmikant Pyarelal had come out with Parasmani and were dominating all music charts. It was the time of Amin Sayani presenting the Binaca geetmala on radio Ceylon. Listening to radio Ceylon was not easy, finding the station on SW2 was tough, but there was no choice because at that time there were no sponsored programmes on Vividh Bharati. Guide had come out in 1965 and I remember the first time I had heard Kishore Kumar singing “Gaata rahe mera dil”.

Amin Sayani also did 15 minutes long film-trailor programmes that presented the main story, actors, some dialogues and songs from new films. I remember listening to one such programme about “Phool aur patthar” and Meena Kumari’s voice from that film.

Around 1966-67 I had first seen the gramophone with the handle on the side, that you had to crank up to listen to the LPs. One day I will also have a gramophone, I had promised myself.

Late 1960s had introduced me to the English pop music at my cousin’s home, when I had listened to "Delialah" by Tom Jones and the "Sunshine girl" by the Herman's Hermits.

Around that time I had discovered Forces’ Request on Delhi B on Friday evenings and thus found out Cliff Richards and Jim Reeves. Songs like “Outsider”, “The lemon tree” and “To sir with love”, had become my favourites.

During the 1970s, I had discovered the Hindustani classical music. My uncle had introduced me to “Nirguna bhajans” by Kumar Gandharav. Going to night concerts on Rafi Marg, and listening to giants like Vilayat Khan had suddenly made me appreciate Indian Ragas.

During 1970s, I still remember the first time I had heard Prabha Atre sing “Tan man dhan tope varun” and Mehdi Hassan sing “Awaraghi”. And I remember my first concert of Kishori Amonkar.

In the 1970s, my aunt had shifted to the staff quarters of Janaki Devi college in Rajendra Nagar and that had given opportunities to listen to maestros like Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Jasraj.

I had come to the European symphonic music and the opera music only after I had come to Italy in 1980. Dvorak’s “In the new world” was the first symphony that I had liked and slowly it had opened the doors to appreciation of other composers, from Verdi to Beethoven. On the other hand, though I loved watching the operas like Aida and Madam Butterfly, I could not appreciate listening to them for a very long time. It is relatively recently that I have started enjoying listening to operas.

Over the last three decades, my work took me to different countries of the world and I started appreciating music from other languages, like Arabic music from Egypt and traditional polyphonic singing from Mongolia.

A visual music tour

Once I started searching for images related to music in my archives, I found that I have hundreds of them. Selecting a few for presenting here was not easy and I had to discard many images that I liked very much. Any way here is my selection.

Let me start with images of music from India - India has such a rich tradition of folk-music, Hindustani and Carnatak music and of course the film music. I like all the different kinds of Indian music.

Today where ever in the world you may live, you can usually listen to music from your country through the internet. However in the 1980s and most of 1990s, it was not so - finding Indian music in Italy was not easy. However, Hare Krishna groups had Indian bhajans and I remember buying a Hari Om Saran music cassette from them once. The image below of the Hare Krishna persons singing and dancing is from Prague.

Prague is also where I saw the wonderful sculptures of blindfolded musicians and dancers by Anna Chromy.

The next image is from London underground, that has a rich tradition of buskers playing music at tube stations and in the metro train. Acoustics of some of the tube stations is marvellous and some of the music I have heard in the tube station sounded absolutely amazing. Like I remember once listening to a busker playing Ravel's "Bolero" on a saxophone at the Piccadilly station, it was the most beautiful rendering of this music that I had ever heard.

London also has the long-standing musical show on Queen's Eddie Mercury - do you remember him singing "I want to break free"? Listening to him, made my blood pulse.

The next two images are from Vienna (Austria) - folk musicians from Slovenia and the statue of Mozart.

The next two images are from Brazil, from a school that teaches Amerindian and Afro music traditions to children to create awareness and respect for these two cultures that are often looked down in contemporary Brazil.

In different parts of the world the dominating cultures mean that the traditions of the indigenous people are seen as "inferior" - music can help us in changing perceptions and helping people to appreciate the value of other cultures. When I had visited the school in Brazil, I had asked myself if in India, the songs and music of Dalits and tribal groups have specific cultural characteristics in different states of India and are similarly ignored? Perhaps someone who knows more about this, can answer my question?

The next two images are from Mongolia. Mongolian traditional singing uses polyphonic sounds to create a special kind of music. I love these ancient melodies, usually sung by men, that seem to come from somewhere deep inside them. The second image has chanting of Buddhist prayers by the monks, an ancient tradition of sacred music that has the power to touch me deeply.

During my journeys in China, I had the opportunity to listen to both traditional music as well as the pop Chinese music. While ancient Chinese traditions received a blow during the cultural revolution and were ruthlessly crushed, in the last twenty years, many of those traditions have re-emerged. The next image presents a guy singing a modern song.

The next two images are from the annual buskers' festival held in Ferrara (Italy) in August. I love the street artists and thus I like visiting Ferrara to listening to them from different parts of the world.

The last images of this post are all from Bologna, the Italian city where I live. Bologna is culturally very active city and every visit to the city centre presents some new opportunity for listening to live music.

The next image is from the music museum of Bologna, one of the most interesting museums that I have seen, presenting notations, music books and instruments from different parts of the world.

The last image of this post is of Dr Ashwini Bhide, a Hindustani classical singer from India, during her performance in Bologna. I like her singing very much and one of her bhajans, "Ganapati vighnaharan" is my favourite. During her concert in Bologna, she had sung that bhajan for me and it remains one of my most cherished musical memories.

I hope that this post has stimulated your musical memories! Wish you all an enjoyful walk down your musical memories lane.

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God loves Uganda! Unfortunately.

The documentary film “God loves Uganda” by director Roger Ross Williams is about American christian groups who feel that they have a special mission for Uganda and about the impact of their work on different aspects of human rights in the African country. The film provides a glimpse into one of the forces that has shaped large parts of humanity in the last five hundred years – the force of cultural colonization.

“God loves Uganda” is part of the international documentary film festival called Mondovisioni, that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna (Italy) in January-April 2014.

Introduction

About five hundred years ago, the colonization era saw Europeans spreading out towards American, African and Asian lands. Exploiting the natural resources of the conquered lands was the most important goal of this colonization. It also resulted in actions that shaped millions of lives, including the decimation of indigenous populations and the slave trade. The conquering armies were accompanied by missionaries, who were supposed to take the word of “the only true God” to the heathen "to civilise them".

Thus colonization took cultural ideas from the old world and established their hegemony in the conquered lands. After the end of the second world war, as the colonies became free countries, they usually carried the legacies of the colonial rules in their national constitutions and laws. It has been difficult to shake off those colonial legacies. For example, even today, the laws made by the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, continue to be the laws of independent India, including the infamous art. 377 of the Indian penal code that classifies homosexual relationships as a criminal offence.

The ideas of “the only true religion”, “the only true God”, “the only true prophet” and “the only true God’s book” are common to many religions but have been especially true for certain Christian and Muslim groups. Therefore, saving the souls of those who do not know about or believe in "the true God", has motivated many persons to dedicate their lives in spreading the word of God among the “non-believers”, including to persons of their own religions but who had slightly different beliefs.

“God loves Uganda” is about an evangelical American group who believe that all the answers of life are in the Bible. They have identified Uganda as the "God's land". About 84% of the population of Uganda is Christian, while another 12% is Muslim.

Film

Groups of American young men and women are influenced by charismatic church leaders like Lou Engle and Rev. Jo Anna Watson, to spend parts of their lives in spreading the words of love, brotherhood, peace and the true teachings of Bible to Uganda. “One million missionaries, one billion converts and one trillion dollars of funds” is the dream goal of one of the groups’ leaders from a church based on an ecstatic trance kind of religious ceremonies.

The American evangelicals have opened their centres in Uganda where they recruit and train young Ugandans to spread their ideas among others. The Ugandan acolytes are accompanied by the young missionaries from America. They are relentless and aggressive, standing on street sides and shouting to people about the dangers of sinning and the urgency of coming to the path of the true religion.

Persons like Rev. Kapya Kaoma and bishop Christopher Senyonjo, from Anglican church and traditional Ugandan church explain how the conservative ideas promoted by the American groups have taken hold among the general population, politicians and leaders of Uganda. These ideas touch on subjects like abstinence, adultery, use of condoms, abortions and homosexuality.

The film focuses especially on the conservative evangelical ideas about homosexuality and how those ideas have influenced the parliament debate in Uganda and resulted in the approval of a new national law that foresees a death penalty for homosexuals. At the same time, it has stoked growing intolerance in the public opinion towards gay, lesbian and transgender persons.

A sequence of the film shows a public meeting where evangelical pastor Martin Ssempa, through graphic images explains that homosexuality is all about licking assholes and eating shit, and thus needs to be punished by death. “The world, the U.N., all the countries have been taken over homosexuals. They will come and make your sons and daughters become perverts and homosexuals. Only we can stop them, it is our duty to stop them”, he thunders in the meeting.

Another episode of the film shows the funeral of a GLBT rights activist, during which the pastor criticises and asks the friends and companions of the activist, to give up being gay and lesbian, followed by attacks of goons on the persons who do not agree with his sermon.

Comments

The film is a frightening look at how good intentions, firm beliefs in God, peace and love, can become instruments of madness, murder and intolerance. That persons promoting and condoning these things are no scary zombies but rather next-door kind of clean-cut American and Ugandan young men and women, makes it even more frightening.

The American evangelical missionaries have actively collaborated with making of this film – they are very open in sharing their ideas and their activities. They are convinced that what they are doing is good and are willing to share everything about it. Their certainties in their religious beliefs makes any kind of dialogue and questioning difficult if not impossible. The strategy of American evangelical conservatives is to start by working with orphanages, schools and education system - by influencing and converting young people to their way of thinking.

The world knows much more about the impact of Wahabi ideas on the promotion of a fundamentalist and traditional view of Islam in different parts of the world. Similar knowledge about impact of conservative evangelical groups is much less, though their role in promoting American wars around the world and the American government's resistance to use of condoms and family planning measures (especially under the Bush administration) have been talked about. "God loves Uganda" shows that they are not very different from their Wahabi brothers.

I had read about the strong views against homosexuality in countries like Uganda and Malawi, but I had imagined that these were due to “traditional African beliefs”! “God loves Uganda” shows that there is nothing "traditional African" about them - ideas of conservative evangelicals from USA have played an active role in arriving at this kind of public opinion and the intolerant laws.

Conclusions

“God loves Uganda” is a close look at how the desire of "helping others", promoted by persons with strong beliefs and lot of money, can influence and change a society's beliefs, and reinforce certain kind of ideas.

Wahabi islamists and evangelicals like IHOP (International house of prayer, Kansas, USA) are not the only ones who want to mould the world to their ideas. Other hardliners including conservative groups among Jews, Buddhist, Hindus and Sikhs, have been inspired by them and have similar ambitions, though usually their activities are focused in their own countries.

How these conservative religious views and processes are shaping our world and what kind of world will be there tomorrow? What role is played by the new technologies in the globalized world in spreading of such views? In the war between the ideas embodied in the United Nations’ declaration of human rights and the ideas of conservative religious groups, which ideas will dominate humanity in the coming decades? The film left me troubled, pondering on such questions.

***

Blood on fire in a cynical world

Dylan Mohan Gray's film "Fire in the blood" moves you and makes you despair for the future of world. It tells the story of more than 10 million people who died due to the uncontrolled greed of Big Pharma. It forces you to think of those other countless millions, who continue to die around the world because of the way the Big Pharma operates. Yet, "Fire in the blood" is a film filled with hope - it inspires you to stand up for your rights and fight for a better world.

"Fire in the blood" will be part of the Mondovisioni, the international documentary film festival, that will be held at Kinodromo, Via Pietralata of Bologna between January and April 2014. You can check the reviews of other films in programme at Mondovisioni festival by clicking here.

Introduction

"Fire in the blood" is the story of persons with AIDS and their fight for medicines. This story illustrates how Big Pharma (ab)used international laws and manipulated governments in ruthless endeavour to increase their profits. This is the same way that big tobacco companies, armaments industry, big oil companies, international mining and petroleum companies, big food and seeds companies, etc. work. Ownership of most of these companies are interlinked.

Any discussions or questions about the modus operandi of these big multi-national corporations are immediately attacked as "communists", "anti-capitalists", "anarchists" and "radicals". Persons who raise these issues are called "against development" and "they want to maintain poverty". In reality the corporations of the Big Pharma are "monopolies disguised as free-market campaigners", they refuse any kind of middle ground and are as extreme as any communist regime they criticise.

Vandana Shiva in a recent article in Guardian had written about this convoluted idea of "development" characterized by the Big Pharma and other corporations as: "A living forest does not contribute to growth, but when trees are cut down and sold as timber, we have growth. Healthy societies and communities do not contribute to growth, but disease creates growth through, for example, the sale of patented medicine. ..Water available as a commons shared freely and protected by all provides for all. However, it does not create growth. But when Coca-Cola sets up a plant, mines the water and fills plastic bottles with it, the economy grows. But this growth is based on creating poverty – both for nature and local communities."

"Big Pharma" towards which "Fire in the blood" points an accusing finger, include companies that sell brand name "blockbuster" medicines such as Pfizer, Roche, Glaxo Smith Kline, Novartis, Merck and Bayer. "The top ten big pharma companies in "Fortune 500" list earn more than the remaining 490 companies combined together, but their greed for money is endless", says Fire in the Blood, "only 5 cents per dollar of what they earn goes back to the research of new medicines."

The film

When the AIDS epidemic broke out in the 1980s, soon Africa became the continent where it affected the most persons. In the initial years, when there were no medicines to control AIDS, millions of persons died all over the world. The first successful treatment of AIDS came out in 1996 but it was very costly - around 15,000 dollars/person/per year - a cost that was not accessible to millions of AIDS patients in the developing world. The new AIDS treatment made of a mixture of drugs, dramatically changed the lives of people in the developed countries, giving them back near normal lives, but only a tiny minority of persons in the developing world had the resources to get these medicines.

Countries like Thailand and Brazil started producing these medicines but these could not be imported to Africa because of patent laws and pressure of countries like USA and European Union. In 2000, Dr Hamied, CEO of an Indian drug company called CIPLA, told a high level meeting of U.N., governments and big Pharma that he can supply those medicines for 350 USD/person/year but his offer was ignored. Activists launched a campaign, but the decision of South African government to import these medicines was blocked with a lawsuit by the big Pharma.

CIPLA made another proposal of reducing costs, offering treatment for 200 USD/person/year. Initially generic medicines from India were attacked as "counterfeit, illegal and low quality". Though Africa provided less than 1% of the income of the big Pharma, it opposed the import of low cost medicines in Africa fearing that such practices will undermine their long term incomes from rapidly developing countries like China and India, and that they might put pressure on companies in US and Europe to reduce the costs in domestic markets.

In 2003 big Pharma and countries like USA and EU bowed to the mounting international pressure and negative public opinion, and stopped their opposition to import of life-saving AIDS drugs in Africa. In the mean time, between 1996 and 2003, when people could have been treated, more than 10 million persons had died needlessly in the developing world.

To avoid similar challenges to its control in future, since 2003 Big Pharma has launched other measures with the support of World Trade Organization and governments of USA and EU  - an international trade agreement called TRIPS, and other bilateral trade agreements. India's patent laws have also been changed so that it can not challenge the Big Pharma.

Comments

I remember participating in different initiatives around the end of 1990s and the beginning of 2000s to talk about the situation of HIV positive persons especially in Africa and their lack of access to the anti-AIDS treatment. I also remember the joy when the Big Pharma had been forced to withdraw its court fight against the import of generic anti-AIDS drugs in South Africa. Still Dylan's film has managed to surprise me by providing new insights in the complex issue of access to medicines and human rights.

Access to medicines has different aspects and point of views. "Fire in the blood" manages to present them in an easy to understand manner by focusing on the stories of the people. It uses a lot of historical footage. It has many well known personalities like former US president Bill Clinton, archbishop Desmond Tutu and the south African icon Nelson Mandela, talking about the issue of medicines. It also presents interviews with different persons who had played a key role in the fight against the Big Pharma like Jackie Achmat and Jamie Love. Photography, music and editing of the film are wonderful.

At the end of the film, it is easy to feel disgusted by the behaviour of the Big Pharma and the support they still manage to get from US and EU Governments. The film makes the point that in spite of all their talks about human rights and high principles, Big Pharma with support from willing governments was responsible for millions of deaths due to lack of access to affordable medicines.

It is also discouraging to understand that though that particular fight was won by ordinary persons, similar fights about other issues such as medicines and life-saving technologies, tobacco, food, seeds and nature are still going on with little attention from the rest of the world.

The ownership of corporations controlling Big Pharma has links with big media companies - they have big institutions, famous names of experts and academics, they use and manipulate concepts like free choice, liberty of expression and free markets through popular and specialized media. They create philanthropy foundations, run beautiful advertisements of the good work they are doing, they "donate" free medicines for the "diseases of the poor" - all the while consolidating their control on lives and deaths of people!

Personally I am not a pessimistic person. I believe that change will come. None of the worst tyrannies of the world has lasted for ever. History shows that when the despots and dictators feel strong, the seeds of their destruction are growing in their bellies. So the reign of the corporations will also end. The question is, while we wait for the change, who is going to pay the price of their reign with their lives?

Do not miss on "Fire in the blood", it is worth watching!

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Powerless - The Ironman and the Goddess

" Powerless" is an engaging documentary film around the theme of electricity in India. It explores the lives of the urban poor and the impact of electricity shortage. It also looks at how the system makes it so difficult, if not impossible, to bring any kind of reform. It tells the stories of two persons - Ritu Maheshwari, an officer who wishes to bring reform; and Loha Singh, an electricity thief, who looks at himself as a kind of Robinhood. "Powerless" is a powerful film, forcing you to reflect on your ideas of right and wrong.

Ironman and the Goddess

When I saw "Powerless", I was immediately struck by the names of its two key figures - Loha Singh and Ritu Maheshwari. Loha Singh, literally means "Iron Lion" and Maheshwari, the wife of Shiva, is the goddess Shakti in Hinduism. With an anti-hero playing with fire and the lady official, using her power in the hierarchy to bring a change, can be seen as the story of the Ironman and the Goddess.

In the initial part of the film, the two start on the opposite sides - Maheshwari wants to reduce the financial losses caused by the electricity theft and Loha Singh wants to ensure that small entrepreneurs and their workshops can continue to run, even if that means that he steals electricity. As the film proceeds, you realize that both have their hands tied and that both will be used and then abandoned by the system.

Maheshwari is an IAS officer, part of the Indian National Administrative service. To become an IAS officer, you need to go through a tough entrance exam and a selection process. Every year, hundreds of thousands of young graduates from the small towns of India try this entrance test and only a small minority manages to get in. Some of them, like Maheshwari, come with idealism and dreams of reforming the system.

Loha Singh is a barely literate nobody, who has come through a life of informal, low paying exploitative jobs since his early childhood. Circumstances have made him a "katiyabaaz", someone who splices the electric wires. His life is still one of poverty and a daily game of roulette that can end with his death.

Kanpur, the city where Maheshwari and Loha Singh come across each other, with 3 million population is an industrial town on the banks of the river Ganges in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in north India.

Story

Kanpur faces chronic electricity (power) shortage, with long power-cuts that last up to 10-15 hours every day. The electrical infrastructure of the city is grossly outdated with loss of electricity and frequent burnouts. Personnel of the electric supply company ask for bribes from the consumers - bribes are needed for everything, including for manipulating electric bills and supply.

Loha Singh knows how to connect you to the electric lines passing on the streets and if needed, he can steal electricity from your neighbours. He has grown up in the city, starting as a child worker. His clients call him Robinhood - it costs less to pay him than to bribe the personnel of electric company and he responds faster to their needs.

Ritu Maheshwari, an idealistic IAS officer is the new CEO of the electric company, she has just arrived in Kanpur. She wants to reform by mobilizing the personnel, answering the needs of clients, and stopping the electrical losses through theft. Persons with long experience in the company and set in their ways (mostly men), tolerate her with smirks and barely masked contempt, but Maheshwari is persistent, and she refuses to back down.

Many persons in the city and the personnel both are unhappy with Maheshwari's reforms. She is disturbing the status quo without any improvement in electric supply. The summer has arrived and the electricity need is increased. People who have the means, use their own generators increasing the pollution.

Loha Singh does not care about Maheshwari. He knows that officials can come and go, but the city is not going to change.

Election time arrives. Irfan Solanki, a local politician, intervenes, asking Maheshwari to back off. However Maheshwari does not understand the rules of political patronage, and refuses to bend. Solanki thunders about the "arrogant woman who wants to command" in his election campaign and gains public support to win the election. Maheshwari is transferred to another city and the life goes back to the old ways.

Comments

Usually such films are made when such stories are already over and have created some news for some reason. The film-makers collect testimonies, share documents and stage some of the key events for making their documentaries. Some times, on some drammatic real-life events, commercial films can also be made. In "Powerless" it is remarkable that the real-life drammaticity of the whole arc of events has been captured with actual protagonists without staging or fictionalizing anything.

The film has three main characters - the city of Kanpur, Loha Singh and Ritu Maheshwari. It gives us an intimate glimpse into some of the complex issues facing the individuals who need to negotiate their lives in the context of local social, cultural and economic systems. "Powerless" does not explain the complexity, you can glimpse the complexity through the lives of Loha Singh and Maheshwari.

The city of Kanpur in the film is a part of the old city. It is not presented in the kitsch magic realism of Bollywood - rather it is a dystopic post-modern scenario where the city is like a dark urban jungle of decaying houses, dirty spaces of garbage and open drains, with hundreds of electric wires criss-crossing the screen like spiderwebs. The usual joie de vivre between the people in India that usually dominates its congested life spaces, is hardly visible in this film. Rather the spaces are dominated by moments of anger, angst and despair. Large parts of the film have been shot at night, sometimes during power blackouts, that deepens the dark mood of the film.

The continuing feudal mentality of the people, after 60 years of independence of India, comes out when the middle aged man pleading his case and asking for leniency, sits down on his knees and calls the officials "Mai baap" (mother and father). It comes out when the local politician Solanki, shouts at Maheshwari in her office, "Lower that finger, don't you dare, I am the representative of the people."

Loha Singh has the biting carelessness and wistfulness of a man living on the edge. He knows the system and understands that idealistic officers trying to achieve legality are without any hope of success and that his life will continue. He is also aware of his own fragility when he acknowledges that he does not know any other work and has no other options for survival. His hands carry the scars of his daily duels with the naked live electrical wires. He also knows that sooner or later his luck is going to run out and he is going to end with an accident that will kill or disable him.

Ritu Maheshwari has the look of a small town woman. She has a house with a garden and a marble floor. Compared to the dark world of Loha Singh, her life is luxurious (though in comparison with the booming entrepreneur and professional classes of the upworldly mobile India, it would be considered very modest - in fact, few persons from well-off families in India, dream of being part of IAS). She has already been transferred many times but has not yet lost her idealism. In the patriarchal society, women like Maheshwari can be venerated like goddesses at some levels, especially in the media, but at more personal levels and especially with their male colleagues, they are often bitched about as being arrogant or dominating. At the end of the film, she knows that she has lost her fight. Unless she can forget her idealism and learn some of the rules of the game, a life of transfers from one place to another awaits her.

Editing and music are used very well in the film, adding to its quasi-commercial film drammaticity. In fact watching "Powerless" reminded me of a recent commercial film, "Shanghai" (by Dipankar Banerjee, 2012), that had some common elements with it - it was also based in an UP town and had an upright IAS officer. "Shanghai" was about the murder of an idealistic politician who is unwanted because he questions the dominant notions of development and globalization. In that film, the IAS officer manages to extract his revenge from the subservient bureaucracy and the corrupt politicians. Compared to most of the commercial films coming out of Bollywood, "Shanghai" was not bad.

However I prefer "Powerless" because it made me reflect on how each of us, and our interests, influence the system and how that makes it so difficult to change that system! The film's title "Powerless" is about lack of electrical power, but it is also about lack of power in the persons to change the system.

Credits

Directed by Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar
Assistant director: Jamal Mustafa
Production assistant: Ahsan Iqbal
Associate producer: Leopold Koegler
Cinematographer/editor: Maria Trieb
Editor: Namrata Rao
Music composers: Amit Kilam, Rahul  Ram and Nora Kroll Rosenbaum
Sound designer: Kunal Sharma
Production: Globistan Films along with ITVS and others
Website: http://www.powerless-film.com/ (film stills used above are from this website)

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In solidarity

On 11 December 2013, the Supreme Court of India overturned the earlier High Court judgement that had blocked art. 377 of Indian Penal Code. I think that it is a sad moment for all of us - for the GLBTIQ community, their families and friends as well as for all those persons who believe in equality and dignity of all human beings. I write this post in solidarity with all of us and present some of my pictures from the GLBTIQ Pride Parade held in Delhi in June 2009.

I think that the decision of the two judges to overturn an earlier verdict of high court, saying that it is the duty of the legislators to change the laws, is not in line with the active and progressive role played by the Supreme Court through a series of public interest litigations over the past decades.

The charge of "homosexuality is against nature" is perhaps an issue of insecurity and religious orthodoxy. In Frontpage, Jay Mazoomdaar has written a very interesting article about same sex relationships in nature while Krishna Udayasankar has written about same sex relationships in Indian mythology and sacred literature. However, I do not feel that rational arguments like in these two articles can change the opinions of those who do not wish to understand. Some of us can change only through personal experiences, may be when our children, friends or colleagues open our eyes to their suffering because of the discrimination and unjust laws.

I remember my march with the GLBTIQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersexual and Queer) pride parade in Delhi in June 2009, before the High Court judgement. The growing list of alphabets in the "GLBTIQ" is itself a sign of how many diversities are part of human nature, and how difficult it is to divide the world into narrow boundaries of heterosexuals and homosexuals. Do they really think that this diversity can be swept under the carpet or hidden inside a closet by this judgement?

I hope that this judgement will become a stimulus for more persons to join the struggle for a change. Here are a few of my images from the 2009 GLBTIQ pride parade:

I wish for an India that respects human rights, where we empathise with other human beings and where we all fight for the human rights of everyone. In any case, art. 377 is only about sex and about criminalisation of the same sex relationships. There are so many other ways in which our societies discriminate and exclude the persons who dare to come out about their sexuality. So let our struggles continue, not just for changing art 377 but also for all other discriminations and injustices.

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