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The Hindu Notes for 27th March 2019

Topic Discussed: The Hindu Notes of 27th March 2019

A bridge to nowhere

Poor people are running from pillar to post as the Aadhaar payment bridge routinely obstructs their welfare benefits

  • Perhaps you will remember “l’affaire Airtel” — the mass diversion of LPG subsidies to Airtel wallets that came to light in 2017. Many of the wallets were unwanted, or even unknown to the recipients. Those affected, fortunately, included millions of middle-class Airtel customers who protested when the goof-up emerged. The subsidy money was returned, Airtel was fined by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and the world moved on.
  • This is an instance of what might be called “diverted payments” — bank payments being redirected to a wrong account, without the recipient’s consent or knowledge. What has escaped attention is that diverted payments have become a widespread problem in recent years, not so much for the middle class as for powerless people such as old-age pensioners and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) workers. The main culprit is the Aadhaar Payment Bridge System (APBS).

    • Shaky foundations

  • The basic idea of the APBS, an offspring of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), is that a person’s Aadhaar number becomes her financial address. Instead of having to provide multiple account details (say, her name, bank account number and IFSC code) to receive a bank transfer, she only has to provide her Aadhaar number.
  • Induction of a bank account into APBS involves two distinct steps, both of which are meant to be based on informed consent. First, the account must be “seeded” with the customer’s Aadhaar number. Second, it must be connected to the NPCI mapper — a step known as “mapping”. In cases of multiple accounts for the same person, the APBS automatically sends money to the latest-mapped account.
  • To understand the dangers of this “bridge”, we must rewind to 2014, when the Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) was launched. In the frantic drive that followed, millions of bank accounts were opened and seeded with Aadhaar in a haphazard manner, under relentless pressure from the Central government. Some JDY accounts certainly served a purpose, but many others were superfluous and created a confusing multiplicity of accounts. More importantly for our purpose, Aadhaar numbers were seeded into these accounts without proper verification.

    • Given short shrift

  • Haphazard seeding continued well beyond 2014 because the government wanted to bring all direct benefit transfer (DBT) payments — pensions, scholarships, subsidies, MGNREGA wages, and so on — under the Aadhaar payments umbrella. Government departments started sending bulk lists of bank accounts and Aadhaar numbers to the banks for accelerated Aadhaar seeding. Meeting the seeding targets was the top priority and due verification, once again, took the back seat.
  • Thus the groundwork required for APBS to work — reliable seeding of bank accounts with Aadhaar — had simply not been done when the APBS was rolled out. The seeding mess, it seems, was sought to be cleaned up by making “e-KYC” compulsory. This essentially means that account holders were required to go through biometric authentication to verify their Aadhaar number and identity information. To enforce e-KYC, many banks used the “ultimatum method”: a deadline was set, and people’s accounts were blocked when they missed the deadline.
  • Compulsory e-KYC became a nightmare for poor people, for a number of reasons: some did not know what they were supposed to do, others had problems of biometric authentication, others still struggled with inconsistencies between the Aadhaar database and the bank database. Among the worst victims were old-age pensioners. To this day, in Jharkhand, many pensioners are struggling to understand why their pension was discontinued after e-KYC was made compulsory.

    • A risky bridge

  • So far so bad. But there is worse: without waiting for the seeding mess to be cleaned up, the APBS was forced on millions without consent. Mapping (the induction of an Aadhaar-seeded account into the APBS), according to NCPI and UIDAI guidelines, should be based on an explicit request from the customer. This gives a measure of protection to educated middle-class customers. It ensures, for instance, that they know which account their money is being directed to by the APBS. For poor people, however, consent is a fiction. In Jharkhand at least, bank accounts have been mass-mapped onto the APBS without any semblance of consent, with or without e-KYC being completed — in other words, without necessarily verifying that an account has been correctly seeded with Aadhaar.
  • Recent discussions with local managers of 10 different banks spread across Ranchi district revealed that they make no clear distinction between seeding and mapping. The two steps are essentially conflated, based on default options and symbolic consent — sometimes just a signature on a photocopy of the account holder’s Aadhaar card, or below a consent line printed in English.
  • The result of this premature and coercive imposition of the APBS is that diverted payments have become a serious problem in Jharkhand. For example, recent victims include Premani Kunwar, an elderly widow in Garhwa district who died of hunger on December 1, 2017, two months after her pension was diverted by the APBS to someone else’s account.
  • Others affected are MGNREGA workers. Already discouraged by delays in wage payments, they have to contend now with diverted payments and other pathologies of the APBS. A recent study of the Indian School of Business (ISB), based on an analysis of more than 10 million payments in 2014-18, concludes that 38% of all the APBS payments of MGNREGA wages in Jharkhand “redirect wages to a completely unrelated account”. This study should have set alarm bells ringing, but little has been heard of it so far.
  • Even if the ISB study’s estimate (38%) is on the higher side, we do know from numerous ground reports that MGNREGA workers in Jharkhand often have great difficulty tracing or withdrawing their wages. For example, hundreds of workers in Boram block were mystified, a few years ago, when their wages stopped being credited to their Bank of India accounts. It turned out that wages had been redirected by the APBS to ICICI accounts that had been opened by business correspondents on their behalf without proper intimation. This is a precise analogue of the Airtel-wallet mix-up.

    • Lack of accountability

  • We end with a few overarching remarks. First, diverted payments are not the only problem associated with the APBS. There are others, discussed elsewhere, such as rejected payments — another nightmare for powerless DBT recipients.
  • Second, these problems are magnified by a pervasive lack of accountability. The ABPS is a very opaque payment system and few people have a clear understanding of it. When people have problems of diverted or rejected payments, they have no recourse. More often than not, they are sent from one office to another. Even with the best of intentions, a bank manager may be unable to help them. Guidelines for resolving payment problems are conspicuous by their absence. Some cases of diverted payments we have personally dealt with took days to understand and weeks to resolve.
  • Third, none of this seems to perturb the agencies that are promoting the APBS and related financial technologies. Last month, we tried to draw the attention of the NPCI and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to some of these issues. They gave us a patient hearing but their response was far from reassuring. Nobody seems to be responsible for monitoring the sort of problems we have discussed, let alone resolve them. Similarly, nobody appears to be in charge of enforcing the consent norms and other “guidelines” issued by the NPCI. The RBI may be the nominal regulator, but the real action is at the NPCI, the UIDAI and other strongholds of the Aadhaar lobby.
  • The UIDAI did take cosmetic damage control measures from time to time in the last two years. Judging from Jharkhand’s experience, however, the pathologies of the APBS continue to cause havoc on the ground. An independent and participatory review of the system is long overdue.

    • An own goal for Britain?

    No one, in Parliament or in government, is still clear on what Brexit means

  • The Brexit slogans have returned like a boomerang in the U.K. “Take back control,” the Brexiteers had demanded. Parliament has now wrested control of the Brexit process from Prime Minister Theresa May and will indicate the type of exit from the European Union (EU) that might be acceptable to it, having earlier rejected both her withdrawal agreement and her threat of leaving without an agreement. Though it is now abundantly clear that no one can quite agree on what Brexit means, let alone how to achieve it.

    • A new deal?

  • Ironically, the European Council had to take control of the Brexit time-line last week to offer Ms. May a reprieve until April 12 to decide how Britain wishes to exit the EU. Until then, Britain had been in very real danger of chaotically crashing out of the Union on March 29. Without a transition agreement, Britain will lose all current arrangements for 49.5% of its total trade; EU laws that govern its industry, banking, agriculture and influence national laws will cease to apply. Until a new arrangement is negotiated, seamless exchanges in goods and services will collapse. The EU, however, is not known for speedy negotiations.
  • At the heart of the current crisis is a 585-page draft on an interim trading relationship. Much of this could have been avoided if Ms. May had consulted widely on what Brexit meant before triggering Article 50 to take Britain out of the EU. Instead, she chose to negotiate with 27 other countries in a bloc by first putting down red lines, as if she held all the cards. When hemmed in by the extreme right of her Conservative Party, she prioritised party unity by calling an election where she lost her slim majority and then, astonishingly, carried on in Parliament as if she commanded a majority and was not at the mercy of the equally hard-line DUP of Northern Ireland.
  • In pandering to the Tory extreme right, Ms. May increased divisions between those who saw their future as best provided for within the EU and those who wanted to shed the perceived over-weaning powers of Brussels and regain control of immigration. Alternative visions of Brexit were never seriously debated even though the referendum itself was completely silent on what sort of exit was envisioned in the Leave option in the 2016 referendum.

    • Parliamentary turmoil

  • This weakness of the referendum process left Parliament in a bind. Convention has tasked Parliament with consulting on, debating and legislating for the country’s future. Quite simply, MPs are voted into Parliament to use their judgment. A referendum turns this convention on its head because it hands MPs a decision that has not been arrived at through proper parliamentary procedure, leaving Parliament unsure of how to treat that decision. There is no precedent for this — the Brexit referendum was only the third ever held, and the first where the majority of parliamentarians voted in opposition to the referendum result. Parliament chose to treat this as a binding instruction even though most MPs disagreed with the result. This then is the genesis of the current impasse.
  • Most parliamentarians voted Remain to safeguard Britain’s future. London’s attractiveness as a financial hub owes less to its soggy climate than to its position as a gateway to the rest of Europe; Britain imports a quarter of all its food from the EU; most large industry depends on complex just-in-time supplies from mainland Europe; and Britain imports medicines ranging from insulin to medical isotopes for cancer treatment to scalpels and syringes. Any regulatory, tariff or logistical barriers to imports could potentially cost lives. For those MPs to vote for or even acquiesce in a ‘hard’ or no deal Brexit which endangers prosperity and health is unthinkable. And yet, this is what a group of deeply Eurosceptic Conservative MPs are pushing Britain towards. They have threatened to break up the Conservative Party over Europe, and Ms. May has, time and again, caved into their demands, prioritising party over national interest.
  • And yet, her government cannot be sacked because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, which makes it very difficult to remove a government mid-term. So Britain is stuck with a government that remains in power without wielding any power. The constitutional ‘firsts’ over Brexit continue. This is the first time Parliament has voted to take control of Parliament business; this is the first government to have been held in contempt of Parliament over its withholding of the Attorney General’s advice on elements of the withdrawal agreement; it is the first to lose a vote on the main business of the House of Commons by an overwhelming margin, twice; and it is the first in living memory on whose watch party discipline has disintegrated so completely that Cabinet Ministers can vote against their government and still retain their jobs.
  • In the meantime, the clock is ticking to April 12, when Britain has to tell the EU whether it wants to leave with the current unloved deal, no deal or needs more time to reconsider Brexit altogether. The gift of that extension which could safeguard Britain’s prosperity now lies in the hands of the 27 remaining EU member states, any one of whom could exercise their veto. It is indeed an odd way for Britain to take back control.

    • Maximum gambit

    The Congress’s minimum income pledge is high on ambition but low on detail

  • It would be easy to dismiss the Congress party’s promise of transferring ₹6,000 a month to poor households as just a pre-poll gimmick by an Opposition party seeking to be one up on the ruling regime’s minimal cash transfer scheme in the form of PM-KISAN. For now, the party has not fully spelt out the details of its minimum income guarantee scheme, Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), and has limited itself to saying this would be a flat transfer of ₹6,000 a month to identified poor households. There has been little word on how the Congress expects to finance NYAY. A ballpark estimate of the fiscal expenditure, to transfer ₹72,000 every year to the poorest 20% of the approximately 25 crore Indian households, would be ₹3.6 lakh crore. This is twice the estimated amount set aside for food subsidy and five times that for fertilizer subsidy in the 2019-20 Union Budget. It is not clear whether the Congress, should it come to power, will cut back on other subsidies and programmes in order to finance NYAY. There is also the additional problem of the identification of the poor — the Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011 is the most comprehensive exercise for this, but it has been riven by reliability and authenticity issues and has only been partially released to the public as yet. By having an inbuilt provision of targeting the beneficiaries, NYAY can fall short as other programmes have, such as the targeted public distribution system.
  • The devil in the detail and the financing of the scheme apart, the idea behind NYAY is not entirely unsound. An unconditional transfer of a specified minimum income support to the poor will go a long way in helping address immediate needs related to health, education and indebtedness. A large section of the targeted poor would include landless workers and marginal farmers in rural areas, and unemployed youth in families engaged in menial labour in urban areas. Besides shoring up income to meet such basic needs and pushing wages upwards, the transfer scheme can help spur demand and consumption in rural areas in particular. There are disincentives inherent in the scheme as well. A section of the beneficiaries could withdraw themselves from employment but this could be mitigated by the expected overall spur in demand in the economy through consumption, and by the rise in real wages consequent to the shrinking of the labour market. Limited cash transfers in the form of direct farm income support in States such as Telangana and Odisha have helped ameliorate agrarian crises. This was the reason why the BJP-led government came up with the PM-KISAN Yojana as a countrywide scheme. A massive programme such as NYAY, however, has no precedent. It might give a fillip to the Congress election campaign, but much more homework is required for its implementation. A dole is not a magic bullet; it can only be one among a clutch of robust and prudent welfare policies.

    • Barring arms

    In banning semi-automatic guns, New Zealand has set an example for other countries

  • Just days after a terrorist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, gunning dead 50 worshippers and injuring dozens in a hail of bullets, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles. The terrorist, a self-avowed white-supremacist, had wielded more than one semi-automatic weapon during his murderous assault, heightening the lethality of the attack. “On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too,” Ms. Ardern said, explaining that the changes to the gun laws were aimed at making the country a safer place. That it took the lives of 50 people for New Zealand to tighten its gun laws is tragic, but the alacrity with which Ms. Ardern reacted in imposing the ban on MSSA and assault rifles has deservedly won her global acclaim. While New Zealanders don’t enjoy a constitutional right to bear arms — like the U.S. Second Amendment protection — the island nation of just under five million people has traditionally had a high level of gun ownership, with estimates putting the figure upwards of 1.2 million firearms. In a clear reflection of the national mood and the readiness of the political class to take rapid and resolute action against the deadly weapons, the government won bipartisan agreement ahead of the ban, and the Opposition National Party leader endorsed it. New Zealand joins its neighbour across the Tasman Sea, Australia, in outlawing semi-automatics.
  • In Australia’s case too, the 1996 National Firearms Agreement and buyback programme followed a deadly massacre in Tasmania’s Port Arthur earlier that year. A lone gunman had used a semi-automatic rifle to shoot and kill 35 people, and wound 18 others, in a rampage across multiple locations in the popular tourist area. The fact that MSSA are almost twice as deadly in killing and maiming victims at the far end of a violent shooter’s sights was affirmed by a study published last September in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers found that given their ease of use, capacity to accept large magazines and fire high-velocity bullets, the semi-automatics were significantly more lethal. Both nations, however, allow licensed ownership of firearms, especially by farmers who need them for “pest control and animal welfare”, and Ms. Ardern has now vowed to move on tightening the licensing rules in New Zealand. That the terrorist, an Australian, chose Christchurch to carry out his rampage shows Canberra’s strict licensing and registration norms have had a deterrent effect. It should be a prompt for the U.S. to proactively move to tighten its gun laws, before more innocent lives are lost in preventable mass shootings.

    • ‘The Congress has always been for cow protection and shelters’

    The M.P. Chief Minister on undoing ‘saffronisation’ of institutions, and the Congress’s position on cow protection and loan waivers

  • Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath is a key player in the Congress’s comeback bid in the Lok Sabha elections. Having ended the BJP’s 15-year rule in Bhopal, he says the priority of his government is to reverse the “saffronisation” of governance in the State. Excerpts from an interview:
  • After the Congress’s break of 15 years from power in Madhya Pradesh, you have become the Chief Minister. Is your government in part a continuation of the 15 years of BJP rule in the State?
  • Our government is in no way a continuation of the past. The previous government had different objectives. They were keen to saffronise every institution in the State. It has been 90 days since I took over. My efforts have been to do as much as possible to demonstrate that the policies of this government are based on our manifesto promises. Many items on our manifesto have already been implemented.
  • When you mention ‘saffronisation’, you are alluding to a turn towards Hindutva in governance? Have you identified areas or institutions where this has happened?
  • There are so many. Take our journalism university. Take the universities and the various bodies they formed. They were not doing that for the public good. They were using State funds for building a party organisation, which we are slowly dismantling.
  • The Jan Abhiyan Parishad (a government-funded network intended to improve governance) was used to propagate Hindutva?
  • Absolutely. The JAP has been used and misused to propagate their ideology, and for elections.
  • Are you determined to change its character?
  • We have to. Because it is a blatant misuse of State funds.
  • Are you looking at the school syllabus too?
  • Certainly. We have to correct all these things, so that what this country stands for, the ethos of this country, is maintained.
  • While you’re striking a very strident pose on ‘saffronisation’, your government’s decision to use the National Security Act (NSA) in cases of suspected cow slaughter was a continuation of the past, right?
  • It was not the government’s policy. That was the policy of the past. It was done at the local level. I was surprised about it myself. This happened a few days after we took over. I strongly objected to it.
  • Have you given instructions that the NSA cannot be invoked in such cases?
  • Absolutely. In any case it cannot be. The objectives of the NSA are very clear. It was the previous government’s policy to do this.
  • It was a misuse of that law?
  • Yes. It was misuse.
  • Cow protection has been a key component of BJP politics. Your government is also setting up cow shelters using public money. How does this square with your idea of change and good governance?
  • Of course it does. The Congress has always been for cow protection and shelters. The previous government did nothing. And they have been exposed on this. We are only continuing with what we have always believed in. We are promoting gaushalas (cow shelters). Cows are revered in Indian ethos, mythology and beliefs.
  • Cow protection is also linked to agrarian problems — stray cattle destroy crops, for instance. Don’t you think that by bringing in this cultural component, the agrarian economy gets distorted?
  • I don’t think so. If we build proper cow shelters, it does not disturb the agrarian economy at all. We respect the sentiments of the people. And at the same time, we protect their rural economy.
  • How long term do you think will be your relief to the agriculture sector through loan waivers?
  • A farmer is born into debt and dies in debt. Loan waiver is not the solution to the problem. Loan waiver is one of the ways to give him relief. We have to look at the agriculture sector in a completely different way. Seventy per cent of the people of M.P. are dependent on the agriculture sector, not all of them farmers. Twenty-thirty years ago, the problem of agriculture was the problem of shortage. Today, the problem is of excess. So, our policies will have to be attuned to this changed situation.
  • Do you have plans beyond loan waivers?
  • Yes, we are looking at a holistic plan on how to make the agriculture sector more remunerative so that farmers don’t sink into debt again.
  • You decided to discontinue the pension scheme for MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) detainees (people who were imprisoned during the Emergency). Why?
  • This was a political move made by the previous government. We dismantled it. Some of them were also fake. There was MISA in 1975. Many of them are not there any more. This is like saying, the BJP government was there for the last 15 years, and all those who felt victimised by them must get pension.
  • You have worked with all the members of the Nehru-Gandhi family barring Jawaharlal Nehru. How do you understand the family?
  • I have had the privilege of working with Sanjay Gandhi, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and now Mr. Rahul Gandhi. They were all there in different periods. The world was different, the country was different, politics was different. So, each one has a different style of working. And in different circumstances and different periods, the challenges are also different, and so their styles are different.
  • How is Rahul Gandhi different from his family?
  • He is no different. As in, his heart is with the weakest always. He is very sharp. I admire his sense of understanding of so many diverse issues of this country.
  • Is there any point on which he is different from his mother and father?
  • I think he is far more impatient for results. He is impatient for achievements. That is good, he goads you on.
  • Is he impatient with people?
  • No, he is not impatient with people. He is impatient with the lack of progress.
  • While you have been vocal against Hindutva, some reports have suggested that you have made a tactical decision to not confront the RSS head on. Is that true? In the case of JAP, you seem to be giving a long rope.
  • Of course, I have to do the correct thing. I called a meeting with them and I told them that this is what you stand for. I have given them three months. Lot of people are involved, there are students in it. I have to ensure that those who are apolitical do not suffer in the process.
  • One long-term effect of Hindutva in politics is the progressive decline of Muslim representation in politics. Does your counter-politics to Hindutva account for this? And how?
  • Everything in society must be equitable. We cannot deny Muslims what are naturally their rights, their aspirations. Everyone, whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh, is aspirational. When it comes to representation in a democracy, the question is, how will you win an election? Doing it symbolically can at times be hypocritical.
  • That is the sad part of our democracy, perhaps. Fielding a Muslim candidate is not the best way to win an election. As a political tactician, do you face that dilemma?
  • When we are fielding someone, we have to see to it that he wins. Because we are putting him up to represent the people. But if he goes through the motions of an election without winning, he will not be able to represent anyone, including his community.
  • How stable is your government? The Congress does not have a majority.
  • The government is very stable. We demonstrated it in the elections for the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. We got 121 against the BJP’s 109.
  • So, there is no question on the longevity of your government?
  • The BJP is continuously trying to lure MLAs with all kinds of things. But I have complete confidence in all the MLAs.
  • Do you think the Centre has been trying to unsettle your government?
  • The BJP as a whole is trying to unsettle this government.
  • Would you expect the Governor to be more impartial?
  • The Governor must stay within the confines of the Constitution. Stepping out of that will not be acceptable.
  • The BSP’s support is critical for your government in M.P., but Mayawati has been hostile to the Congress recently. How do you see BSP-Congress relations going forward?
  • The objective of the BSP is to oust the BJP and there will be convergence at some point, because our objective is the same. And everybody takes local situations into account. In U.P., they are dealing with the ground situation in the State. We have our own perceptions. That does not mean that our objectives are divergent.
  • After the NSA was used in cases of alleged cow slaughter in M.P., Ms. Mayawati said that the Congress and the BJP have the same character. Have you spoken to her after that?
  • I talk to her from time to time on various issues. They are our supporting party in M.P. They have two MLAs.
  • You challenged Digvijaya Singh to contest from a difficult seat if he wanted to contest. And he is now contesting from Bhopal. Is this a return of friction between the two of you?
  • I have no friction with anyone, whether it is Mr. Singh, Mr. [Jyotiraditya] Scindia, or Mr. [Suresh] Pachouri. We all worked together for victory in M.P.
  • Then why did you challenge Mr. Singh?
  • Because he has been State party president and Chief Minister. It was not a challenge, but a suggestion. I told him that it would befit his stature if he contested from a seat that the Congress has not won for a long time. He accepted my suggestion.
  • The Lok Sabha election in the State is on Narendra Modi or Kamal Nath?
  • Both. The people of M.P. are poor, they are simple, but they are not stupid. Mr. Modi will have to explain to the people of M.P. what happened to all the promises he made in the past.

    • The return of the rural

    A clutch of new filmmakers is attempting to restore the rural to Hindi cinema

  • A friend recently expressed his desire to watch Abhishek Chaubey’s Sonchiriya, set in the once-dacoit-dominated Chambal region of Madhya Pradesh. More than the plot or the misdeeds of the dacoits, he was interested to encounter such a place through a film. Though part of popular folklore, places like Chambal have only recently been reappearing in mainstream Hindi films. My friend also mentioned how excited he is now to encounter small towns or rural areas in contemporary Hindi cinema.
  • Earlier, the rural always existed in Hindi films. It was a regular narrative trope: characters from rural areas would always be arriving in the city. Those films created a split between the rural and the urban: the rural was seen as pure and the urban as impure, the rural as innocent and the urban as corrupt. They created a binary between the village and the city.
  • Manoj Kumar furthered this split through his nation-loving films, which cast the West invariably in a poor light, robbing people from the East of their principles. In the 1970s, the Hindi ‘new wave’ filmmakers also made films set in the rural. However, 1990 onwards, the rural gradually disappeared from Hindi films. The urban took centre stage and, slowly, so did the middle class and the rich.
  • A clutch of new films and filmmakers is attempting to restore the rural to Hindi cinema. And they are going beyond the idyllic hamlets of Punjab. But what does it mean to encounter a place through film? People make a place. We attribute an identity to a location vis-a-vis its people, who constitute its socio-cultural fabric.
  • Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara, set in the badlands of rural Uttar Pradesh, added a new dimension of caste-based politics to the film, thereby rendering it contextually true. Gangs of Wasseypur was a trendsetter in this regard. It introduced a range of idiosyncratic characters to Hindi cinema. The rural does not appear as a caricature, as it did in Priyadarshan’s Malaamal Weekly. Anarkali of Aarah took us to the by-lanes of the hinterlands of Bihar. Newton was a plunge into the Adivasi settlements in the forests of Chhattisgarh. Bareilly Ki Barfi showed us a free-spirited girl who refused to bow down to the pressures of marriage.
  • All these films have had myriad depictions of the rural — from the oppressed to the celebratory. Through them we recognise people as individuals with wants and desires and not case studies or objects of anthropological lust, as they were at one time.