Unfortunately, visiting museums in NYC is not cheap. Most museums charge non-nominal admission fees. Paying to get into the MoMA, for example, can set you back $ 20 per ticket. A valid student ID usually gets you a considerable discount, and it’s worth carrying one around everywhere. Other museums have systems that are more annoying than the admission fee. The Met (which is really a nice museum) makes you pay, what it euphemistically calls, a “recommended donation”. It “recommends” that adults pay $ 25, students pay $ 12 and seniors pay $ 17. I must add here that the effectiveness of this “recommendation” is inversely proportional to the thickness of your skin. To enter the Met, you have to stand in a long line, at the end of which you give your money to a snooty-looking Met employee, who hands you a colored button that allows you to enter the museum. Believe me, it takes very thick skin and enormous self confidence (or extreme penury – this is my excuse) to stand in that line and tell the snooty person at the end of it that you want to disregard their “recommendation” and pay only 5 cents. In theory you can, but in practice most people end up paying at least $ 10.

I find that every time I go to the Met, I am inclined to pay them less. I started with $ 12, and am now down to $ 2.5. This is because the Met is an ostentatiously rich museum. It really doesn’t need your money. They are also very smart, these Met people. They change the color of the button everyday, so you can’t re-use it to re-enter the Met on another day. The buttons have become something of a tourist souvenir now, so keep yours! The button also allows you to visit the Cloisters, which is managed by the Met administration, but is located further away in Fort Tyron Park. The Cloisters are lovely and you should go if you can. If you’re at the Met, you should also see the view of NYC from its roof. It’s spectacular.

Museums are cheap if you plan your trips well. Almost all NYC museums have a few hours a week when they don’t charge an entrance fee. If you know that time for the museum of your choice, you can show up then. But lines are always longer, so come well in time. In summers, there is a Museum Mile festival, where participating museums offer free entry. Again, lines are long, but it’s worth it. If you subscribe to a service like groupon.com, you can often get a very good deal for museum tickets. Many museums are also covered by the NYC Pass, if you bought it. And finally, if you know I-Bankers, you should visit museums with them. They inevitably have free access to the best museums in the city by virtue of the large donations provided by their employers. It is ironic that NYC museums are only free to the one demographic that can actually afford $ 20 to stare at pretty pictures – investment bankers.    

In any event, it’s generally worth checking a museum out online before going, because buying tickets online is always faster and sometimes cheaper. Often, you can get really lucky and realize that a special exhibit is running. Recently, the Met was exhibiting a selection of Alexander McQueen’s designs. It was excellent, though the lines to get in were long. The museums also have really nice gift shops. I often spend as much time in the gift shop as I do in the museum. It’s full of stuff you will never use, but cannot resist: e.g. postcards featuring B-grade movie posters with titles like “Redneck Zombies”. I’m not sure what to do with them, but I bought a pack of 100.   

I’m going to quickly end by pointing out that true museum lovers should consider Washington D.C. The Smithsonian Museums are as good as, and sometimes better, than what NYC has to offer. It helps that they are free, and are surrounded by all of D.C.’s gorgeous memorials and monuments. D.C. is a 4.5 hour bus ride away from NYC. It’s worth taking a weekend trip there sometime.

 Visiting the ESB is not fun at all, I found it distinctly un-enjoyable. Ideally, you should buy your tickets online. It’s $ 20 for a view from the 86^th floor and $ 37 for a view from the 102^nd floor (cheaper if you’re a student). Having bought both these tickets several times, I can assure you that there really isn’t any difference between the views. You can get in cheaper if you buy some version of the New York Pass, which gets you discounted entry into a whole bunch of New York’s tourist attractions. The Pass itself isn’t cheap, but if you plan to visit everything included in it, I guess it is a great deal. 

There is usually a long line to get into the ESB. Somewhere inside the building itself, the line forces you to go through a booth that takes a very cheesy picture of you with a mock-ESB in the background. Of course, you can buy this at a very unreasonable price if you want to. There is a bar on the 86^th floor, also exorbitantly priced. Getting to the top is quite the anti-climax: you wait for a long while to get in, you look, and then its time to get back down. The best part of the ESB for me was the guy who was manning the elevator (it’s America and I’m being authentic, so I’m not going to say lift). He spent the elevator ride up to the 86^th floor guessing where each person was from, and then greeting them very inappropriately in what he considered a native language. So I was greeted in “Indian” with a “namaste” and my Pakistani friend was told “arabs like salaam”. We smiled politely. Many people, I’ve realized, assume all Indians speak Indian.   

The ESB is located very close to shopping-friendly areas of New York, for those interested. Korea Town is also close-by, where you can access all form of Korean food and entertainment. In summers, it’s a nice place to munch on NY’s street food offerings. On my first visit to New York, my friends insisted I eat a pretzel. A pretzel is … well … it is odd tasting, salty bread. And there is limit to how good that can taste. But if you eat meat, New York street food has a lot more to offer – hot dogs, knishes, chicken on rice. People take street food quite seriously, and track the trucks that serve the best food. See http://newyorkstreetfood.com/. And it’s all cheap. In my first week here, I bought ice-cream from a truck very close to the ESB. I was there with friends, and we asked the ice-cream man for a recommendation.

 He said “It will depend on where you’re from. Different races have different preferences”.

 “Races?” we asked.

 “Oh yes,” he said “You – you are Indian”. I nodded. “You will like the choco-nut ice-cream”. He pointed to a vile looking ice-cream that was doused in copious amounts of chocolate sauce and nuts.

“And you” he said, “You are Chinese?” “Umm no, Korean” said my friend. “Aah yes, of course, good. Koreans like everything. You will like everything”.

 “And what about me?” asked my third friend, “I’m Croatian”. “Croatians like the rainbow split” he was told. The Rainbow Split is a multi-colored, radio-active-looking ice-cream. It looked a little poisonous.

 Much to the ice-cream man’s disappointment, we ordered two vanillas.

 I personally find looking at the ESB more fun than looking at New York from on top of it. It lights up in different colors everyday. Its red and green on Christmas; blue on the day of Columbia’s graduation and purple on the day of NYU’s graduation; on the day of Pride, it is rainbow colored; red on Chinese New Year … you get the general idea. On their website, they post a list of all the colors for the month, if you want to keep a look out. On August 15^th, they make it tri-colored. It is really quite lovely! And if you really like great views of New York, you can visit any number of nice roof-top bars where you get similar views. The view from the top of the Metropolitan Museum is spectacular as well, far better than anything from the ESB.

Walking is a great option in good weather. Unlike most parts of America, New York actually has a culture of walking. You won’t find yourself alone doing it (as you would in, for example, Charlotte N.C. where you’ll find yourself the only pedestrian). In winters, however, New York’s sky-scrapers act as funnels for cold winds moving in from the river, making walking around the city close to impossible. New York in the winter feels colder than Boston in the winter, which is saying something. Of course, in some parts of New York (especially mid-town Manhattan and the Financial District), you want to show no hesitation as you walk around. People are whizzing past you; if you stop walking to gain your bearings, you will probably cause a minor road accident. People walking behind you will inevitably bump into you, drop coffee on you, curse you and wonder loudly how you dared to walk the streets of New York without knowing where you were going. Not the place for a relaxing amble.    

Taxis are another option. In New York, the yellow cab is reasonably affordable and easily available. But you have to tip – 10 percent or 15 percent. Or the driver will very likely curse you a little bit. This tipping culture, as I found, is omni-present in the U.S. The cab isn’t yellow, however, in upper Manhattan or even in Brooklyn. They start to appear in different colors. Cab drivers are often delightful people. This one time I paid up and got out of a cab with a lot of luggage when it was snowing, and accidentally tripped on something because the road had not been cleared. The cab driver leapt out of the cab, and handed me his card saying, “You can sue the city – here is my card, I’ll be your witness”. Small comfort if you’re lying in the snow with your luggage strewn around you, but helpful nonetheless!

If you don’t like to walk, and don’t want to cab anywhere, you could always take a train. New York’s subway system is prompt, effective and, for USD 2.25 a ride, can take you almost anywhere you want to go. Unlimited travel passes, issued by New York’s MTA, are probably the most inexpensive and convenient. Bear in mind, however, that the subway system is very counter-intuitive for someone not used to it. I’ve often believed that subway systems should have a law: if you get in at stop A, you should be able to get out at stop B with x number of changes. Boston’s T works that way, as does London’s Tube for the most part. Not so for New York. Here you could get in at a particular stop and never get close to where you want to go, despite how many times you change trains. While on a train in New York, you often need to know whether you want to go ‘uptown’ or ‘downtown’. Without this crucial piece of information, you could easily spend valuable travel-card money getting on to the wrong platform and be unable to access the right one. Also, knowing the name of your stop often isn’t enough. Different subway lines have stops by the same name. I think there are 4 stops on different lines, each un-helpfully called “125 street”, all of which take you to different parts of the city. Similarly, New York has many Church Avenues stops, several 7^th Avenue stops, the list goes on. The same travel card works for the buses. But buses aren’t my favorite because they are slow, and almost always get caught in traffic. Sometimes however, the bus is unavoidable. If you want to cross Central Park, for example, you’ll need to take a bus. No train to my knowledge does so. 

I’m going to end by clarifying that I did not spend my first days in New York only exploring transport options (as this blog might suggest): I also did other mundane things like figure out how to get to work, buy groceries, and iron my clothes. I did however buy a monthly unlimited travel pass for the subway for USD 104, to prepare me for the upcoming weeks.

Craigslist.com is my personal favorite, but not because it is more effective – its not. It’s my favorite because nothing can prepare you for the shock of living in NYC like craigslist.com can. My own experiences have been relatively tame; but my friends have been swindled, been proposed to, been re-united with childhood friends, been stalked. Going through a craigslist experience is pretty life-changing! For the fainthearted, airbnb.com is probably better. At least it has a system by which your money is secured because they charge a USD 65 service fee. Also, airbnb.com allows its users to post online reviews of places, so if you sub-let a place with good reviews, then you’re doing pretty well.

Other thoughts on housing in New York (this obviously does not apply to you if you have a nice Wall Street type job and a broker manages housing for you):

1. Sub-letting is cheaper than hostels are. Even stuff like the YMCA.
2. Always go house hunting in the evening. New York neighborhoods change dramatically when the sun starts to set.
3. DO NOT pay people without having seen the house and the person you are paying. This may seem obvious, but several people forget this annually and get swindled.
4. You’ll have to share a bathroom. For some reason, New York houses are rarely built with a 1:1 bedroom-bathroom ratio.
5. Keep a look out for the closest Laundromat and dry-cleaners. Unlike the rest of the U.S., New York actually has a service economy that is affordable.

I followed this process this year. I had done so last year as well, with disastrous results. Against all advice, I found a room in upper-upper-upper Manhattan – fondly known as Spanish Harlem (the inspiration for the song, yes) – on 161^st street. Harlem has a curious reputation in popular culture: simultaneously known for its high-immigrant population, being the epicenter of African-American history and culture, and its high crime-rate. As loathe as I am to give in to stereo-types, I’m afraid that all these are very true. Harlem is lovely – every street is a lesson in American history. It houses the famous Apollo Theatre, the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the excellent Studio Museum of Harlem (more on this later). However, someone also got stabbed 17 times outside my kitchen window, in my first weekend after I moved into the area last year. I’m not joking. I fearfully asked someone around the scene of crime if this was normal. They told me: “Dun worry hun, they wanted him. They don’ stab no one 17 times if they not want him”. “They” was presumably some organized crime network in the area. Not too comforting.

Of course this was an aberration – I don’t mean at all to suggest that vicious stabbings are a routine part of life in Spanish Harlem (in fact, the rest of my summer passed without accident) – I’m only suggesting that should any of you want to live there, please be careful, that’s all.

This summer therefore, after much deliberation, I chose to live in Brooklyn, one of NYC’s five constituent boroughs (more on Brooklyn later). I found a place near Prospect Park (Brooklyn’s answer to Central Park), about 2 minutes away from the park, in a very Caribbean neighborhood. My room mate was a life-long Brooklyn resident who owned the house, was a vegan massage therapist who worked in a food-cooperative and swore by organic food. Here I began to settle down for my 90 day stay.

My primary motivation for writing this series is my recent realization that that I have spent a lot of time – and I mean a LOT of time – thinking about what to do in NYC. And about how to do it all at the lowest possible cost. Often, after having accomplished something particularly arduous (say, for example, waiting in line for free tickets to a Shakespeare in the Park performance for about 11 hours), I thought how much easier it would have been if people had told me the basics. Obvious information that no “Official Site” or “10 things to do in New York” list provides, but anyone who has actually done the thing in question would no doubt know. Equally often, someone passed along a gem – something truly spectacular to do in this city, and I feel it my karmic duty to pass it on.

New York is a wonderful city. No number of episodes of Sex and the City, How I Met your Mother, Gossip Girl, Friends, Will and Grace, 30 Rock (take your pick really) does the city justice, but they all provide a pretty great sense of what being here is like. As I discovered in my time here, it would be very hard to be bored in New York. You would have to try to be bored. If you are at all like me – enamored by the idiosyncrasies of American life – it would be even harder. 

This summer is my second summer as a poor, interning, foreign student in New York. Meaning, therefore, that I have done the preliminary round of tourist-like things: have seen the Statue of Liberty, have visited the MoMA and the Met, been blinded and had a migraine because of the shiny lights of Time Square, have seen the Empire State Building (to my eternal shame, I have paid for and climbed this monument at least thrice in recent memory), gawked at the Brooklyn bridge, gone to the Top of the Rock. NYC Pass would be proud of me. But one summer really isn’t enough, and I left last year thinking that there was a lot more I would like to do.

I must also warn anyone bothering to read this that I am very much of an easy-going generalist when it comes to travel and exploration. I enjoy watching a musical, eating a nice meal, the occasional jazz concert, wearing pretty clothes, experiencing a baseball game, walking through New York’s many parks. I do not follow any form of sport, music, or food obsessively. I say this because I have plenty of friends who find my hours of tireless research into what NYC has to offer endearing but useless. They are the cynics (those who are generally tired of all forms of travel and exploration, and would like nothing more than to bum around) and the experts (who know everything there is to know about some narrow sphere of human activity – movies, fashion, music, drinking – and really don’t care about anything else).

My following posts are therefore a carefully compiled list of what I did, what other people did, and what could have been done in the three months that I spent in New York.

In this piece, I set out an agenda for 2011: I list what issues are likely to come before the U.N.S.C. in 2011 and what India can and should do about them. While doing so, I keep in mind that the U.N.S.C. today is a largely discredited body, and it is in India’s interests that its efficacy and legitimacy are revived; that India’s 2-year stint in the U.N.S.C. is crucial to its future ambitions for permanency; and that every decision India makes in the U.N.S.C. is a delicate balancing act between its own interests, the interests of the world community and the interests of the powers (the P-5) who control chances of future U.N. reform.

Iran: Sanctions against Iran have been on the U.N.S.C. agenda for a while now, and recently a fourth resolution authorising sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme was passed. While sanctions against Iran generally enjoy the support of the P-5, increasingly the international community doubts the efficacy of a sanctions programme in reducing Iran’s production of fuel. The other option is increasing diplomatic contact, like Brazil has recently done. Furthermore, the recent NPT review conference in May 2010 demonstrated considerable global support for a WMD-free-zone in the Middle East, which many believe is a better way to regulate the Iranian nuclear programme. India has great interest in Iran – it has for long been a major importer of Iranian goods, has publicly stated that Iran enjoys the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy, and requires Iranian cooperation to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean. However India also voted against Iran in the IAEA. The question of g Iran will come before the U.N.S.C. in the next two years. It would be in India’s interests to develop alternatives to sanctions, and successfully engage Iran diplomatically.

Burma: After much resistance from China, and often Russia, the question of Burma was put on the U.N.S.C. agenda recently. The U.N. has turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the military junta, and India’s complicity in this has been nothing short of shameful. It has increased trade ties with Burma, and consistently opposed U.N. scrutiny of events in the country. Many suggest that protecting Burma helps India keep its relations with China intact. But given that the E.U. and U.S. both condemn junta actions, the Indian position is curious. The elections recently held in Burma were largely farcical, and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi was the only positive development. If and when the question of Burma comes before the U.N.S.C., India should demand accountability from the junta for its actions.

The Middle-East: Yet another issue sure to come before the U.N.S.C. in 2011 is the conflict in the middle-east, particularly the Israel-Palestine question. 2011 is crucial as it is Abbas’ stated year for declaring independence. Thus far, there have been many attempts to conduct peace-talks between the two sides, but the question of the West Bank and Israeli aggression have led to road-blocks. Under Nehru, India supported the Palestinian cause. More recently however we have begun to deepen our defense and security ties with Israel, and are the largest buyer of Israeli arms. The morality of such trade aside, at the U.N.S.C., it is important for India to be able to disassociate its personal gains from trade with Israel, and take a strong stand on issues that thwart the peace process such as speaking out against Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.

Institution-Building: Institution building is slowly becoming a big part of U.N.S.C. activity. The internal functioning of the U.N.S.C. has come under much criticism because of its lack of efficacy, accountability and transparency. India can go a long way in lobbying for change in these areas. For example, peace-keeping is a U.N.S.C. function of great importance to India, as India is the third-largest contributor of peace-keeping forces globally. U.N. peace-keeping strategy is a mess – as the recent, continuing debacle in the D.R.C. demonstrates. The efficacy and legitimacy of the U.N.S.C. could be greatly bolstered if peace-keeping forces were more accountable, if the U.N. allied more regional organizations (particularly in Africa), and if better exit-strategies were negotiated.

In addition to the issues mentioned above, there are many others likely to come before the U.N.S.C. in 2011 – non-proliferation, terrorism, Sudan and the Côte d’Ivoire (particularly relevant given India’s increased stake in Africa). Dealing with each of these in detail is impossible. However, a lot is at stake. In conclusion, the rule of thumb for India at the U.N.S.C. in 2011 should involve the following considerations: on the one hand, Indian interests must be balanced against what is good for the world community; on the other hand, blindly aping the policies of one great power to garner their support for a permanent seat must be balanced against taking principled, independent stands on important issues.

I recently learned that when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] was being drafted in the 1940s, UNESCO commissioned a project which asked the world’s best-known philosophers the following question: How is an agreement conceivable among men who come from the four corners of the earth and who belong not only to different cultures and civilisations, but to different spiritual families and antagonistic schools of thought? While the existence of the UDHR might make us believe that these philosophers managed to find some common ground, the sad truth is that the report submitted was ultimately shelved because (surprise!) no agreement could be reached on what ‘common convictions’ and ‘universal values’ the world shared. Gandhi was one of the philosophers consulted by this project.

Even in the 1940s, when the world was obsessed with the emerging ‘rights-discourse’, Gandhi’s contribution is unique because of its emphasis on duties. Gandhi disagreed with the rhetoric of rights – at a national and international level – and much preferred a discourse couched in the language of duties. What is most fascinating is that he went beyond the obvious correlation between human rights and state duties, and emphasised the duties of individuals. In other contexts Gandhi argued that the “Rights of Man” be replaced with a “Charter of Duties” and said that “a duty well performed creates a corresponding right”. Of course, the UDHR is testament to the fact that his suggestions were not popular at that time.

The idea of duties in the international human rights discourse has gained great currency in recent times. Most obvious is the emergence of the norm of the responsibility to protect, which suggests that states may act to prevent gross violations of human rights within the boundaries of other states. Interestingly, even Gandhi’s emphasis on the duties of non-state actors in the context of human rights protection is becoming more relevant. International law is progressively realising the inefficacy of promoting global human rights without regulating the conduct of crucial non-state actors. We hear noises about corporate accountability for rights violations, individual criminal liability for rights violations, the responsibility of armed groups and ‘belligerents’ in times of war, duties of peacekeepers and human rights defenders. Recently adopted regional instruments – such as the African Charter for Human Rights – provide for clearly delineated individual duties. The InterAction Council recently went so far as to suggest a draft ‘Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities’.

Yes, some of these developments are problematic. Some aim to subvert the central principle of state sovereignty while others raise concerns about a new-age imperialism in international law. It is also possible that the impact of these developments today will be far removed from what Gandhi envisaged in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the interest in this field demonstrates that while Gandhi’s emphasis on the duties of the individual may have been ignored in the 1940s, there is no doubt that it is a ‘hot’ topic in international human rights today. As is true in many spheres of human activity, it is evident that Gandhi understood the stakes and debates in the project of universalising human rights better than most.

At the outset, I admit that I have a very limited training in economics. However, some advantages of CCTs are obvious. Giving indigent families cash conditional on specified actions provides a strong incentive to change behaviour. It can be argued that CCTs might be more successful than past governmental incentive systems – like the mid-day meal scheme to incentivize education – as it gets to the core of the problem. Children aren’t sent to school because they work to make money; mothers don’t access pre and post natal care because they can’t afford it. Similarly, it appears as though CCTs allow the state to precisely target the group/ policy it wants to. If successful, CCTs can ensure something as specific as better immunisation records for dalit children in Andhra Pradesh. People have also argued that the benefits of CCTs have a better chance of reaching intended beneficiaries than other government welfare schemes like subsidies. And finally, there is the most obvious reason: as CCTs are a part of the World Bank’s scheme of things, there is a greater chance of attracting aid for CCT-based human development projects.

However, this is only one side of the story, and some disadvantages of CCT-based programs are equally obvious in the Indian context.

First, and most patently, there is the problem of corruption. An advantage of in-kind benefits (such as food grains and mid-day meals) is that the chance of the benefit getting siphoned off to corrupt officers is lower than if the benefit in question is cash. Second, CCTs require a lot of infrastructure to be successful. Beneficiaries need to be documented, correctly identified, need to have bank accounts and easily accessible biometric data. Much of this is unavailable in India. Third, the ultimate success of CCTs depends on the quality of service providers available. If cash transfers are made conditional on children going to bad schools or visiting bad hospitals, the CCT program would have failed. Sadly, rural education and health care in India is far from adequate. Four, monitoring and evaluation is crucial to the success of CCT programs. There is virtually no effort in this area in the Indian context to my knowledge. If anyone reading this piece has information on the monitoring and evaluation of social welfare programs in India, I’d be grateful if you brought it to my notice. Five, monetary incentives will not help to alleviate all the problems faced by marginalised communities in India. Caste-based inequality and skewed gender ratios, for example, aren’t sourced in monetary considerations as much as years of entrenched prejudice and discrimination. Therefore, proving cash-based incentives to remedy these problems may not meet with much success.

My intention in this post is not to be unduly critical. CCTs may well represent a novel and useful method to ensure social welfare and protect the interests of minority groups in India. However, it is important to pursue such programs with caution and only after the pre-requisites for success are in place.

I saw Dabangg last weekend and was completely blown away. That seems to be the consensus amongst the thousands of people who have seen the film, including very many who would not be the typical target audience for a Bollywood-Salman-Action film.

I have read multiple reviews of the film in popular media with words like “paisa wasool” and “mass-entertainer” have been used whilst maintaining that though the film would be a financial behemoth it lacks somewhat in the script/storytelling department. And a particular reviewer scoffed at it and said that a film wearing its origins so blatantly could have added a separate treatment a la Om Shanti Om (OSO).

While OSO was a fun film and also arguably some pretty good film making – I would not sell Dabangg short at all. I think it was far superior.

Dabangg is a genre film.

And it is a spectacular genre film. I have seen all the action films of the 80s and love the glory of Suneil Shetty-Akshay Kumar era of the mid 90s. And while they helped set the parameters of a genre: Dabangg revelled in it.

Anurag Kashyap said it would be a film Tarantino made. People scoff because in this case he is hardly an un-biased party. But I agree with him.

A genre film is one which keeps a strong pace while touching every milestone set out in the genre. It takes some very very good storytelling to do that without losing the plot.

And most importantly: a genre film is judged by the rules of the genre.

Here is why it is a much better piece of “cinema” than people would agree right away:

** Serious Spoilers Ahead **

1. It has a plot. There are heroes and villains and relationships between some protagonists change during the course of the film. The romance was done well and smartly and effectively. Serving to further fill in the character of Mr. Chulbul Pandey. He is fearless (duh) and is driven by an enormous ego and a twisted sense of honour. This is all we need as an audience. He is pissed off and feels the whole world owes him something – the background of which was etched very cleanly. We never question why he feels this way…

2. Again in the plot the character motivations seem clean and not terribly convoluted. The step-brother’s character was confused and wandering: but he is supposed to be a jellyfish and his pre-climax over compensation seems apt. The step-father does a 180 towards the end but at that time he is vulnerable and the reconciliation happens because he sees Chulbul no longer as a threat (he probably hates him for being better than his own son, and fears what would happen when he dies) but as a support. The heroine loves Chulbul because he is an alpha male where she is surrounded by men she had to take care of her whole life (drunken dad, handicapped brother). And Dimple did a kick-ass job as a mother torn down the middle. We don’t need 30 minute dialogue heavy scenes to get  it. We are a smart audience. A 45 second scene is enough to establish relationships.

The mother torn between sons is done better here than in Deewar and Ram Lakhan and so many other “genre” films.

3. Again on plotting: all the cannons are shot. I cannot emphasize this enough: from the inhaler and the asthma, to the money stolen at the bank heist (forming such a huge plot pivot – almost a macguffin), even the explanation for the sunglasses (which we were all wondering about) there was an attention to detail here sorely missing in many other films.

4. Subtlety in storytelling. Now you are wondering if we even saw the same film!

- Sonakshi’s nervous almost sub-conscious adjustment of her pallu on her shoulders when Salman is talking to her – its glorious. She feels naked in his glare: and we see that. (Again very different from the gratuitous almost exploitative stance taken during Sallu’s last hit: Wanted)

-  A hilarious abroad song shoot (it would have been Australia or Switzerland for a Yash Raj film – here it was Dubai because that is where a corrupt cop from small town UP would go for his honeymoon!) which helped build the characters

4. This film knew its genre and exploited it. We got all the one-liners we could want (Salman only spoke in those), we got 2-3 liquor drenched songs with the requiste pelvic thrusts, well choreographed fight sequences (phone ringing mid fight was a touch of genius; also the song is from Wanted), right touch of sentimentality (the sunglasses hiding tears was very effective) and the requisite touch of the bizarre (the weird photographer guy).

5. Salman was shirtless only once in the film. We knew it was coming – it was just a question of the when and the how. I don’t think anyone could have written that part better. This was better than anything Takashi Miike could come up with.

It is a clean reference to the Super-Heroism of the heroes of the genre (like a certain green guy who we will not like angry). That worked better than the hero surviving explosions and multiple gunshots.

The simplest stories are the toughest to tell. Genre stories even more so.

Every character served their purpose (even Om Puri and Anupam Kher in short cameos) and character motivations are clear and we get spirited along to the inevitable ending.

Nothing in the film is by chance, and it has been put together very consciously and very carefully. So carefully in fact that you almost don’t notice.

That is great storytelling and great cinema.

A brief note about the U.P.R. before moving to India’s specific engagement with it: The U.P.R. was introduced to reduce the selectivity and politicisation in the working of the Human Rights Council’s predecessor body, the Commission for Human Rights. It is designed such that each state in the UN will have its human rights records reviewed once every four years. The review is based on compliance with the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights instruments to which the State is party, voluntary pledges and commitments made by States, and applicable international humanitarian law.  The review will include documents submitted by states to the Council, reports by the OHCHR and ‘credible and reliable information provided by other relevant stakeholders’ which has been read to include civil society actors. The implementation of U.P.R. recommendations is left up to each state, though the Human Rights Council has the authority to ‘address as appropriate, cases of persistent non-cooperation with the mechanism’.  The two most important features of the U.P.R. are, to my mind, the introduction state-to-state peer review in the context of human rights, and a periodic self reflection by each state on its human rights law compliance.

India was last reviewed in 2008. The National Report, submitted on 6^th March, 2008 by the government, is notable for the complete non-mention of any serious human rights problem the country is facing. It reads instead like a school civics textbook with historical anecdotes about how the constitution was adopted and what DPSPs are, while doing token lip-service to the many institutions that have been created to account for the needs of ‘minorities’.

More meaty is the submission by the OHCHR and civil society groups – they mention inter alia how India has still not signed many crucial human rights conventions, has still not implemented the few it has signed, has not complied with several UN treaty special procedures, has retained the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990, while caste-based discrimination still exists, religious minorities still face persecution, stigmatization and marginalization and the trafficking of women and children is rampant. 42 countries commented during India’s 2008 review, and many recommendations were made.

Now, many commentators would say that the Indian government’s reluctance to engage in a real and substantive exercise of self reflection on its human rights practices is realistic, and perhaps even justified, for several reasons. Many others argue (more legitimately) that the U.P.R. itself is flawed for many reasons, and this is true. However I argue that, despite truth in the latter argument, taking the U.P.R. seriously is a worthwhile enterprise for India in 2012 for several reasons.

First, quite simply, having a strong human rights record is a good thing in itself. It is part of what governments should do for their citizens. People have recently taken this argument a step further and said that human rights are important in a country’s foreign policy , and are part of the ‘national interest’ emphasised by international relations scholars and political science theorists. Secondly, with a show of good faith vis-a-vis its human rights record, the Indian government can actually build strong bonds with civil society groups that work on aspects of rights-protection, thus ultimately reducing its compliance burden. Thirdly, having a good human rights record and demonstrating compliance with existing norms is important from the point of view of eventually getting elected to the Human Rights Council itself. Increasingly, countries with bad records are losing elections for the few coveted spots on this body. The U.P.R. is now a requirement for all UN member states, and India is already criticized in the international community for its poor record on international human rights law. Taking the U.P.R. seriously would help remedy this. Fourthly, several treaties that India is signatory to have similar reporting mechanisms that India has persistently defaulted on. Engaging in one, solid stock taking exercise every 4 years will allow us to fulfil other requirements as well. And finally, I firmly believe (contrary to many realist readings of international relations today) that a country with a good record of compliance with international law gains tangible, reputational advantages in the international sphere for this reason alone.

What then should we do?  Most importantly, we should begin a serious enquiry into how, and to what extent, we have implemented the recommendations that came out of our 2008 U.P.R. Furthermore, there is space in the U.P.R. process today for ‘voluntary pledges’, or obligations that states can take upon themselves to improve their  human rights record. Again, this is something we should give serious thought to. Finally, we have the option of starting early and engaging constructively with the various stake-holders involved in human rights protection in our country. The U.S. recently submitted their U.P.R. National Report and – while much is wrong with current American human rights policy – before the final submission, the government held a series of conferences all across the country, collaborating with civil society groups and academicians.

Unfortunately, all of this is time-intensive and requires some serious political will. The 2012 U.P.R. – for it many flaws – presents a valuable opportunity for the government today. Hopefully the government will make the most of it.