The Karnataka story and the Marketing takeaways!

The Karnataka state elections are over. The results are out. And so are the myriad analyses, commentaries and takeaways from experts and social media pundits. One of the big reasons that is always attributed when an incumbent government loses is – “Anti-Incumbency” as if it is a very legitimate excuse in democracy.  But we have seen that incumbent governments do not always lose elections. Only when governments do not provide basic governance and when people see a better alternative to the incumbent government, they are thrown out. So, labelling poor governance as Anti-incumbency is a lazy analysis to start with.

In Karnataka, the incumbent BJP government lost due to an absolute lacklustre performance in the last term. Period. Therefore, you see that across different strata of society or geographies with very few exceptions, BJP lost. Arguing that BJP held on to the vote share and therefore it was not a rout serves only as a spin for the media. The state was up for grabs for the Congress. I have a theory for why BJP let things go out of hand. But will keep it for another blog. Since a lot has already been said about how Congress pulled it off, I am going to restrict myself to one important aspect of the Congress campaign which in my opinion is straight out of marketing textbooks.

During elections, it is very common to see all parties making a lot of promises. These promises are made on an ad-hoc basis during election rallies or put in the manifestos which are released by parties before the elections. Though manifestos are released with a lot of fanfare by parties in press conferences, I doubt if they are read by common people. Even if some diligent people read them in newspapers or news portals, they are hardly remembered. Even the press which goes on and on with sundry divisive campaign speeches, doesn’t focus too much on the manifestos. The media also doesn’t do a follow-up on the “Promises Vs Delivery” from the last elections for the party in power. Therefore, manifestos are prepared and released as part of some SOP every time but are hardly given any importance by the parties and the people.

In Marketing communication theory, we are taught a few things. For starters, when communicating a product’s promise, the message should be simple. A product has many features, but it is the benefits that need to be communicated not the features. Again, it is important to pick the key benefits and talk about them rather than try to communicate all the benefits. And then comes the medium through which the product’s promises are communicated. Finally, when the communication need to happen.

Here’s where Congress made an interesting deviation in the way of communicating poll promises and came up a winner in these elections. Here was an incumbent government that was suffering from poor performance. But in order to turn it around to its advantage, Congress had to demonstrate a credible governance model that can be delivered through capable leadership. Luckily for them, they had a credible face in Siddaramaiah. What they needed was a smart way to communicate their plan or promises.

Instead of doing it through the usual Goshna Patra or manifesto, Congress this time communicated its promises through a Guarantee card. And in my opinion from a marketing standpoint, this was a masterstroke for the following reasons:

  • People understand the concept of a guarantee card or a warranty card as they see it coming along with the products they buy. In such cards, companies give a guarantee for the performance of their products. The guarantee or the warranty card acts as a contract between the manufacturer and the consumer. So, when Congress put its promises in a guarantee card, people understood the seriousness of the intent.
  • Manifestos run into pages usually and therefore nobody remembers or registers much of the content. The Congress guarantee card was just one page and therefore easy to register and recall. Keeping it simple is very important in any communication.

  • The other important point is, Congress put forth just five promises in the guarantee card. Instead of including myriad promises trying to please all in the state, Congress focused on five key promises.
  • Coming to the promises in the guarantee card themselves, these were 200 Units of free power to each household, Rs 2000 monthly payment to women in each household, Free bus travel to all women in the state, Cash dole to unemployed youth in the state and Free 10 kg rice every month to all BPL families. All are quantifiable, relatable and later can be verified for delivery.
  • While it is good to come up with the concept of a guarantee card, it can be a futile exercise if the same is not taken to people properly. Here again, apart from releasing the same to the media in a press conference and putting it out on social media platforms, Congress got the guarantee cards printed and distributed them to people all across the state. I read somewhere that they managed to distribute 2 crore cards in the state. When Congress leaders were distributing the same, it created a buzz and excitement among people who were jostling to collect them as if it was some kind of empowerment.

  • As a reinforcement on the polling day, Congress put out full-page ads of the 5 guarantees.

  • And finally, the top leadership of the Congress also stressed the point that the guarantees will be implemented in the first cabinet meeting of the government if Congress comes to power.

It is not my case that Congress won handsomely because of just this reason. Victories usually are multifactorial. But I have no doubt in my mind that the mode of communication of the poll promises in the form of a guarantee card certainly helped Congress in establishing credibility as an effective alternative to the BJP this time.

Having said that, communication is just one thing that of course helped Congress to come to power. From here on, delivering on the promises is key. All the positive aspects of the guarantee card idea could come to haunt Congress if it falters in the delivery. But at least from a marketing standpoint, it is an idea that Congress could do well to replicate in the coming state elections later this year and in the Lok Sabha Elections in 2024. It will be interesting to see what BJP, a normally marketing savvy party would come up with to counter Congress’s guarantee card idea.

Post Script: If the “Guarantee card” was a killer idea for the Congress, the “Double Engine Sarkara” plank of the BJP was the opposite.  For BJP, one engine was not firing at all or it was firing in the reverse direction. Secondly, a double-engine sarkar could not prevent the situation from going out of hand during the border strife where both the states involved were BJP-ruled states. Therefore, here’s the next marketing takeaway.  Don’t go overboard on a feature in your product that is not working.

For Apple, I for India!

In the last week, we were all witness to an overdose of coverage related to the India visit of Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook. In a well-choreographed PR exercise, Cook gave a lot of photo-ops to the media, made all the right noises, tasted some local food, met with key people from industrialists to film stars to politicians and even watched an IPL match – ample proof that he and his handlers had done a thorough job of appealing to all the Indian senses. For Americans, marketing comes very naturally. And in American companies, their CEOs are their best salesperson. So, during his visit, Cook did not waste a single opportunity to soft sell Apple’s products in some form or other. It seemed as if India was the apple of the eye for Cook.

And what was he here for basically? Cook was here among other things to open Apple’s first direct showroom in India. Why is it such a big deal? Apple showrooms are there all over the world. Does a global CEO go all the way from her base country to open showrooms in other countries? Well, it doesn’t happen usually unless otherwise, she wants to turn such an opportunity to convey a larger strategic intent to the stakeholders at large – shareholders, employees, vendors, competitors, local governments and of course consumers. I am sure that’s what Cook intended too during his India visit just like Jesper Brodin, CEO of IKEA when IKEA opened its first showroom in India in 2018.
Even Cook would have been pleasantly surprised to see and hear of the massive lines in front of Apple’s showrooms in Mumbai and Delhi even before they were officially opened. What explains this kind of craze for a product like the iPhone that caters to just 11% of the total market in India? It is the same in India as in other countries. The answer actually lies in the answer to another question – Who is the brand ambassador for iPhone or for that matter any Apple product?
Vivo phone has Virat Kohli as its brand ambassador. Alia Bhat is the brand ambassador for the Galaxy range of Samsung phones. Similarly, other brands have other celebrities. But not the iPhone. For Apple’s products, its numerous users are its brand ambassadors. I remember vividly back in 2007, even before the first model of the iPhone was officially launched in India, people returning from the US were going gaga about it. Even when Apple was not even looking at India as a serious market and was more concerned about China, it had its fan following in India. It is this fan following borne by the aspirational nature of Apple’s products that explains the huge lines in front of Apple’s showrooms. In today’s viral age, for a marketer, this is the ultimate endgame when her consumers become the best brand ambassadors. Just like the line between the brand and the product category blurring completely.
Those who have visited Apple’s showrooms would vouch for the fact that they are not just platforms for showcasing Apple’s products. Apple’s showrooms typically showcase the Apple experience. When I visited Apple’s showrooms in Tokyo and Singapore I was floored by its simplicity and single-minded focus in presenting the Apple experience. There was no one in the showroom to “push” a product to you!
After many years, it is now that India has become very important to Apple. As we speak, India has almost a 360o engagement with Apple. For quite a while now, like other tech companies, India has been a critical source of engineering manpower for Apple. Companies in India have been providing backend support for Apple’s marketing programs as well. As a country, India is now among the high-growth market for Apple’s products. And now, India has also emerged as a manufacturing base for Apple’s products.
Among all the above engagements, though for India as a country, we would look at the last one as the most important, from Apple’s perspective it is India as a consumer market that matters. In the luxury or the premium end of the smartphone market, Apple is the leader with a staggering 50% share for the Oct/Nov/Dec quarter of 2022 and a 45% share for the full year of 2022. Yet, internally to his team, Cook, like most CEOs might say that they are just scratching the surface and here’s why.
If you look at the whole smartphone market, Apple’s iPhone has just a market share of close to 8% and is behind Samsung which leads the pack with a 20% share, followed by Chinese brands like Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme. For the whole year of 2022, Apple’s share is less than 5%. The premium market where Apple’s iPhone is playing is just 11% of the total market.
Now compare this to the situation in its home turf, America. There, Apple dominates the market with a 57% market share. However, the market is expected to grow just at a CAGR of 0.29% for the 2023-28 period. In a market where it is already a dominant player with more than half the market share, the possibility is only for dropping share and not gaining. Growth for Apple can come only from markets where the markets are expected to expand and where Apple has a low market share. India fits this definition perfectly at this point in time.
For India, the smartphone market in absolute numbers is expected to reach a staggering 253.28mn units by 2027 with a CAGR of close to 8% for the period 2021-27 as per available research reports. Now this is a mouth-watering opportunity for the CEO of any smartphone manufacturer including Tim Cook. And when the market share is as low as 5%, it is an opportunity as much a challenge.
India is a mass market where the volumes are there in the low, utility end. The moot question is, – Will the recent strategic initiatives of Apple like producing in India and opening up a direct retail presence help increase sales? Unlikely. But both help to contribute to Apple’s strategic plans in different ways. Increasing production volumes in India helps to reduce over-dependence on China. It helps to reduce production costs by taking advantage of the inverted duty structure of manufactured phones Vs imported ones. The showrooms of course act as a reminder medium for the brand Apple.
My sense is that while Apple is not the one to cut prices to increase its share, soon it may come up with an emerging market iPhone that is competitively priced to increase its share. This may not happen today or tomorrow but can happen when Apple is faced with a situation of stagnating volumes from developed markets in the coming years. The journey of Apple bringing an emerging market model and Indian consumer’s per capita income increase may meet midway within the next ten years.
On the one hand, increasing the production share out of India and increasing the domestic market share in India on the other hand, means India would be in the thick of the action as far as Apple HQ is concerned for the next few years. As kids in kindergarten schools, our English learning started with “A for Apple”. For Tim Cook and his team at Apple, it is “I for India”!

PS-2: Is Rahman back?

Ponniyin Selvan (PS) fever is back again with the release date of the second part just a couple of weeks away from now. As part of the now predictable sequence of the promotion routine for any big film, the teaser release was followed by the songs’ release and the big audio launch.  After listening to all the songs of PS-2, it is clear that Rahman who has composed the music score has taken a detour in terms of style in PS-2 compared to PS-1 and I must say for the good.

I remember vividly when the first single of PS-1 – Ponni nadhi paakanumae was released, I had mixed thoughts in my mind. The song had a peppy tune, a good beat, a stylish chorus and a vibrant orchestration to go with it. In isolation the song was great and it would soon get into your bathroom playlist! At the same time, I suspected that the sounds in the song were too contemporary for the Chola era. When I watched the film later, my suspicion came true. Not just for this song but the other songs like Devaralan Attam, Ratchasa Maamaney and so on all sounded too modern and out of sync with the context. Not just me but there were many others who felt the same. Overall, the verdict for the PS-1 score was mixed, I would say.

During the music launch of PS-1, I remember Rahman mentioning that he and his team did a lot of hard work on the score. In fact, he mentioned initially he presented Mani Ratnam, the director of the film with very traditional-sounding tunes based on Carnatic ragas and so on, but Mani dismissed all of them outrightly. He then travelled to Bali, shut himself out, did a lot of research and then came up with sounds that are now part of PS-1, which got the approval of Mani. From that point of view, Mani has to share part of the blame for the music score of PS-1.

It can be clearly seen that the sounds for the Devaralan Attam song in PS-1 (Check here) are inspired by the Balinese traditional dance form called Kecak. In Bali, the Ramayana Dance-Drama performance in Kecak (See the clip here) is a huge tourist attraction. It seems that Rahman and Mani took creative liberty to portray the influence of the Kecak dance form in an event that happens in Kadambur in the Chola Kingdom which also at a point in time stretched up to Malaysia, Indonesia and Southern Thailand. This bit of context notwithstanding, the absence of sounds that we can relate to the region like Nadaswaram, Thavil etc… in PS-1 was quite glaring.

It appears that the mixed feedback on the musical score of PS-1 has hit home. The songs of PS-2 are out and in the first hear itself one can make out that Rahman has gone back to his original strategy of going conventional rather than being esoteric. Take the first single which I listened to – Veera Raja Veera. At home, whenever we hear a song or a musical bit for the first time, among me, wife and daughter, we have this bad habit of trying to recall if it resembles any other song by the same composer or any other director and try to guess the ragam etc… When we heard the Veera Raja Veera song, we couldn’t connect to any other Rahman’s song but we could feel certain strands from Ilaiyaraaja’s beautiful number Aagaaya Vennilave Tharai Meethu… in the film Arangetra Velai, a song set in classical Darbari Kanada raga. Darbari Kanada has been often used in Tamil film songs but usually in duets or devotional numbers but we thought Rahman has attempted a unique faster style in what seems like a victory celebration or a coronation sequence.

It was only later that I came to know that this song is actually based on a traditional Dhrupad tune in the Dagar Baani as Veejay Sai, the author of the Biography on Balamuralikrishna points out. Listen to a bit of this by the Gundecha brothers here. It is indeed creditable that Rahman and the producers have not missed giving credit by mentioning that the composition is based on the Dagar Vani Dhrupad in the Raga Adana which is similar to Darbari Kanada but with faster phrases.

Now we know that it is not new for Rahman to introduce non-conventional genres in conventional situations in Tamil films.  Like how he used the Qawwali form in the song Varaha Nadhikarai oram…in Sangamam, a film that has a clash of traditional dance forms as its theme. That song was rendered by Shankar Mahadevan in its inimitable style and went on to become a chartbuster.

Back to Veera Raja Veera, for the Tamil version, Rahman summons the services of Shankar Mahadevan again whose voice we know is aptly suited for this type of high pitch song with yoyo phrases. And with his mastery over Hindustani and Carnatic styles, Shankar actually makes it sound very easy and simple. Of course, Chithra and Harini also give suitable company to elevate the song which is easily the best in the album.

When we heard the other melody number – Chinnanjiru Nilave, while I was racking my brain to recall the song it resembled, my wife was quick to point out that it is very similar to the Suttum Vizhi number composed by Rahman himself in Kandukondain Kandukondain! It is not just because of the tune but because of Ilango Krishnan’s lyrics also, I reckon. Here is an aside I must add that most of Rahman’s songs suffer from the irony of repetition. We don’t know if it is by design or by default but Rahman has a tendency to rehash his own tunes in one form or another. Even in his first film Roja, in the memorable Chinna Chinna Aasai song, check out the alaap in the 2nd interlude (starting at 3.12’ in this clip), it is very similar to the one Rahman had used in this commercial for Asian paints.

Once he discovers a new genre or sound, Rahman has the habit of using the same in a few of the films in succession. I noticed that the research he did for PS-1, has been used in the score of films like Venthu Thaninthathu Kaadu and Iravin Nizhal. Be that as it may, the Chinnanjiru nilave is a soothing melodic number that has a melancholic ring to it. The orchestration is a bit loud but yet does not seem to be out of place. Will be interesting to watch this on the big screen. The Aga Naga song is also nice but would have done with another voice I felt. The Shivoham piece is a typical Sanskrit shloka type and with a chorus of singers is put together nicely. I am not sure if the PS-2 anthem that has been released a few days ago is part of the film. I hope it is not, as its score is nowhere close to the era and suffers from the same PS-1 problem.

There is a feeling of late that Rahman is over his peak and nowhere close to his past glory.  The tagline of Ponniyin Selvan – 2 is “The Cholas are back”. I am eager to see if Rahman is also back in PS-2.

Index of Opposition Disunity!

These days, as we approach the next Lok Sabha election which is exactly only a year away, there is much chatter about plans and strategies to dislodge the BJP Government led by Narendra Modi at the centre.  Among various ideas, the key strategy being talked about is around mounting a United Opposition against the BJP which seems to be the only way to defeat the Modi Sarkar considering its reigning popularity among the majority of the population. Now while this sounds logical and easy on paper, many challenges and tricky situations emerge when trying to put this into practice.  In terms of an approach, what are the options for the opposition?

Option one is a United opposition which means the coming together of Congress and Regional parties with a pre-poll alliance to take on the BJP. This would mean a rainbow coalition of more than 10 parties. Ideally, if this works, there will be only one main opposition candidate against the BJP in almost all the LS Seats. The problem in this proposition starts with who will head this coalition. With Lok Sabha Polls increasingly becoming presidential, the voter would like to know who is she voting for, as the Prime Ministerial candidate. While for the BJP, it is very obvious that it is Narendra Modi, for a grand opposition alliance, it is a question mark.

In order to fix this conundrum, will all the regional parties accept a Congress leader as the PM candidate? This is almost a certain no-go considering the state of the Congress presently. Will the Congress accept any other regional party leader as a PM candidate now without knowing what will be the electoral success of that leader’s party now? Can all the regional parties come to an understanding on “a” particular regional leader without knowing how many seats his or her party will win?

Also, putting together a coalition means Congress and other parties coming to a compromise on the seats they will contest. Any arrangement that is thrashed out in such a compromised manner will only put the local party workers’ interests at peril. For example, in West Bengal, Congress would have to toe the line of the TMC and agree not to contest in most seats and also work for TMC candidates in those seats.  In Delhi where the AAP came to power after dislodging the Congress, Congress has to play second fiddle to the AAP.  There are many other states in this situation.  This naturally dwarfs the interests of the local state leaders whose ambitions need to curb in order to push the cause of the other party.

It is also difficult for regional parties to convince their core voters of a diluted ideological position like what we are seeing recently with the Savarkar remarks controversy. Both Uddhav Sena and NCP have rushed to not only distance themselves from Rahul Gandhi’s acerbic comment on Savarkar but they have also gone on to condemn it. BJP will only add pour more oil into such fire.

A rag-tag coalition of parties with divergent positions coming together just to defeat the BJP in the 2024 elections is the kind of free fodder, the BJP would feast on to build a narrative of the tyranny of coalitions. An era of a very convoluted coalition politics that bogged India before Vajpayee became the PM in 1998. I already saw some short videos being circulated by the BJP on social media taking potshots at the ills of a multi-party coalition without a clear face.

Finally, in New India, no other sight is more repulsive than the sight of leaders of political parties of all hues clutching and holding their hands up on stage like the one we saw last in 2018 in Bengaluru during the swearing-in of H. Kumaraswamy as the Chief Minister of a post-poll alliance in Karnataka.

The second option therefore would be not to have a full-fledged pre-poll single alliance but for Congress with its like-minded allies and regional parties to contest based on what they feel as strengths. Now, this is similar to the situation we had in 2019 and we all saw what happened. In BJP Vs Congress head-to-head seats, Congress gets decimated. In BJP Vs Regional party situations, in some states like Delhi, UP, Bihar etc… BJP gets the benefit of a fragmented opposition and in a few states where the regional party is strong like WB, Odissa and TN, they win big.

The third approach could be to have a tactical state-wide understanding depending upon who is stronger between the Congress and regional parties. Now, this approach is required only in states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, AP, Telangana, Odisha and Kerala. This means a compromise both on the part of Congress and the respective regional parties not to contest in these states if the other one is stronger and also work towards transferring their votes diligently to the other. As I understand, this was the approach advocated by Prashant Kishor before he moved to Bihar on his Jan Suraaj Yatra. However, this approach also has the same challenges when implemented at the ground level. For example, in a state like Kerala where the Left and the Congress have always been on the opposite side of the fence, will one party give up its position in the state just to defeat the BJP at the Centre?

From the above scenarios, it is clear that BJP is in a pole position as far as the 2024 elections are concerned.  If you are a strategist for the opposition, what would you advocate?

It may be a good idea for Rahul Gandhi to embark on another yatra namely ‘Opposition Jodo Yatra’. This need not be a Padayatra of course but air sorties to state capitals that matter first to convince the respective regional party leaders to come to a tactical tie-up with the Congress and then the respective state leaders of the Congress to accept a short-term compromise and work towards defeating the BJP as described in the third option.  Easier said than done.  But, may be worth a try. Before Prannoy Roy the original proponent of the Index of Opposition Unity (IOU) concept comes up with the Index of Opposition Disunity as the defining concept for the next few decades!

Yet, will that be still enough to stop the BJP from returning to power in 2024? That’s for another blog.

Pic Courtesy: The Wire

For an Oscar Win, read Philip Kotler!

On the morning of a new weekend on Monday, the 13th, much of India went on a collective ecstasy when the news started coming in of Indians winning two Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards. RRR, a film from Tollywood that became a Pan-Indian hit got an Oscar for the “Best Original Song”. The second Oscar went to “The Elephant Whisperers” for the “Best Documentary”. For Indians, an Oscar win is coming after 14 years when A.R. Rahman and Resul Pookutty won the Oscars for the Best Original Song/Score and Best Sound respectively for The Slumdog Millionaire film.
As one would expect for such a global recognition, accolades have come in thick and fast from all quarters and deservedly so. It is common knowledge that an Oscar win adds to the brand value of the creative people behind it. Just limiting the scope of this article with RRR, S.S. Rajamouli, the director of the film, the producers, and the lead actors have all revelled under the glory in addition to the Music director M.M. Keeravani (MMK) alias Maragathamani (in Tamil) alias M.M. Kreem (In Hindi).
As can be expected, Naatu Naatu song winning the Oscars has attracted its share of criticism as well. Comments like “There are so many other classic songs from India composed by others and when they did not win the Oscars, how come Naatu Naatu?”, “Even among MMK’s work there are other songs that are much better than Naatu, Naatu”, “RRR got the award, not for Art reason but “Commerce” reason, because Hollywood wants to tap the vast Indian market” and so on are going the rounds in Social Media. Though all these comments could be partially or fully valid, that an Indian work has received the Academy Award is indeed commendable and hence should be complemented without any ifs and buts. So, congratulations to MMK, Lyricist Chandrabose and the entire RRR team are in order.
The reality is even if a film or a song/music is outstanding, it doesn’t mean that it will win an Oscar. This should be understood clearly because for any film to make an impact at the Oscars it has to go through a rigorous process that also involves millions of dollars and that’s quite a lot for an Indian film that is made in a few million dollars. For RRR, unconfirmed reports suggest that the team spent more than 80 million dollars for the Oscar campaign. That brings me to the subject of this blog that for an Indian film to win an Oscar, it has to get its marketing also right. Now one should not get me wrong as if I am alluding that MMK or ARR before got the Oscars only because of marketing and not because of their capabilities. My point is though the winners may be and actually are extremely talented and worth the Oscars, Marketing had a huge role to play in their wins whether it was RRR or Slumdog Millionaire.
Now, the Academy Awards are awards meant for Hollywood films. There is one category for foreign films in which Non-Hollywood films can compete where many countries including India send in their entries. To first get nominated from the home country as its official entry and finally go on to win an Oscar, is a creative + marketing exercise.
Philip Kotler, the Marketing Guru talks about the Ps of the Marketing Mix that a seller has to use to influence the buyer’s response. What started as 4Ps has now become 7Ps. My point is for an Indian film to win an Oscar it is not enough for just the first P – namely the Product to be great. The makers have to work on the balance 6Ps also if they want to stand a chance to win the Oscars. Let me explain the 7Ps and their relevance to the Oscar hunt.
Product: This is quite obvious. Here the product in this context refers to the film or the aspect of the film that is contesting for the Academy Awards (Film, Cinematography, Sound Editing, Music score etc). This is fundamental and has to be outstanding in the first place.
Place: This refers to channels through which the product is sold. In this context, Place refers to where the film is made and where all it is shown. If it’s a Hollywood production it obviously has a better chance to win. Though RRR was not a Hollywood production and it was not nominated as an official entry from India, it had an extremely successful run in many parts of the world including Hollywood. It was eventually the film’s American distributor – Variance Films who submitted the entry to the Oscars under the “For Your Consideration” category – kind of a wild shot at the Oscars. That the film was exhibited widely and was acclaimed all over as a fancy Indian film helped to push through under this category.
Price: In the normal context this refers to the cost or the price the customer pays for the product which usually is an important element for most of the categories. But in this context, I would refer to it as the Price the producer is willing to pay for the marketing and promotion of the film. Once a film is in the fray and that too a foreign film, it only stands a chance if most of the jury members are made to watch the film which requires heavy lobbying that costs money.
Promotion: Usually refers to the Advertising and Promotion activities that need to go behind the product. In this context also it refers to the same and it doesn’t need much explanation. Right from promoting the film within India before release and later promoting it in the markets where the film is exhibited, Promotions are becoming an important aspect of a film’s success.
People: Usually this refers to the people involved in the product right from concept to the store. In the context of films, this refers to the people behind the making of the film. Obviously, the creative brains involved in the film, the stars/cast that is part of the film and later the people who are involved in taking the film to the theatres play a huge role in the success of a film and its chance for an Oscar. Here I would add a crucial P in this People is the Producer without whose mind share and wallet share, it is almost impossible to take a shot even at the Oscars.
Process: This usually refers to the series of actions and SOPs that are involved in taking a product or a service to the consumer. In the context of films, it refers to the process that is involved in taking the film to the Oscars. And whoever has gone through the process before like Aamir Khan or Kamal Haasan will tell you how important it is to master this process that also costs money (P in Price)
Physical Evidence: In Kotler’s theory, this refers to the tangible and intangible elements that customers experience while using a product or service. Physical evidence includes the design, layout, and appearance of a physical location or environment where a product or service is delivered, such as a store, office, or website. It also includes the packaging, branding, and other visual and sensory aspects of a product or service. In the context of films, I would reckon that this would refer to the packaging of the film itself. Like how poverty in a developing country was packaged in Slum Dog Millionaire, for example. Or how a leader like Gandhi was packaged and shown in the film Gandhi. Or how a story belonging to the pre – Independence era has been packaged with mythology and so on in RRR.
There are many outstanding films that are made every year in India. Many of us feel that those are all far better than Slum Dog Millionaire or other films that win the Academy Awards. In order for these films to get chosen from India as India’s entry first and then to stand a chance for winning an Oscar, it is not enough if they are just great films from an Indian viewer’s perspective. It has to be an outstanding film from the perspective of the jury of the Academy Awards. For that, in addition to the main P (Product), the other six Ps as mentioned above need to be worked upon as well.
Many of Kamal Haasan’s films have been sent as the official entry for the Oscars in the past but have not managed to even secure a nomination. This is because they did not pass the 7 Ps test in my opinion. Now go back and check how RRR has fared in handling the 7 Ps and you will understand why it managed to enter into the race first of all though it was not recommended as the Official entry from India and also win an award in the original score category at the end. In the future, if any other filmmaker has aspirations of an Oscar, make a great film and before that read Philip’s Kotler.

India and the Global Attention Surplus Disorder!

Jan 17th, 2023:  BBC releases the first part of the documentary on Modi titled “India: The Modi Question”. Among other things, the documentary goes on to levy charges on Modi for his role during the Gujarat riots back in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of the state. It is another matter that the courts and different committees have delved into the same matter for so many years and have exonerated Modi for his involvement in inciting the riots as claimed by the documentary.

Jan 24th, 2023: Hindenburg, an American short seller, publishes a report on the Adani group in which it accuses Adani group of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.” This was just three days before the opening of Adani’s FPO in the market. The ensuing brouhaha led eventually to the withdrawal of the FPO only after a massive evaporation of its market capitalisation.

Feb 6th, 2023: In the US, the Deputy Secretary of State briefed that “The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines,”

Feb 17th, 2023: At the Munich security summit, an annual conference on global security issues, George Soros, an American business magnate and philanthropist launched a scathing tirade on the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his speech, he also referred to the Hindenburg report and said that Modi and Adani were close allies and that their fate was intertwined.

If you look at all these stories, a few things are strikingly common – the stories are about India, they are damning in design and emanating from outside India.

Quoting World Bank data, Centre says Indias PPP-based economy reached $8 trillion in 2017

Welcome to India’s “Global Attention Surplus Disorder” TM (GASD) era. At the outset, let me clarify that this has got nothing to do with Attention Deficit Disorder which is a mental condition. Global Attention Surplus Disorder is when a country is subjected to excessive attention globally because of which stories mostly of the critical type about the country keep coming out at regular intervals.

It is important to note that all countries are not automatically subjected to this syndrome. In the evolution of any country, there comes a time when the country becomes in a way eligible for excessive attention.  Once eligible, it becomes a part of this privileged league of nations. I believe that for India, this started last year (2022), though we have often threatened to get into this league but slipped back in the last minute. Why did India become part of this league and is getting subjected to GASD?

When a sportsperson starts doing well in mega events, she starts becoming the cynosure of all eyes. She also comes under scrutiny not just for her sports feats but also for her conduct in her personal life (Think Sania Mirza). Among all the film stars, if you are a top star like one of the Khans, obviously you are at the centre of all attention and scrutiny. You will receive your regular dose of bouquets but when the brickbats come, they will be heavy and bitter. Ask Aamir Khan. If you are the among the richest and most famous you cannot escape the attention of the prying news reporters. Look at the Ambanis. A dominant and globally successful company is always under media scrutiny not just for its success but also for its omissions and commissions. Search Google. A very quick upstart, which was initially the darling of the one and all could face the bile of the same media and regulators worldwide when it becomes over-successful. What happened to Facebook (Meta)? Even when a politician becomes extremely popular with the public and becomes a darling of the masses, he becomes a victim of excessive and continuous scrutiny. Even if it’s a Modi.

This has what has changed for India in the past few months. For a populous country like India, it weathered the Covid storm pretty well. In the past few years, the fundamentals of the economy are getting stronger because of which the country’s resilience to external shocks has improved drastically. Despite global headwinds like Covid, the Ukraine war and now the global economic slowdown, India continues to grow at a faster clip than all major economies. For the future, the world is now predicting that this could be India’s decade. There is a visible transformation of infrastructure in the country. Highways, Railways, Airports, Metros, sea links are all finally moving toward completion in the next five years after being in a permanent Work In Progress phase. The adoption of digital solutions to solve the country’s public issues seem real and this holds a lot of “hard” promise for the future. In the past, our promises remained “soft”.  As we saw in the recent mega order of the aircrafts, big powers are looking to India to help them.

In Marketing it is said that for a market leader apart from doing routine things to increase its share, and expand the market, the bigger challenge is to ring-fence itself from some “Public Relations (PR) storm” or other that it is subjected to now and then. For example, a successful brand and a leader in its category like McDonald’s has to spend extra marketing resources for challenging litigations and Class action suits by say, Vegans. A vigilante group will never waste time and resources on going after say a Biggies Burger or a Burger Singh (yes these are Burger brands and competitors to McDonald’s in India)

My point is, getting subjected to Global Attention Surplus Disorder is a sign of India’s success. It means that India has arrived. In my opinion, China started suffering from this around the mid-2000s when its economy started firing on all cylinders and China became the so-called factory of the world. But that’s when coverage of its record on Human rights, Freedom of expression, Public Data accuracy, Transparency Index, Corruption, etc. also started finding its way into the global media regularly. There is not a single day when there is no negative story on China these days in reputed publications like The Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Times and so on. China has been suffering from GASD for many years; India has just started.

In the coming days, weeks, months and years, you will see India being in the eye of the storm frequently and more often. We have to get used to this excessive attention from the world. As a country, and as a government we should put processes in place to handle PR storms of varied nature from here on that will ensure less Governmental time on such issues. At the same time, we should pick the right battles to fight. Otherwise, we could get into a vicious distractive cycle. India is at the cusp of making history. Focus on the job at hand is more important than getting waylaid by distractions.

As Cricket experts would say, in seaming conditions and turning tracks, a batsman should know which ball or bowler to attack and more importantly which to be “well left”!

Image courtesy: Hans India

Abki Baar Amrit Kaal!

In the political calendar of India, the Annual Budget presentation is a key event. So, last week was consumed by the budget event and by now we are also done with the surfeit of analyses and opinions on the same. However, this year the finance minister’s thunder was stolen by the Adani story thanks to the Hindenburg report culminating with the cancellation of the Adani FPO, the announcement of which came late at night on the budget day. What could have ended up as a great budget day for the FM and the government, turned out to be a fifty–fifty day.  Even otherwise, I have been feeling that Finance Ministry in the Modi Sarkar has always been treated uncharitably by commentators.

The budget presented by the finance minister last week was the Modi government’s 10th and Nirmala Sitharaman’s 5th in a row. If she presents the budget in 2024, which in most likelihood she would, Sitharaman will become the 1st full-time woman Finance Minister to complete her full term.  Truth be told, back in 2019, when Sitharaman was anointed as the FM, even among BJP supporters, there were raised eyebrows.  That she was a political lightweight unlike her predecessors and came across as a haughty, headstrong lady, an image which she continues to live with even today, were some of the reasons attributed to the scepticism around her appointment.

I had opined then that making Sitharaman the FM was an inspired choice by Narendra Modi and that she may end up being a surprise pack. My take was based on the following reasons. She hailed from a middle-class background with a grounded upbringing and therefore would bring in a sense of earnestness and commitment to whatever she does.  She had a squeaky-clean image which I thought is important for any minister, more so for an FM.  For the same reason that she was a political lightweight, she didn’t carry any past baggage and was not seen close to industrial groups or lobbies in India Inc or abroad – a point that can’t be said of earlier FMs of India.  As a spokesperson of the BJP when UPA was in power, she did a fantastic job of articulating the opposition’s point of view through logical and measured viewpoints for which she would come meticulously prepared. This aspect demonstrated her diligence and seriousness in the job given.  And finally, she did have an educational background in Economics and therefore was not completely alien to grasping macroeconomics, which I think is an important requisite for an FM.

On the flip side, I did feel that Sitharaman may not be a very creative or out-of-the-box FM but may just be an FM who would execute BJP’s manifesto and Modi’s vision diligently. In this sense, her priorities will be driven by what is the ideological framework of the party and its manifesto. Five years since her appointment and five budgets hence, even her sharp critics admit that Sitharaman has done a fairly commendable job as the FM particularly navigating the country through a global crisis.  This can be borne out of the fact that there was hardly any material criticism of the latest budget. By and large, the criticisms came out of people’s compulsive and competitive positions rather than constructive prognoses.

Nirmala Sitharaman took over from Arun Jaitley (though Piyush Goyal was an interim FM for a brief while stepping in due to Jaitley’s ill health in 2019), who had a huge political heft in the Modi Sarkar. Sitharaman herself considers Jaitley as her Guru and mentor in politics.  Jaitley’s balance sheet as an FM has GST introduction, the Bankruptcy Code and Banking clean up on the credit side and Demonetisation on the debit side. Though to be fair, Demonetisation was a purely political decision that had economic ramifications and so it should feature more on Modi’s balance sheet than on the FM’s. But for Jaitley’s way with people of all fronts, consensus building on GST and its eventual introduction, GST would still be a Work In Progress now.  But one of the major issues of Jaitley’s period was the slipping of India’s economic growth since 2017 which didn’t get the attention it deserved back then. I vividly remember that in 2017, it was taken for granted that India will grow at 8% come what may and the question was what the government will do to touch double-digit growth consistently for a long period. But in the last 2 years of Modi Sarkar’s first term, the economy slipped considerably.

It was in the background of this dull growth that Sitharaman took over as FM in 2019. To be fair to her, just within one year into her tenure, she had to contend with the Covid pandemic which brought the entire world to a grinding halt in 2020. Navigating the country’s economy fairly smoothly through the pandemic must count as Sitharaman’s biggest achievement of her tenure.  Even during the last three years of the pandemic, as a country, we have managed to be fiscally prudent and come out relatively unscathed.

Back in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, most of the developed nations were doling out cash to their people to pump prime the demand. There were clarion calls from reputed economists on India too, to do the same. However, the Indian government decided on providing targeted support like free grains to the poor, MSME credit, etc rather than cash transfers to the people though the government through the now famed “India stack” could have done it easily and scored brownie points. Toeing the line of these economists, the opposition leaders too were clamouring for cash transfers. Looking back at the way the pandemic played out through uncertain crests and troughs, keeping the powder dry for the rainy day turned out to be a prudent strategy.

Identifying the issues in hand correctly which were a) No visibility on the endpoint of Covid with repeated waves, b) Supply-side problem due to lockdowns c) Less consumer confidence which means even if money was given, people were less prone to spending, the Indian government took a calibrated approach to handle Covid. If you remember, we used to have the FM announcing a slew of measures according to the developing situation almost every other month. While all this was happening, the government’s focus was also to provide monetary support to the vaccination program which in itself was a humungous task for a populous country like ours.

The result of this “drip” approach to handling Covid and its aftermath is that today we are in a far better situation to fiscally get back to the growth path even while being caught in the midst of another external crisis like the Ukraine war.

The 8% + growth which we were taking for granted in the last decade may be eluding us today and we may be in the 6-7 % range. Yet, in so many years, India has not been seen with the kind of optimism like it is being seen today. India has an uncanny knack of flattering to deceive as we have seen in the past many times. But the way the finance minister and her team handled the economy during Covid in a composed manner without taking a misstep and now re-wiring for growth with very high spending on infrastructure etc… is giving a sense of confidence that this time, India will live up to the hype.

There is still a lot to do and waving the victory sign too early is not a wise thing to do. But, for reaching up here, it is only fair that due credit is given to the FM and the teams in the Finance/related ministries and PM’s Economic Council.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi might have first used the term “Amrit Kaal” during his Independence Day speech in August 2021 in terms of a vision for New India for 25 years. But it is now I feel – Abki Baar Amrit Kaal.

BBC, Bollywood, Bans and Boycotts!

It’s pouring Bs in Bharat. In the news, I meant. BBC, a long-venerated medium in India is in the news these days for all the wrong reasons. A two-part documentary on India namely India: The Modi Question has put a question mark on BBC’s objectivity and has come under fire from the Government of India. The Government has used emergency powers to ban the documentary from being “viewed” in India.

I just watched the first couple of minutes of the documentary, so I am in no position to comment on the veracity of what’s being said in the same. However, from all reports, it seems that the documentary has tried to once again raise the question of Narendra Modi’s role during the Gujarat riots in 2002 when he was its Chief Minister. Notwithstanding what has been shown in the documentary, the banning of the same has invoked sharp reactions and has split opinions right in the middle.

On the one hand, you have the liberal group who have labeled the ban as undemocratic and unbecoming of a liberal society.  But the fact is, this is not the first time that a ruling government in India has gone after BBC content. Mark Tully, the iconic representative of BBC in India for years has listed many instances in the past from the days of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi when a story was asked to be pulled down or was banned. So, it is not unique to this government to resort to such aggressive actions when faced with uncomfortable content. On the other hand, there is the group that supports the ban and claims that in “New India”, we will no longer tolerate a hit job on India that too coming from BBC, a foreign media with its colonial hangover.

From what I saw in the first few minutes, I could make out the intent and the purpose of the documentary which I feel is to tarnish the image of India and more so Modi who is riding a huge popularity wave in India and outside. Therefore, in a way, I feel that the anger and opposition to the documentary are fully justified. However, is banning the same the right reaction? I reckon not for the following reasons.

First, in today’s age of the internet and technology, is a ban practically implementable? Even now as we speak, it is possible to look up this “banned” documentary and watch it. Second, “Answer to a book is another book”. This was a quote by Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was a tall opposition leader of course. So, the answer to a BBC documentary that is peddling a particular agenda is another documentary to counter it. Third, the banning of stuff fearing an adverse reaction within the country is all “Old India” stuff.  As a country now confident of its status in the world, “New India” should not resort to banning that only gives an impression of having a soft underbelly. The 2002 subject has been flogged in Indian media for two decades now and frankly, I feel that the country has moved on from it.  There is nothing new that this documentary is going to tell that is already not known in the public domain. So why fear a backlash now?

Fourth, the Streisand Effect. As per definition, this is a phenomenon in which an attempt to censor, hide, or otherwise draw attention away from something only serves to attract more attention to it. We are already seeing this in India where, in states that are not ruled by the BJP, the film is being shown on large screens on campuses with a vengeance.  The curiosity to find out what is in it that resulted in banning it draws in more people who otherwise are least interested in the subject. By the way, the Streisand Effect is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project’s photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, clicked to document California’s coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003.

Now coming to the second B – Bollywood. Bollywood which actually means Hindi cinema made out of Bombay has been also in the news for all the wrong reasons of late.  A string of flops even of big star films and more off-screen controversies kept Bollywood on its toes the whole of last year.  This year has started with the release of the SRK starrer Pathaan on the big screen. Amidst social media calls for boycotting the same from right-wing groups, the film has managed to do well at the box office in the first four days, as per reports.

From this, it is clear that a film does not do well mostly because of poor content or reach and not necessarily due to boycott calls on social media.  One of the purported victims of the boycott saga last year was Aamir Khan’s, Lal Singh Chaddha.  I had watched the film and felt that film was a stretch. In my opinion, the film bombed due to bad reviews from critics and more importantly bad word-of-mouth feedback from those who watched it on the first weekend.  Despite being made very well, the content failed to connect with the audience that watched it. Therefore, it failed, and not just because of boycott calls. The same holds good for other films like Shamshera, Ram Setu, Dhakkad, Samrat Prithviraj, Jersey, and so on.

I haven’t watched Pathaan and hence I have no views on the film. From what I hear, it is a commercial action entertainer that has been made well though, it is from the same spy thriller genre that is being flogged in Indian films of late. Concluding that “Bollywood is back” because of Pathaan being a hit is also a simplistic view. By and large Indians like films and the big stars and would love to watch them on the big screen provided the content manages to engage with their sensibilities. There is no rocket science beyond this, in my opinion.  It is good to see the Prime Minister exhorting his party men not to waste their time going after films and calling for boycotts.  He should extend the same logic to bans on documentaries and other content as well.

Next week, the country will move to discuss another B – the Budget and hopefully, it will set the tone for what is said as “Bharat’s Decade”!

Mani Ratnam at 40!

(This article was written for the news portal The News Minute and was carried on the 20th Jan 2023 and can be read here.)

Tamil cinema, for as long as it has existed, has been ruled by its stars. From MGR-Sivaji and Kamal-Rajini to Ajith-Vijay now, stars in pairs have consistently held sway over the Tamil audience and the industry’s market dynamics. But even amid this, once in a while, you see the ascent of a director who makes a mark with his indelible style of filmmaking. In the years of 1960s and 70s, it was CV Sridhar who emerged as the first director whose films were sought after by filmgoers — especially the women. K Balachander would be the next, making his presence felt in the 70s and 80s, followed by Bharathiraja in the 80s and 90s. All of them brought a distinctive and signature flair of filmmaking to Tamil cinema. Then came Mani Ratnam.

If direction originally meant putting together dialogue-heavy melodramatic performances and incorporating song and dance routines into a well-written screenplay, Mani Ratnam changed all that. Cinema is a visual craft, and it required this filmmaker to reaffirm this once and for all. Not only did Mani Ratnam have an ineffaceable style of his own, but he even went on to establish cinema as a director’s medium — where elements like writing, music, performances, cinematography, editing, and so on come together as per the director’s vision.

The Mani Ratnam era, which started way back in January 1983 and is today 40 years old, is still going strong. The history of Tamil cinema can never be written without Mani Ratnam featured as one of its main protagonists. In fact, when most filmmakers in Tamil either came from a theatre background or after assisting other directors, Mani Ratnam — barring his family’s association with film distribution — eased into the scene without such baggage.

A director of a film, in my opinion, is akin to a conductor of an orchestra. A conductor doesn’t play any instrument by herself, but her main role is to bring the written musical score to life. Similarly, a filmmaker’s role is to bring a written script to life on the screen by tapping into the talent of their actors and technical crew. A good director taps into the talent of the team, while a great director stretches its potential to newer heights.

Mani Ratnam’s oeuvre will tell us that he is among those ‘great’ directors. Whether it is PC Sreeram, Santosh Sivan, Rajiv Menon, or now Ravi Varman, their stints as cinematographers in Mani Ratnam films remain high up on the list of their best work. The same is the case with the music of Ilaiyaraaja and AR Rahman, or with Kamal Haasan and Abhishek Bachchan in terms of acting performances.

One could argue that Mani Ratnam always works with the best in the business, and therefore it is a no-brainer that the output turns out to be excellent. But here’s where the requisites of a good orchestra conductor come into play. Legendary composer Pierre Boulez had this to say of the Berlin Philharmonic: “That’s an orchestra of rampant individuals, who want to feel fully realised. But if the person up on the podium isn’t giving them a collective focus, then they are rudderless and bereft.” Mani Ratnam has been right up on the podium, giving a collective focus to the talented crew members, the result of which we have been seeing in his filmography.

In his very first film Pallavi Anu Pallavi, Mani Ratnam was lucky to work with some of the best in the business. Balu Mahendra as the cinematographer, Ilaiyaraaja as the composer, Lenin as the editor, and Thotta Tharani as the art director is a dream team to have for any debutant filmmaker, that too in his 20s. It is often said that “luck favours the brave”. But in Mani Ratnam’s case, one can conclude that luck also favours the talented, the prepared, the focused, and the instinctive. And these are the attributes that shaped his craft.

If the film Nayagan (1987) is what brought Mani Ratnam to the fore and made him the “Mani Sir” we know him as today, signs of his strengths were visible in his earlier films as well. Even his very first film, Pallavi Anu Pallavi, had dealt with a young man’s sensitive relationship with a lady who is married and separated from her husband, while already being committed to another woman. In the subsequent years in his career, portraying complex relationships sensitively would become Mani Ratnam’s calling card. Incidentally, no other filmmaker has told the story of a relationship between a mother and a little girl with intellectual disability, with as much finesse as Mani Ratnam did in Anjali (1990). Similarly, few filmmakers have portrayed the dynamics between an adopted child and her parents with the sensitivity of a Kannathil Muthamittal (2002), a film I would regard as Mani Ratnam’s best.

Even in Pagal Nilavu (1985), which was just his third film, his command over storytelling was evident in the way the screenplay would seamlessly shift between the stories of four different sets of characters (Murali/Revathi, Sathyaraj, Radhika/Sarath Babu, Goundamani/Isari Velan), while bringing some of them together in between. He would develop this technique later through films such as Iruvar (1997), Aayidha Ezhuthu (2004), and Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018).

In Mouna Ragam (1986), which is Mani Ratnam’s fifth film, there is a scene in which the mother tells her daughter to go to the bedroom for the ‘first night’ after marriage. To this, the daughter asks her mother if she would have told her to spend the night with an unknown man two days ago, before the wedding. We knew then that a master storyteller was here.

Mani Ratnam developed a new syntax for filmmaking, where along with powerful storytelling, the depiction of each frame counted. The staging of scenes, framing of visuals, and song choreographies are all by design and never by chance.

When we saw how a young Velu Nayakkar (Kamal Haasan) in Nayagan dealt with the request of a young girl in a brothel to let her study for the next day’s exam, we understood what it meant to ‘stage’ a scene in cinema. In the same film, when we saw the top angle shot of Velu Nayakkar relaxing with his wife and two kids on a bed, and had a premonition of what was coming next, we realised the impact of ‘framing’. When we saw how the song ‘Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu…’ was shot in Thalapathi (1991), we understood what song choreography is and how it can be more than just a filler in a film. Mani Ratnam, the craftsman, had arrived.

The women characters in Mani Ratnam’s films deserve a special mention. Even in terms of their thinking, most of them were ahead of their times. Whether it is Divya in Mouna Raagam, Anjali in Agni Natchathiram (1988), Shakthi in Alaipayuthey (2000), or much later Tara in O Kadhal Kanmani (2015), Mani Ratnam’s women are consistent in the way they assert their agency.

It is not that Mani Ratnam doesn’t have any detractors. Some say that the lighting in his films is too dark, the dialogues are framed in a staccato style, and his settings too urban-centric. These criticisms could be partially true, but are also a bit uncharitable in my opinion. In fact, the idea that his frames are dark-lit got stuck after he and Sreeram used some experimental lighting techniques in Agni Natchathiram. His other films don’t use this technique. Besides, at a time when heavy dialogues defined Tamil cinema, the casual conversational style of characters in Mani Ratnam’s films had actually come as a whiff of fresh air. And yes, his movies have been predominantly set in cities, but it is not that people outside of cities and big towns don’t understand or like his cinema.

If there is one major critique of his films, it is that he doesn’t push the envelope in terms of addressing political conflicts head-on, and is content with telling the story of a relationship while keeping the conflict in the backdrop. Many of his films are set against real political issues such as the Kashmir conflict in Roja (1992), the North East issue in Dil Se (1998), communal strife in Bombay (1995), the Sri Lankan Tamil armed struggle in Kannathil Muthamittal, and so on. In all these films, you can notice that Mani Ratnam uses the conflict only to set the context for the film and shies away from dealing with it. I reckon that this could be a strategy to play safe when crores of rupees are involved in the making of a film, and therefore, he would rather play safe than invite the wrath of a section of the audience.

At some point after the success of Roja, which was well-received even outside Tamil Nadu, Mani Ratnam wanted to make films for the national audience. In that sense, he had already become a ‘pan-Indian’ filmmaker back then. This move, however, didn’t work well for him when films like Dil Se, Yuva (2004), and Raavan (2010) didn’t fare that well at the box office. One felt that Mani Ratnam conceived those films in Tamil but made them for a Hindi audience, the result being that they worked neither here nor there. But it appears that he soon realised his misstep, and post-Raavan, he was back to making films mainly for the Tamil audience.

The misses in Mani Ratnam’s career have been few and far between. Even in the films that didn’t do well, there could have been issues with the content but his command over the craft was unmissable. His later films such as Kadal (2013) or Kaatru Veliyidai (2017) are examples. With his last outing Ponniyin Selvan – 1 hitting the bull’s eye in terms of critical acclaim as well as box office response, he is firmly back in business as a filmmaker who is still on top of his game. It is therefore that his coming together with Kamal Haasan years after Nayagan, for a film after PS-2, seems to be such an appetising proposition for Tamil cinema.

Cinema is the art of balancing the 3 C’s – content, craft, and commerce. I don’t know of many directors in Indian cinema who have managed this balancing quite well. Mani Ratnam has not only mastered this, but has done it for forty years now with a fourth C — consistency.

Carnatic Music’s “Ageing” Conundrum!

The ‘Season’ has almost drawn to a close in Chennai. Of course, the ‘Season’ here implies the Carnatic music season, also called the December music season or the Margazhi festival. When the Season comes to an end in Chennai, offshoots of the same prop up in other cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc… In fact, as I write this, Margazhi Mahotsavam – a mini-Carnatic event is going on in Mumbai, where I live presently.

The last time I attended the Season in Chennai was in 2019. The 2020 Season got marred by Covid.  The Season made a comeback in 2021 and one could almost enjoy the season “online” except for the canteen. So, this year’s festival (2022) is a return to the Season we all know in its full pomp and glory – Full-fledged Kutcheries in sabhas and auditoriums where we can see the artists in flesh, listen to the music in real and of course savour the delicacies in the canteens in person.

I don’t know how the Season went off in Chennai this year. From whatever little I gathered from the media, it seems that the response from the rasikas was quite overwhelming and the Season has been a roaring success.  Yet, I feel that Carnatic music is in the throes of an “Ageing” conundrum which is what I want to talk about in this post.

Are today’s youth attending Carnatic music concerts? I don’t have a conclusive view on this yet but, my question arises from the signals I get while attending concerts. In Mumbai, in the last few years whenever I have attended Carnatic concerts, the audience comprises freshly minted senior citizens mainly, some super senior citizens, a relatively smaller bunch of those in their 50’s, and then kids in their teens who are probably still learning Carnatic music (before the 10th/12th bugs hit them). One can hardly find people on the right side of youth (the 20s/30s) or the wrong side of youth (the 40s).  Even if they are, they will be few and far in between. But you can find these groups in cinema halls, in live music shows and stand-up comedy gigs.

Now, I am not sure if the scene is any different in other cities. When I used to attend the Season in Chennai, the situation was quite similar. Having said that, it is not my case that Carnatic music has no appeal among today’s youth and hence it has no future. In fact, it is the contrary mainly for two reasons.

One, in the last two decades, there has been a huge influx of exciting talent in Carnatic music which is a very encouraging sign. This has completely demolished the arguments of the 80s that Carnatic music faced an existential crisis. Today, Sanjay Subrahmanyan who is only in his mid-50s is looked upon like a veteran a la Dhoni in CSK. That Sanjay keeps evolving himself to be in tune with the rasikas of today and tomorrow with his engagement style is another matter. The Sabha schedule is packed with concerts by those who are in their prime youth. So, it is not that the youth are not taking to Carnatic music.

Two, as I mentioned before, the younger generation of today is taking up learning Carnatic music in a more enthusiastic way than it was in my generation. So, it is not “uncool” anymore to learn Carnatic music. Particularly the NRIs have been trailblazers in this regard with a lot of fresh talent in Carnatic music coming up from among the NRI youth.

It’s clear, therefore, that while Carnatic music is not an anathema for the youth, I find them reluctant to spend time attending typical Carnatic concerts. Therefore, the questions are – what are the reasons for this phenomenon and what can be done to correct the situation?

One of the main reasons I have heard is that Carnatic as a style is too slow and so not so cool to follow. And it is also difficult to appreciate the nuances of the music unless one has some basic knowledge. I agree that there is a need to de-mystify Carnatic music among the masses. Here I find attempts of some of the mainstream Carnatic musicians like Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Sikkil Gurucharan, and Vijay Siva to constantly explain the influences of Carnatic music on film songs in a simple, lucid manner through their YouTube channel, very laudable. This creates interest even among those who don’t know Carnatic music. The availability of social media platforms has also helped them to reach their content widely. Another person who has been putting conscious efforts to de-mystify Carnatic music is Subhasree Thanikachalam. She and her team have been doing these themed concerts where they present a typical Carnatic Kutcheri format but with popular film songs with simple explanations.

Then there is the “Agam Model”.  Agam is a rock band that came into the scene ten years ago and soon earned the epithet of “Carnatic Progressive Rock”. Today, I find that this band is extremely popular among the youth. In their concerts, Carnatic is nicely blended with metal to give a very high energy and frenzied experience which the youth of today seem to lap up. On stage Agam’s lead singer, Harish Sivaramakrishnan is like the pied piper of yore making the audience sing along to his tunes which are even Carnatic based. I was surprised to see youngsters finishing the lines of popular kritis like Ranga Pura Vihara ( A Muthuswamy Dikshitar Kriti immortalised in our souls by M.S.Subbulakshmi) and Manavyalakinchara (A Tyagaraja Kriti in the mellifluous raga – Nalina Kanti) (Check out the clip here) which are of course the band’s most sought-after numbers. Their rendition of these kritis has garnered huge hits on YouTube as well. I am told that Agam has a cult following among senior citizens as well. So, is creating a Carnatic-based genre where Carnatic vocal is fused with Western music riffs on guitar and western percussion an answer to the conundrum?

I am certain that there is no one answer.  With the advent of technology and with Senior citizens increasingly relishing watching concerts online from the comfort of their homes, soon Carnatic music may be facing the same “Theatres VS OTT” conundrum as the film industry. It is therefore high time that the practitioners of the Carnatic genre gave some thought and find ways and means to get the youth to the Kutcheri halls and solve this “ageing” problem.  In Tamil, one is called a Karnatakam type, if he is old-fashioned. Carnatic music should not slip into that definition if it is not already.

Cartoon courtesy – Keshav from The HIndu