New Delhi: With Dhurandhar: The Revenge smashing box office records this month, following the blockbuster success of the movie’s first part, which was released last December, The Economist highlights that it is seen as propaganda for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The films have near-perfect viewer ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, a review-aggregation website. Critics are less enthused. Just 35% liked the first movie and 43% the second. Their view is that the films are undisguised propaganda—not for the government or even the ruling party but for Narendra Modi himself,” it says.
“Despite the films’ combined 7.5-hour runtime, the plot can be summarised in one paragraph.”
The report states that the movie is essentially about an undercover agent who is sent to infiltrate the criminal gangs of Karachi in Pakistan, and then spends the second part of the movie avenging the “humiliation after humiliation” that India faced in the form of terror attacks.
The report underlines the shift towards propaganda movies in Hindi cinema ever since the Modi-led BJP came to power in 2014. “Hits include The Kashmir Files, which dramatised the violent expulsion of Hindus from the Kashmir valley, and The Kerala Story, about gullible Hindu girls manipulated by handsome Muslim men into converting to Islam,” it says.
“There is only one hero in this film, and it is not the undercover agent,” it adds about Dhurandhar, noting that the loudest cheers came when Modi’s footage featured on the big screen.
“In Dhurandhar the enemies are everywhere: Pakistanis, of course, but also Indian opposition parties, Muslim butchers, Sikh separatists, NGOs, and lefties,” says the report.
It, however, cautions against dismissing the movie as propaganda. “Its genius is to reflect the world many Indians, browbeaten by years of shrill pro-Modi messaging on TV news and social media, already believe to be real,” The Economist asserts.
The New York Times reports that Elon Musk also participated in last week’s phone call between US President Donald Trump and PM Modi. The inclusion of Mr Musk, it says, was confirmed by two US officials.
The call was about the West Asia crisis and Iran’s control of the crucial Strait of Hormuz. Musk’s was “an unusual appearance by a private citizen on a call between two heads of state during a wartime crisis”, says the report, adding that “it is unclear why Mr Musk was on the call or whether he spoke”.
“Mr. Musk has long coveted a greater commercial presence in India. And SpaceX, his private rocket company, has been considering an initial public offering later this year, which could be thrown into turmoil if global economic conditions worsen.”
Musk has eyed India as a key market for his automotive, space and AI ventures. Tesla has faced hurdles due to tariffs on foreign carmakers, while Starlink, the satellite internet service from SpaceX, is still awaiting final “regulatory approval” to operate in the country, the report notes.
Musk’s presence on the call comes amid an improving relationship with the US President since last year’s fallout.
Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa write for the BBC about India’s “educated and employed but struggling” middle class.
“Across India, the quiet machinery of automation has been reshaping – and in many cases, eliminating – the jobs that the middle class was built on. And the middle class is only now beginning to reckon with what that means,” they write.
They note that white-collar job growth, once expected for engineering or commerce graduates, has slowed sharply, dropping from 11 percent before 2020 to just 1 percent now, citing the Naukri Jobspeak Index.
“Automation had been hollowing out middle-skill work since the early 2000s, quietly eliminating the clerical roles, bookkeeping jobs and sales positions that once absorbed India’s graduates.”
AI has only accelerated the disruption.
Indian government think-tank NITI Aayog estimates that by 2031, AI could eliminate close to three million IT and customer service jobs.
For much of the employed middle class, salaries are not keeping pace with the cost of living, pushing many into a cycle of taking loans and borrowing more to repay existing debt, the report highlights.
Nearly half of Indian households have taken personal loans, with 67 percent of borrowers taking their first loan before age 30. Among those in debt, close to 40 percent of annual income goes toward repayments, it adds.
“This borrowing isn’t building anything. It is financing holidays, smartphones, school fees and hospital bills – consumption and survival, not investment.”
“The middle class built the post-economic reforms India. Whether modern India can now sustain its middle class is the question this decade will answer,” says the report.
Ashutosh Joshi writes in Bloomberg that foreign investors sold a record 12 billion worth of Indian stocks in March, raising concerns about surging energy costs overshadowing India’s growth story.
“Overseas investors have offloaded a net $11.7 billion of local shares through March 25, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. That puts equities on course for their steepest monthly exodus ever, with total outflows this year exceeding $13 billion and nearing levels seen a year ago,” says the report.
Even before the West Asia conflict, investors were already dealing with a depreciating rupee, a slow and uneven recovery in corporate earnings, and stretched stock valuations. The spike in oil prices has only intensified these concerns.
Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and UBS Global Wealth Management have all downgraded their expectations for Indian equities.
But India is not the only one; other Asian countries are facing similar churn: “To be clear, the pivot away from India comes as global funds have pulled about $52 billion from emerging Asian equities, excluding China, since the Iran war began, putting the region on track for its biggest monthly outflow.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)