'Slumdog Millionaire' opens a new passage to all things Indian

Here is an interesting article in USA today. Is India getting closer to American mainstream like Latino and Chinese culture? Every Indian knows A.R. Rahman is one of the best world musicians, but sadly till now the world didnt know it. There are so many of these untapped talents that might start coming out. Who knows, maybe Amir Khan might be the next Tom Hanks (ok, Tom Hanks is uncomparable, but there is nobody else in Hollywood who can take up his mantle when he retires, so why not somebody from Bollywood?)

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2009-03-03-india-slumdog_N.htm

Hurray for ... Bollywood?

Not exactly, but there's no doubt the success of India-set Slumdog Millionaire — eight Academy Awards and more than $100 million at the box office — has magnified India's profile and accelerated the mingling of American and South Asian cultures.

Who knows? Just as salsa came to rival ketchup as America's top-selling relish with the diffusion of Latino culture, maybe Slumdog is a sign more Americans will be consuming even spicier fare.

So pass the chutney.

"Now you can find Indian food even in mainstream grocery stores," jokes Vin Bhat, the American-born co-founder of Saavn, a New York-based company that, as the largest digital distributor of Bollywood movies, music, videos and ringtones, is benefiting from the success of Slumdog.

Music to more and more ears

"We're seeing a tremendous impact," Bhat says. "We're already seeing record downloads on iTunes and other major carriers; we're seeing a lot of people purchasing tracks and albums by (Slumdog composer/musician) A.R. Rahman."

In fact, the soundtrack is top the album on iTunes and vaulted 26 spots to No. 22 on the Billboard chart in the days after the Oscars.

"People are buying Slumdog— it's an access point for people to explore other movie and musical content from India," which is easier to do nowadays, thanks to the Internet, Bhat says.

Indians in America, long concentrated in the tech industry, say it's about time. (Indians are the largest ethnic group among the South Asian population.)

"Perhaps it took something as spectacular as the Slumdog sweep to confirm our 'arrival' as a cultural, and not just professional, force," says Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, editor of the American monthly India Currents.

The India-is-cool trend has waxed and waned for decades. "It goes back to The Beatles, Ravi Shankar, the Maharishi — look at how yoga is mainstream now," says frequent visitor Dan Storper, founder and CEO of Putamayo World Music, which expects its first, just-released all-Indian music CD, India, and coffee-table book, India: A Cultural Journey, to be best sellers in part thanks to Slumdog.

"There has been a curiosity about the region for a long time, but it always takes one big thing to take it to another level," Storper says. "The stage is now set."

Hollywood might be more willing to gamble on Indian-themed movies and other East-West collaborations now that Slumdog has established audience interest, says Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the Indian-born American novelist and author of The Mistress of Spices and just-published The Palace of Illusions.

"We're kind of on the cusp, and Slumdog might tip us over," she says. "Fiction touches the imagination, and the impact lives on long after the facts of non-fiction have faded."

More and more, Bollywood and Hollywood are hooking up. Aussie singer Kylie Minogue is making her Bollywood debut in Indian superstar Akshay Kumar's upcoming film, Blue, and has already recorded two songs for it, including the title track by Rahman.

Sylvester Stallone is appearing in an Indian film co-starring Kumar, Incredible Love, made in Hollywood and due out this year. Warner Bros. released the Hollywood-made Chandni Chowk to China, a Bollywood-style martial arts movie aimed at the world market, also starring Kumar, last month. Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis — all are said to be working out deals with Indian entertainment companies.

"There's all sorts of people going to work" in India, Slumdog director Danny Boyle told reporters backstage after winning his Oscar. "The world's shrinking a little bit."

But don't expect pure Bollywood down at the local multiplex. The genre is not really most Americans' cup of tea: no sex, not even kissing, and lots of over-the-top song-and-dance numbers. Five years ago, Bride and Prejudice, a Hollywood-Bollywood version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, flopped at the U.S. box office.

"The people who go to see Paul Blart: Mall Copa ren't going to start watching Bollywood films," says box-office analyst Gitesh Pandya, editor of BoxOfficeGuru.com. "But the exposure opens up more eyes."

Slumdog itself isn't very Bollywoodish: There's only one musical number. It's a British production with a British director, a British-Indian male lead and a Dickensian story of a Mumbai slum-dweller's rags-to-riches romance.

Nor is it the first India-themed movie to sweep the Oscars: Gandhi, a British production with a British cast and crew, took home eight top awards in 1982 but had almost no effect on U.S. culture.

Increased familiarity

By contrast, Slumdog lands in the American consciousness just as South Asian names, faces and accents are being heard more, thanks to immigration and population growth.

Nowadays, many Americans have Indian doctors — in fact, Indian-American Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and CNN correspondent, is being considered for U.S. surgeon general.

"For years, Indians complained about TV hospital shows that had no Indian doctors — it was completely unrealistic," Pandya says. "Then (British actress) Parminder Nagra was cast in ER, and everyone celebrated. This second generation born and raised in the U.S. wants to be represented" on TV.

And in politics. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who delivered the GOP response to President Obama's address last week, is the first Indian-American ever elected to a statewide office — and the first Indian-American politician to address the nation on national television.

South Asian names and faces are becoming more familiar in screen credits (director M. Night Shayamalan, The Sixth Sense); on TV (Kal Penn in House, Naveen Andrews in Lost, Sanjaya Malakar and Anoop Desai on American Idol, Aasif Mandvi on The Daily Show, even Apu on The Simpsons); on the news (Martin Bashir on Nightline, and Ali Velshi and Fareed Zakaria on CNN); and advertising (Indian-American Ajay Mehta stars in Fiber One cereal ads).

In music, Western pop stars such as Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and Britney Spears, hook up with Indian stars and make hits. Singer M.I.A. is a London-born Sri Lankan; No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal is a London-born Indian.

Golf fans follow Vijay Singh, a Fijian of Indian descent, lifestyle junkies follow Deepak Chopra, and readers snatch up books by the likes of Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Jhumpa Lahiri.

"We're trying to bridge the gap between East and West, and there's a natural musical and creative synergy between Western music and classic Indian music," especially the rhythmic Bhangra genre that blends well with hip-hop, says Ted Chung, chairman of the Cashmere Agency, a Los Angeles company that brought Snoop Dogg together with Akshay Kumar to make the title track of Singh Is Kinng, a hit in India last year.

"The passion that drives us is to show each other's culture and expose people to new things, so they're not so ignorant or afraid of something they don't know," Chung says.

Bracing up for Recession

Looks like this is gonna be recession year in the US. Recession means a drop in economic activity and associated with drop in investments, company profits and employment rates. How this going to affect various people?

First, interest rates will significantly drop as a reaction to recessionary pressures, and couple with high unemployment rates and inflation, this looks to be bad for saving money :-(. However, this seems to be right time to take a look on basic things. Based on my readings I find the following to be the reasonable advice for people like me.

1. Dont leave secure jobs, as job market will go south this year.
2. This is not the best time to go to school for doing MBA and such, as markets might tighten up in the next year. But, a lot of experienced folks who can untangle the mortgage mess and stuff will find great jobs.
3. Maintain 6 month emergency fund that should take care of ourself even if we dont have job for a long period. This fund must be maintained separately in money market or savings accounts.
4. Reconsider the portfolio. While stocks do better in the long term, it is time to reduce the risk by taking bit more of bonds and other secure avenues. I moved mostly to secured investments last October, and could wither some of the drop in my retirement plan.
5. Rethink investments. As big ticket investments like starting companies or building houses will be hit during this recession, it is time to reconsider those things for now.

If we are able to maintain jobs and have savings cushion, recession could also be a great time. A lot of great investment opportunites will be available at the later part of recession when everybody else will run out of cash. Houses and companies could be got for dirt-cheap prices and the recession will also help the economy overall by cutting down wasteful expenditures and over consumption while moderating the prices (of oil, houses etc that had runaway inflation during the current boom).

In terms of countries, the expectation seems to be that China and India will cool down affording them to rethink their policies and priorites. China will be hit by drop in exports, while India will be hit by drop in investments. So, its time for China to put renewed focus on domestic consumption (including by appreciating Yuan) and India to start second wave of reforms. When India badly needs money it can no longer afford to keep sectors like Banking, Aviation, Retail stores under tight leash and might be forced to open these to foreign investments. Dollar looks to get weakened more as there is a substantial interest rate gap between India and US, and IT companies will be hit both by strong rupee and a drop in US economic activity. Its time to rein in the India's runaway salary growth and diversify beyond IT.

India can gain a lot. First, if IT weakens a bit and salaries start cooling down, other Indian sectors like Auto and manufacturing can pick up as they can get quality engineers at affordable salaries. It makes no sense for the nation to train a mechanical engineer only to lose to Infosys to do some payroll processing. Also, this recession could get the hell out of Ford and GM who would be forced to do a lot of offshoring and India seems to be the best choice. Already Tata Motors and Hyundai and have begun huge expansionary cycles. And healthy Indian companies can get great bargains with a weak western economy. I wont be even surprized if a group of Indian companies together buy up Ford in the next decade. Also, its time to realize our strengths in Finance and Banking. Its illustrative to note that almost all of the Citi's current top management are Indians and we have similiar loads of talent hidden in our moribund banking sector. Its time to get to Basel-II banking standards and open them to International capital and competition. Maybe, someday we could see a ICICI or a privately owned SBI could take on Citi or Bank of America in head on competition in international turf.

Second, Indian economy can also gain by cooling down of real-estate markets at home. Just like Americans, Indians seem to harbor the thought that house prices can never go down. Americans have learnt the lesson and Indians have still not. Just like any investment, house prices can as much go up as down. A lot of houses are priced at 100 times the annual per-capita income of Indians and the development looks unsustainable as a lot of them were made with unreasonable expectations of salary growth. Now, house prices can go down significantly in a lot of over-priced markets and this will improve affordability for common man.

Third, the market crash will make people rethink consumption. While too much dropping of consumption is bad, too much of consumption is even more bad. Indians are consuming rather too much for their salary levels and savings are not as great as Asian levels. This can hurt a lot of people in the forthcoming real-estate and stock crash, and if managed correctly this could lead to a long term balance between savings and consumption.