Man Vs Machine - Who will win this race?

It was a beautiful evening and after doing all my chores it was time to relax a bit. I had the evening to myself as my brother had gone to his college, preparing for his impending exams. I prepared my lunch and played the movie, Naya Daur, the Dvd of which I got from the library yesterday. This was the new colored version of the 1957 Dilip Kumar-Vyjayanthimala classic.

My favourite song from the movie, Uden Jab Jab Zulfein tere

The movie was released 10 years after India's independence, when the country was going through a transition phase. India was struggling between the Industrialization of the country vs. the human factor which is the main resource of this vast country. The story like most Indian stories was also about friendship, love, jealousy, family and faith. But like most stories of that era, the movie raised some questions and surprisingly most of those questions are still relevant. The questions about man vs. machine, growing India vs. forgotten India, progress vs. human cost of that progress. As India is growing these questions are becoming more and more important. Questions which cannot be ignored if the progress has to be real.

Uden Jab Jab Zulfein tere in Black and White

Recently there have been lot of news about vegetable hawkers and small store owners threating the new organized retail sector to close down their stores. In some cases they have been successful because the Government is worried about their vote bank. The question is, who is right? Are the big corporations like Reliance ethical in opening vegetable marts across that country, where they can leverage their power to bring down the prices? Or are the vegetable hawkers wrong in closing down these big chains rather than competing with them on equal terms? What about the consumers, do they prefer buying their vegetables after some bargaining and getting some dhania for free or do they prefer to go into air-conditioned shops and buy the freshest vegetables at lowest prices?

The movie is about two friends who get divided by the same girl they fall in love with. The movie takes a dramatic turn when the village which is solely dependent on the forest industry and tongas (horse carts) for taking the passengers of the local train to the villages nearby, encounters machines. In the movie, son of the landlord of that area returns from the city and brings with him machines to replace people in sawmills. Suddenly half of the village is unemployed and the rest of the village, the tonga-wallas, face the same fate when the landlord decides to ply a bus to take train passengers to the village. Protagonist of the movie, Dilip Kumar's character, goes to meet the landlord's son to settle the isue.


Rest of the story surprised me for a very different reason. Second part of the movie was eerily similar to the movie Lagaan. Replace the Britishers in Lagaan with landlord's son, replace the Aamir Khan's Bhuvan with Dilip Kumar's Shankar, replace the cricket match with race between a tonga and the bus, and there you have essentially the same movie. I am surprised that not many reviewers were able to catch the similarity. The scene where Bhuvan accepts the bet is exactly same as Shankar taking the bet from landlord for the race. The climax cricket match with the whole village watching is again eerily similar to climax race between tonga and the bus. Ashutosh should be commended for taking the story and moulding it very smartly. But the credit for the story should goto the original writers and B R Chopra for portraying such a forward-thinking story with the backdrop of rustic village life, which brings me to another related question. Why have the so-called Bollywood moved away from the story of villages.

For a country where 70% of the population is still living in villages, its an irony that only two significant movies, Swades and Lagaan, have been village based in recent times. Is it because 30% of India is now earning more than the 70%? A cinema which had its heart in the villages of India is now catering to the NRI audience while conveniently forgetting the same people that supported it all this while. It seems the progress in Hindi Cinema has left behind the forgotten-ones. The thought makes the movie Naya Daur even more ironic. It seems men (and women) with money, foreign visas and machines have left behind the men with the plough once and for all.