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“People have expressed faith in us,” said the man of the moment, Manmohan Singh — basking in a spectacular victory.
The UPA has stormed back to power with enough seats to call the shots, riding on the Congress party’s best performance since 1991. It’s got about 200 seats on its own. It is a tally even the party did not expect.
But if 2004 was the story of Sonia Gandhi, Verdict 2009 belongs to Rahul.
He’s been credited with the party’s revival in Uttar Pradesh, where it did not win more than 10 seats in the last few elections.
As some partymen raised the familiar cry of ‘Rahul for PM’, the Prime Minister himself set the stage for his initiation into the government. “It is my wish that Rahul is in the government. I’ll persuade him to join the Cabinet,” he said.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi said: “It is up to the Prime Minister to decide.”
But the UPA is still short of the magic number.
Apart from a few independents, the Congress is not giving up on the undisputed king of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, to shore up its numbers.
Says Nitish Kumar: “Yesterday when I spoke of a special mandate for Bihar, everyone including the Congress agreed. Now that they have won the mandate I think its time to grant special status to Bihar.”
Another challenge will be who gets which ministry.Especially those who came through with flying colours, like the Trinamool and DMK. Sources say Lalu Yadav will stay on despite his poor showing, and so will some other ministers.
For the first time after 1971, the Congress has been voted back to power after serving a full term. The only difference is – this time it’s a coalition government which the people of India have given a resounding yes to. Read more…
Four-way DTH war makes subscriber the king
MUMBAI: What happens when four biggies of the Indian business world decide that each wants to rule the same segment? One, their pockets burn real deep. Two, customers rule.
In the Direct to Home (DTH) market, installation charges as low as Rs 1,400 and a dirt cheap monthly subscription cost — less than Rs 100 — are fast becoming a reality. The number of channels is slated to go from 150 to 400 in a few months. Plus, digital video recorders and high definition (HD) are on their way.
This has doubled the industry growth. Officials from the market players told DNA Money that while three months ago, the industry was acquiring 2.5 lakh customers every month, the number has now doubled to 5 lakh, and could go up to 7-8 lakh in a few months once the new players settle down.
In lieu of this customer base, the industry will be shelling out around Rs 800 crore this year for advertisements and promotions, according to Salil Kapoor, chief operating officer of Dish TV, from the Zee stable.
And yes, with a minimum five-year gestation period, it is too early for anyone to be making money.
Arun Kapoor, president, Big TV, part of Reliance ADAG, said, “We will acquire, expand as soon as possible. This industry is not for the weak-hearted and certainly not for those without deep pockets.”
True. Maybe that’s why the Tata Sky DTH service invested Rs 2,000 crore to acquire 20 lakh customers, while another Rs 2,000 crore investment is on its way.
So what tools are the players using to woo customers now that pricing is hardly a differentiator anymore?
“The biggest differentiator is transparency and simplicity in pricing. The consumer shouldn’t have to research on whether he is being made to pay more than what is being showed,” said Salil Kapoor.
While Dish TV can probably take it easy, being the market leader, others are being ‘entertainingly’ aggressive.
Big TV claims it has acquired 5 lakh subscribers in its first two months. It plans to acquire four lakh subscribers per month with DVRs (digital video recorders), high definition channels and exclusive content.
With the customer base of Reliance Telecom and Reliance Energy ready to be tapped, maybe this number is achievable.
Similar strategies exist for others. Also big on their list is interactive services. Airtel, the fourth player in the market, has a tie-up with Infosys for interactive technology. Airtel is offering a common remote for both the set-top box and television, while Dish TV has begun to provide a banking platform on television with ICICI Bank.
Tata Sky has religious and educational programmes to lure customers.
Through that, the industry expects the current 70 lakh subscriber base to swell to 6 crore by 2015, 40% of the total television viewing households.
While players lock horns for market share, firing allegations at each other and blowing louder-than-reality trumpets, subscribers can sit back and have fun.
There will soon be even more channels to surf. Now, if only there was something good to watch! Read more…
There was an earthquake in the State if Maharashtra, India with the magnitude of 4.7 on the Richter scale.
The earthquake occured on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 21:47:14 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time ) and on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at
03:17:14 AM local time as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The epicenter is 90 km (55 miles) NW of Kolhapur, Maharashtra, 135 km (85 miles) S of Pune, Maharashtra, 205 km (130 miles) SSE of Mumbai
(Bombay), Maharashtra,1305 km (810 miles) SSW of NEW DELHI, Delhi, India with the depth of 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program.
Maharashtra is located Western India and is India’s third largest state in the area. Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra, is India’s largest
city and is second largest in population by 9.4 per cent.
So far there have been no reports of any damage.
Previously on September 30th 1993 a devastating quake rocked Maharashtra, leaving more than 10,000 dead, 67 villages flattened and 120,000 homeless. Read more…
INDIA has Savita Bhabhi, the country’s leading MILF.
Bhabhi means sister-in-law, or brother’s wife”, and the comic strip features the newly married cartoon porn star with buxom breasts and a fierce libido shagging gentlemen callers, priapic teenage boys and handymen.
Savita Bhabhi is what happens when self-publishing enables male cartoonists raised on Archie comics and 1950s comedy publish their fantasies. And there is plenty of humour. Episode 1 is called The Bra Salesman.
Enthusaists of Norman Saunders S&M Bazooka Porn And Battle Cards will enjoy India’s first Internet porn star, who while her salary man husband is out at work all day seduces, well, anyone and everyone.
As Anorak wrote on British sex before the watershed:
Sex comedies existed in Britain for two reasons. First, censorship laws meant that continental style porn couldn’t be shown. And secondly, although the sex content was negligible, the fact that it existed at all meant that it had to be covered up with nervous laughter.
Pornography is illegal in India. And Savita’s creators seek to plug the hole in the market. But porn is all in the mind. And if naked picures turn a reader on, then surely it is porn. Its might even be a thought crime.
One cartoonist, known as Deshmukh, explains:
“We get 60 million unique visitors every month. The average time a visitor spends on our site is more than 10 minutes. Almost 70 percent of our traffic is from India, while the rest is from the U.S., U.K. and more than 80 other countries.”
Dr. Prakash Kothari, an eminent Bombay sexologist, analyses:
“Most men are quite intimate with and take advice from their bhabhi. It’s someone who’s there to advise you, to help you, to make fun of you, to crack jokes, whom you can ask any intimate questions.”
And sex?
“It’s not welcome, it’s not permitted, it’s not accepted by society. Having advice from your own bhabhi is acceptable, but having sex with her is not.”
And in taboo lies titillation.
Says the cartoonist, based in the US:
“One of the reasons for creating SB was to also portray that Indian women have sexual desires too. India is a country which is still sexually repressed and I feel that for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first. We are already seeing that in a way, and hopefully SB will do her bit to help in this revolution.”
And come that revolution, Bhabi will be consigned to the dustbin of history, a curio of past erotica…
More Details:
Thanks to an anonymous group of computer geeks, India’s first international Internet porn star is fast becoming this conservative country’s answer to Wonder Woman — and Monica Lewinsky.
But here’s the trick: The steamy web seductress is a cartoon.
Turning the tables on Bollywood’s demure heroines — who’ve only recently started agreeing to lip-to-lip kisses on screen — “Savita Bhabhi” (or sister-in-law Savita) is a buxom, recently married housewife who knows what she wants and how to get it.
Bored with her workaholic husband, she seduces door-to-door salesmen, neighborhood cricket players, even a not-so-subtle stand-in for the gray-bearded Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan — a move that earned her some flak from Indian entertainment channels.
Though pornography is illegal in India, Savita Bhabhi’s sexual misadventures, published on savitabhabhi.com with scripts based on fantasies submitted by fans, have attracted a huge following, according to one of the strip’s anonymous creators, who goes by the screen name Deshmukh.
“We get 60 million unique visitors every month. The average time a visitor spends on our site is more than 10 minutes,” the site administrator told GlobalPost by email. “Almost
70 percent of our traffic is from India, while the rest is from the U.S., U.K. and more than 80 other countries.” (Read more about my interview with this secret creator of Savita Bhabhi, here).
Part of the reason for its success is its diversity. With the help of volunteers — recent posts on the Savita Bhabhi fan site read “Urgent! Calling all script writers!” and “We need translators! Are you up for it?” — Savita’s creators publish the strip in 10 different Indian languages, along with English.
By all appearances, it’s a tough job. In another recent fan post, a user named Srinkar pleads, “If possible, develop your Bengali language up to date, as most of us are eagerly waiting to take the maximum pleasure through the mother tongue.” Indeed.
But the secret to Savita’s popularity isn’t so much her Pamela Anderson proportions as her roots in Indian culture. Complaining about a long digression featured in one episode, a user called Sex Drive explains, “The reason SB is so popular is because people fantasize about a sari clad bhabhi being so raunchy and sexually liberated. You take her out of the equation and the fantasy just ends there.”
Dr. Prakash Kothari, an eminent Bombay sexologist, explains. “Bhabhi means sister-in-law, or brother’s wife. Most men are quite intimate with and take advice from their bhabhi. It’s someone who’s there to advise you, to help you, to make fun of you, to crack jokes, whom you can ask any intimate questions.”
And an object of sexual fantasy? In Indian culture, sex with your bhabhi isn’t taboo on the order of Oedipus, the doc says, but it isn’t kosher, either. “It’s not welcome, it’s not permitted, it’s not accepted by society. Having advice from your own bhabhi is acceptable, but having sex with her is not.”
“[A] bhabhi is the Indian version of a MILF,” explained Deshmukh, who came up with the idea for the comic while boozing it up with fellow Indian exiles in the U.S. “Though in literal terms it means your “brother’s wife” — that is not the meaning here. For an Indian youngster his first fantasy is normally the newly married hot woman in the neighborhood who is referred to as a hot Bhabhi. Hence it seemed only natural that our hot heroine whom the entire neighborhood lusts after be called Savita Bhabhi.”
There’s obviously a spoof factor here. But the slightly zany aspects of an impossibly curvaceous middle-class housewife slipping out of her sari for, say, a “special massage” from her servant boy doesn’t account for Savita Bhabhi’s massive following.
That lies in the cleverness of the comic’s creators, who have tapped into current anxieties about the social changes brought about by modernity as well as nostalgia for past forms of printed entertainment.
“One of the reasons for creating SB was to also portray that Indian women have sexual desires too,” Deshmukh said. “India is a country which is still sexually repressed and I feel that for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first. We are already seeing that in a way, and hopefully SB will do her bit to help in this revolution.”
That repression — and the temptation to escape it — is a big part of the comic’s appeal, explains sociologist Sanjay Srivastava, the author of “Passionate Modernity: Sexuality, Class and Consumption in India.” “It plays upon a well-established male anxiety and desire — wanting and being scared of the modern woman,” he said. “It’s good to have a modern woman as a girlfriend, but [as the serial cuckolding of Savi's husband illustrates] it’s dangerous to have her as a wife.”
At the same time, though, Savita Bhabhi offers a bit of humor for the 30-something generation who grew up with the ubiquitous Amar Chitra Katha comics depicting tales from Hindu religious mythology. “[It] also borrows from that artwork,” says Srivastava. “So for some people some of the pleasure is that it’s a kind of satire of those religious comic books.”
Nevertheless, not every bastion of tradition is unassailable, according to some fans.
“I am not able to log on to the website as it is banned in UAE,” writes Bhushan Ar. “I tried with proxy but no use … kindly help guys, I am the newest fan of bhabhi.”
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After a bit of trolling through the fan pages, I managed to track down “Deshmukh,” one of the creators, and a site administrator, of Savita Bhabhi, India’s first porn sensation.
Here’s a peek inside my interview notes:
What inspired you guys to start an online pornographic comic?
It just came out of the blue. We were a group of friends sitting together on a weekend having a few drinks and talking. As usual with a bunch of drunken young men, the topic shifted to women and sex. One of our non-Indian friends remarked that while Indian women were considered among the most sensuous in the world, we did not have a single really hot Indian porn star. That stirred up our discussion and we decided the next best thing to a real woman would be a toon porn star. One of my friends is an amateur artist and he came up with the first draft of SB. Initially there was a tossup between SB being a young Gujarati woman or a South Indian aunty. We went ahead and posted some threads on a forum asking people which they prefer. Savita as a young newly married woman won.
Why did you choose a “bhabhi” as your heroine?
Bhabhi is the Indian version of a MILF. Though in literal terms it means your “brother’s wife” — that is not the meaning here. For an Indian youngster his first fantasy is normally the newly married hot woman in the neighborhood who is referred to as a hot Bhabhi. Hence it seemed only natural that our hot heroine whom the entire neighborhood lusts after be called Savita Bhabhi.
How many hits or page views do you get in a month?
We get 60 million unique visitors every month. The average time a visitor spends on our site is more than 10 minutes.
What is the general profile of your fans? (i.e. what countries, age groups, etc)
Almost 70% of our traffic is from India, while the rest is from the U.S., U.K. and more than 80 other countries. SB has fans in almost all countries in the world and we’ve actually had translations sent to us in Mandarin and French among other languages. We had done a poll a few months ago, which showed 30% of our viewership as being women.
What are some of the best signs that Savita is a hit? (e.g. Facebook groups in foreign countries, etc.)
SB has been covered in the press in Asia, Europe, and North America. A search for SB in Google results in 312,000 pages of which 99% have not been created by us. I have heard of social networking groups on Facebook, Orkut and other sites regarding SB.
It’s interesting to me that Savita is a sexually mature woman who (mostly) takes control of the situations to please herself, rather than being exclusively the object of male desires. Was that a conscious decision on the part of her creators?
Yes, it sure was. One of the reasons for creating SB was to also portray that Indian women have sexual desires too. India is a country which is still sexually repressed and I feel that for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first. We are already seeing that in a way, and hopefully SB will do her bit to help in this revolution.
Why a comic, rather than some other medium?
For one, it is a unique medium in the context of Indian porn. We’ve had MMS’s, videos, stories, etc, but no porn comics. Also a comic allows us to explore the fantasy in a much more vivid way than any other medium.
What are your main influences for plots? — e.g. I see “building friends” and a Bachchan parody…
All SB plots are based on real life fantasies of our authors and fans. They are all something that a normal full blooded Indian male or female would be fantasizing about on their commute to work or a lazy evening at home. We get tons of email from fans detailing their fantasies and asking us if their fantasies can be converted into an SB toon. We try to keep all our plots fairly believable (for someone with a vivid imagination of course) and connected to everyday occurrences which could just lead into a sexual adventure!
I noticed that there are various links to other pornography sites/downloads etc on the site. Do you guys make money off Savita Bhabhi in any way?
Right now we don’t make any money on SB, but we’re planning to introduce some advertsing on it. Not sure which links are you talking about? If they are links on the fanclub you are talking about, then those are just links/downloads posted by SB fans. All free stuff.
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