Where to find 500 billion taka?

That the COVID-19 pandemic is as much an economic crisis as it is a health crisis is no longer news.  According to the 2020-21 Budget, economic growth for 2019-20 was expected to clock at 5.2%, a full 3 percentage points downward revision from what was expected in June 2019, and much slower than the 7.4% a year pace recorded in the five years to 2018-19.

There is, however, considerable difference of views about the timing, pace, and visually, the shape of the recovery.  The Budget forecasts a V-shaped recovery where the pandemic will have ended presently, and the economy will grow by over 8% in 2020-21 and 2021-22.  International organisations are less optimistic.  For example, the World Bank expects an L-shaped recovery where the economy not only slowed sharply in 2019-20, but the slowdown persists into the next couple of years.  Back in April, the multilateral development bank expected real GDP growth of around 3% in 2019-20 and 2020-21, still not reaching 4% in 2021-22.  Their latest forecasts are even more pessimistic.

With the global pandemic yet to show any sign of ending, and the science and logistics of a vaccine still uncertain, it is useful to do a simple scenario analysis — what would be the fiscal impacts if the recovery reflected the World Bank’s April guesses instead of the official Budget projections?  The table below sets out the scenario that was analysed couple of weeks ago.

Some back of the envelope calculations suggest that if the scenario were to materialise, the government might be facing a revenue shortfall to the tune of nearly Tk500 billion a year (Tk488 billion in 2020-21 and Tk495bn in 2021-22, to be precise).

How could the government make up for such a revenue shortfall?

Escape from Dhaka

When Rishi Kapoor passed away a day after Irrfan Khan, hardly anyone raised D-Day — the 2013 turkey they both starred in.  Uncharacteristically, Kapoor played the villain.  Named Goldman, the character is not inspired by any Bond flick, but the real life character Dawood Ibrahim — one of the top fugitives in the world with a $25 million bounty, and the subject as well as financier of many a Bollywood movie.  In the movie, Khan is a deep cover RAW agent who is sent to Pakistan to spy on the mob boss.  No, not a fancy, posh, big name hair stylist, but your neighbourhood barber.

Sounds ridiculous?  Not as ridiculous as the army officer turned mercenary who is sent by RAW to nab Goldman.  Played by Arjun Rampal, the first thing this Indian hero does in the Land of the Pure is to visit a lady of the night!  Perhaps he fancied the lure of the exotic other, or maybe he always wanted to visit Heera Mandi and had to make do with some Karachi girl– but surely this was supremely irresponsible: I mean, one would think someone with the surname Singh might have a certain anatomical feature that would be quite distinctive compared with the typical patron of most houses of ill repute in the Islamic Republic!

The grand ending

Oh that ending was epic, right?

The nine-year-old exclaimed as we came out of the theatre one Saturday afternoon last antipodean autumn.  We had just finished watching what would eventually become the highest grossing film in history.

Couple of weeks ago, after watching the ending of another multi-movie (and in this case, multi-generational) saga, I asked him — Was that ending epic?

Yeah, I guess so.

The less than emphatic affirmation made me think — what makes an epic’s ending, well, epic?  Of course, I couldn’t but help throw in the biggest television series in history into the mix.

The Avengers, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones — three epics of our times — ended (well sort of, fine prints, see towards the end of the post) in 2019.  How do I judge these endings?  And here, let me stress that  I am particularly interested in the way the story ends, not necessarily on how the story is told (or shown).  That is, I am not going to get into arguments such as whether the Star Wars prequels were worse than the sequels (I change my mind on this all the time) or whether the last season was Game of Thrones poorer than the rest (yes, absolutely).

Now, we need some benchmark to judge these epics against, and what is better than the grandest epic of them all?

A Song of Chaos and Power 3

From Bollywood to Hogwarts, plot twists involving separated, long lost families, mistaken or concealed identities, new revelations, or much less satisfactorily, some deus ex machina are common.  Sometime they genuinely come as a shock, and profoundly alter our understanding of the story.  I don’t remember a time when I did not know Darth Vader’s true identity, and yet get goosebumps watching Luke Skywalker hearing I am your father.  Typically, these plot twists hone in on the key individuals, protagonists and antagonists of the tale, even if there are larger, macro consequences.  For example, rise, fall, and apotheosis of the Skywalkers may matter for the entire far, far away galaxy, but the fate of the galaxy is not our primary focus, is it?

Game of Thrones has plenty of plot twists, relying on all the common tropes, and more.  Things are not what they seem like.  Royal children turn out to be not so.  Men of honour turn out to be not so dissimilar to men without honour.  Even death might not be the finality in this story.  The interesting thing about this saga, both in the show and the books, is that not only is there a focus on the relevant characters — you had a knife through your heart, you died, and now you’re back — but that there is no shying away from the fact that these twists are integral to the fate of the entire Seven Kingdoms.

The wars for the Iron Throne are also, as is the case in Bangladeshi politics, history wars.

A Song of Chaos and Power 2

A friend quipped when I pointed out the parallels between Game of Thrones and Bangladesh — Wait, you telling me Hasina is Khaleesi and Khaleda is Cersei? Bhai ki deshe ferot jaben?

To anyone familiar with the show, the punchline of the ribbing is obvious.  But the joke is completely lost if one has never seen an episode.  Khaleesi is widely seen as the heroine of the show, and at least in the earlier seasons a veritable sex symbol.  Cersei, on the other hand, is the main antagonist, a bitter, manipulative woman with no regards for anyone other than herself.

You get the point my friend was making?  Good.  But — and as Ned Stark used to say, nothing before the word ‘but’ counts — this story is much more complicated than a fight between a good queen and a bad one, just as the battling begums is a sexist and inaccurate caricature of Bangladesh’s politics.  I will leave Bangladeshi politics for another time, and try to sketch out the story instead.

In the process, of course, there will be spoilers.  But to the uninitiated, this should not be a problem.  After all, we all know how the story of star-crossed lovers from feuding families end, but that does not stop us from enjoying adaptations set in Californian ganglands to the one starring Salman Shah.  I will, however, abstain from linking to the gazillion bytes of videos and blogs and discussion on the show and the books — do, or do not, indulge on your own.

A Song of Chaos and Power

Only a few more hours to go before the final season of Game of Thrones begins, and over the following six weeks life will be quite annoying for people who do not partake. A fellow Deshi political junkie friend who had never watched the show once asked me why I would recommend it — I know it’s got dragons and stuff. But that’s not my thing. Doubt you watch it for that. So, what’s the deal?

I replied that it’s a show about Bangladesh.

No really, I am not kidding. Think about it.

Once upon a time there was a legitimate, but inept, king whose misrule brought the realm to ruins. The king was killed by his own guard, and the rebels massacred most of his family. The usurper, however, proved just as unfit to rule, and before long he too was gone, triggering a vicious power struggle. Behind the scene, a shrewd, master strategist consolidated power, forging alliances of convenience. But he too was killed, along with most of the contenders for the throne. His capricious heir ascended to power, while a challenger emerged from beyond the border — the old king’s surviving daughter had assembled, in exile, a coalition of discontents and foreigners that was about to reclaim the throne.

Wait, you telling me Hasina is Khaleesi and Khaleda is Cersei? Bhai ki deshe ferot jaben?

What about he White Walkers?  They are the mullahs?

And who’s Jon Snow?

Questions followed from friends who clearly had watched the show.

Of course, I was being facetious.  But only just.  No, the show is not about Bangladesh, even though the parallels are quite uncanny.  More profound, however, is the fact that I couldn’t think of any Jon Snow, or Tyrion for that matter, parallel. None of this makes sense to anyone who hasn’t watched the show, or read the books.  Therefore, if I were to convince my friend to watch the show, or make any political points about Bangladesh, I would need to elaborate a bit more.

Ultimately, Game of Thrones, and the book series whence it’s based — A Song of Ice and Fire — is a meditation on political philosophy, political economy, and moral philosophy.  And there is sex, violence, and yes, dragons, and ice zombies.  Over the next few weeks, as winter comes to my town and the show ends, I plan to elaborate on these themes, posting here and in Facebook.

Oh, I will end the series well before the show is over.  How do I think it will end?  To quote one of the characters — If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.

Dadagiri redux

When Shashi Kapoor passed away late last year, my facebook was abuzz (or should I say alight?) with clips of mere paas maa hai.  I wanted to post my favourite Kapoor as my childhood favourite hero.  I was sad to find no clip of Kissa Kathmandu ki — Satyajit Ray’s small screen adaptation of his Feluda caper in Nepal.  Granted it wasn’t Ray’s finest, but all sorts of weird and improbable stuff can be found online, why not this, I wondered.

My mind then wandered to why Ray cast Kapoor and not Amitabh Bachchan, the only tall man in India, for the role of the towering Bengali detective?  Perhaps it was because Bachchan was by then too busy with politics.  But that leads one to wonder why Ray hadn’t made a Hindi Feluda earlier?

For that matter, why did Ray not make more Hindi movies?  It’s not like he was oblivious to Bollywood trends.  He even set one of the Feluda adventures in mid-1970s Bombay, when Bachchan was smashing box office records and the bones of villains.  In the novel, Lalmohan Ganguly is advised by Feluda about the masala that would make a blockbuster:

…. instead of one double role have a pair of double roles.  The first hero is paired against the first villain, and the hero number two and the villain number two make the second pair.  That this second pair exists isn’t revealed at the beginning…..

… need smuggling — gold, iamond, cannabis, opium, whatever; need five musical sequence, one of which should be religious; need two dance numbers; two or three chase sequences are needed, and it would be great if in at least one of which an expensive car is driven off a cliff; need a scene of inferno; need heroines against the heroes and vamps against the villains; need a police officer with integrity; need flashback of the heroes’ backstories; …. need quick changes of scenes…. ; at least couple of times the story need to be on the hills or the seaside…..

…. at the end — and this is a must — need happy ending.  But the ending would work best if it can be preceded by several tearjerkers.

Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek.  Ray wasn’t into making blockbusters.  And he explained in a number of places that he was most comfortable in his mother tongue.  But Ray was so in tune with the zeitgeist that even Enter the Dragon is channeled in that story, and I can’t help but wish he would have made the movie that would have been rishte mein toh baap to Sholay, Don, Qurbani, Tridev or Mohra.

Wonder years

Thirty years ago today, Dhaka was shut down as the opposition parties — all of them, Awami League, BNP, leftists, Jamaat — demanded the resignation of President HM Ershad.  There were meetings and rallies around the city, many turning violent.  A working class man in his mid-20s was killed around the General Post Office near Gulistan.  He had the words shoirachar nipat jak (down with autocracy) painted in his chest.  Written on his back was ganatantra mukti pak (free democracy).

Of course, there was no school that bright crispy early winter morning.  Our impromptu game of neighbourhood cricket was ended abruptly by an auntie whose window was smashed by a square cut, or perhaps it was a cover drive, or an overthrow — I don’t quite remember after all these years.  I do remember what happened next.  We rode our bikes.  We didn’t care about politics, but coming from a heavily politicised family, I knew enough to avoid going towards the city.  Instead, we gathered on the new road that was being built near our neighbourhood, and then hit the runway of the old airport.  I don’t think any of us had a watch, but even if we did, who checks the time when so much fun is being had!  Before we knew it, we were in the heart of the Cantonment, and it was around the time of the Asr prayer that we returned home.

I was reminded of the adventures of that day, and the parental wrath thus incurred, while bingeing on the latest episodes of Stranger Things.  I am told it’s not bingeing if I am watching only one season.  But I feel five hour-long episodes straight in a weeknight, starting after the day’s chores are done, counts as binge watching.  Bingeing or not, the second season of Stranger Things is even better than the first one.  And that’s quite a feat considering the hype.  Like everyone else, I had no idea about the first season before watching it, liking it instantly, even if it was, to use the show’s self-deprecation, a bit derivative.  I feared disappointment with the new season, fears that proved unjustified.  This must be how it would have felt to watch Godfather 2 or The Empire Strikes Back back then, unfiltered by the accumulated weight of pop culture now-memory.

Now-memory?  From the show.  This post will have spoilers.  Read at own risk.

The seeker of the truth

Raj, the Desi guy in the sitcom Big Bang Theory, compliments his friend’s deductions in an episode as ….a regular Byomkesh Bakshi.  Another friend quips — What’s that?  An Indian Sherlock Holmes?, drawing Raj’s retort — Perhaps Holmes is an English Byomkesh Bakshi!

Of course, Holmes predates Bakshi by decades.  And I have no idea how widely known Bakshi is outside of erstwhile Bengal.  Or even among the Bengalis for that matter — growing up, I was certainly more familiar with Satyajit Ray’s Feluda than Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s satyanweshi (the seeker of the truth).

Perhaps this has changed with the recent films coming out of Kolkata and Bollywood?

Old school spy flicks

Tired of the Batmanisation of the genre?  Well, we have had a couple of old solid gold old school spy movies of late.  Last year there was the Guy Ritchie version of a 1960s TV show.

And before that we saw the screen version of a British comics.