When will Hero Worshipping fade out in India?

[coffee_rules]

12 hours ago, Mariyam said:

This is laughable. That BD push illegals into India to raise their score on some IMF metric! The illegals that you speak about would not even be counted for the most part on any of census counts. They are people, who for all practical people, have a rootless existence.

 

15 years ago, India's per capita GDP was higher than that of BD. India had a substantially larger population than BD back then too. In those 15 years India's population has grown by about 21% as against 18% in BD. So BD has been better able to control its population growth. 

Also, Indian economy shrank by some 10% due to the impact Covid-19 ( official figures, mind you) and BD's economy actually grew marginally. 

Truth be told, they have performed better than us. To shrug it off as a scheme where they send illegals to lower our Indices is being disingenuous and not addressing the real problem on hand.

 

That said, as India's recovers in the next 1-2 years one would expect India to surpass BD on this metric.

 

Yes I was trolling, I hate that people point it that BD having higher per-capita GDP than India, when we don’t know how many are entering with no real data available. I have Bhadralok friends who says it is such a porous open border, they have homes and families in BD. Come in the morning to India to steal cows or do their business and go home to sleep in BD.  And lib crowd in India beats India with this stat that BD is doing better than India. It could be in some sectors but no need to use it for political purposes.?

[Mariyam]

On 12/20/2020 at 5:10 AM, Tibarn said:

I disagree. 

 

India just has a huge population so it makes it look like it.  If 1% of India's population is a superfan of someone, that is 10 million people: more than the population of some countries. 

 

The whole celebrity obsession culture is far stronger in the West. Look at Trump, Obama, the Clintons family, Bush family. That's just politicians. Athletes like Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady. Even losers are literally celebrities without even doing anything, like the Kardashians.  

 

Many(most?) people in India still look down on actors/actresses in my experience. The phrase nachaniyo/nachaniya doesn't exactly has a positive connotation. 

Lets leave aside the comparison to the West. That's another discussion. 

Entertainers in India have ridden on waves of popularity as a result of their onscreen exploits.

Many of the entertainers have ended up being CMs. Mainly in South India. Far too many to list. Only Kerala doesn't confirm with the trend.

Many Bollywood mainstays have made it to the Lok Sabha! Sunny Deol, Govinda, Vinod Khanna, Dharmendra and a few more.

A fair few have made it to the Rajya Sabha.

They are routinely called on to campaign.

If we are to count cricketers/singers/ TV stars as entertainers, we can add a dozen odd more names to the mix.

 

Does this indicate hero worship? Probably not. But does indicate immense popularity!

 

"Nachaniya" has negative connotations, but that is when you want to derisively address this lot. In normal parlance you'd call them "kalakaar" or "funkaar".

[Tibarn]

22 hours ago, Mariyam said:

Entertainers in India have ridden on waves of popularity as a result of their onscreen exploits.

Many of the entertainers have ended up being CMs. Mainly in South India. Far too many to list. Only Kerala doesn't confirm with the trend.

Many Bollywood mainstays have made it to the Lok Sabha! Sunny Deol, Govinda, Vinod Khanna, Dharmendra and a few more.

A fair few have made it to the Rajya Sabha.

They are routinely called on to campaign.

If we are to count cricketers/singers/ TV stars as entertainers, we can add a dozen odd more names to the mix.

 

Does this indicate hero worship? Probably not. But does indicate immense popularity!

"Entertainers" are popular everywhere. No one denies such people are popular in India as well. However, their popularity doesn't equal hero worship, and electoral success of actors/actresses or "entertainers" isn't necessarily because of their own popularity. It would be a stretch if one were to say so. Entertainers have some non-zero marginal popularity that could possibly help turnout and that helps win elections to some degree(add some non-zero amount of votes), but the vast majority of people mostly vote for their party/issues important to them/their leaders. 

 

I haven't seen any evidence that any of those entertainers who have won Lok Sabha elections massively moved the needle in their elections, certainly not to the extent that anyone can justify the idea that Indian people hero-worship to any significant degree more than non-Indians. People like, for example, Gambhir or Paresh Rawal won elections on seats that the BJP already won before. If they both resign tomorrow and there is a special election for those seats, the BJP would likely win anyway. It is the same for other parties as well whether during state or central elections. 

 

Rajya Sabha MPs aren't elected by the people themselves. They are mostly political selections which just make up numbers in that monstrosity of a body. People who wouldn't otherwise get elected anywhere difficult, such as ManMohan Singh, randomly win from and represent Assam in that chamber.  If the logic that actors get elected to RS due to their popularity is extended to include other RS nominees, like Singh, it would mean that he has some underlying popularity in Assam. I think that is a big leap. 

 

Furthermore, using "South India" as a reference point, I doubt "South India" votes/voted for actors primarily/or even significantly on account of their "art." Some of these actors were groomed within their parties before they ever rose up the ranks to leadership, like Jaya. Others founded parties themselves and had to show actual work before anyone elected them to significant positions, ie TDP and NTR. This again points to people supporting their party/issues important to them.   The fact that some people were at one point entertainers and then get involved in politics doesn't lead to the conclusion that they succeeded in politics because they were entertainers. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Tibarn