Platter of Half Baked Ideas

Dr. Manmohan Singh was not allowed to make his speech. Here is the complete text of his speech. It’s aggressive and very well written. It’s a pity he was not allowed to speak. The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have misled him. This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come. As for Shri Advani’s various charges, I do not wish to waste the time of the House in rebutting them. All I can say is that before leveling charges of inc...

The Indian film industry, commonly referred to as “Bollywood”, has received much attention in past few weeks with reports of Steven Spielberg’s potential deal with India’s Reliance Entertainment for a substantial equity infusion allowing him and his Dreamworks partners to break away from their current ownership structure at Paramount Pictures ( VIA ). Additional reports this past week also have Sylvester Stallone starring in his first Bollywood picture with Indian star, Akshay Kumar. However, Bollywood is no overnight sensation despite the mainstream U.S. media’s recent attention to it, and upon closer examination one can see there is far more depth to these moves than meets the eye. The chart below, taken from a recent Credit Suisse report entitled “Challenges for Hollywood in Bollywood”, shows just how far the industry has come in recent years: click to enlarge images While the overall numbers involved pale in comparison to the traditional Hollywood film community, the growth level...