Having done the Dirty Picture and won accolades from all - the 'dirty' as well as 'clean' - versatile actress Vidya Balan has now agreed to Indian Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh's proposal to be the brand ambassador of his ministry's cleanliness drive named Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan. Devised primarily as an ad campaign to propagate construction and use of indoor toilets the minister hoped her involvement would make the campaign  to end open defecation as "national obsession."

“This is a clean picture (for Vidya Balan),” Ramesh said, when mediapersons asked if people would like her in her so cool a role after 'the hot of the decade' one in Dirty Picture.

As for Vidya herself she seems to have accepted it with her whole heart. "For an actor, what can be a better thing than doing a ‘Dirty Picture’ on screen and a ‘clean picture’ off screen. I think this role will work a lot because we are working on a national movement," she responded without winking which had otherwise become almost her habit after the Dirty Picture.

Good for India if the campaign succeeds as westerners have always had a handy excuse to disrepute India in the name of Indians habit of defecating in the open. I still remember how a western reader tried to mock India's economic progress in response to an article "India's surprising economic miracle" in The Economist some two years ago.

Wrote the western under the username of sammysenior, interalia:


Here we go again, another dose of Economist romanticism.


450 million poor in India (more than in entire Africa combined) also mean 450 million who do not have any economic space to play. 250 million defecating on train tracks also mean 250 million whose ill-health will never allow contributing to the national economic growth. 57 million children in India malnourished - one third of all underweight children in the world - means that when they grow up they will be operating on the economic fringes. The young demography will soon turn into a old demography and the task to provide welfare services to them will be gigantic, and quite simply unmanageable for any country in the world, let alone India.


Deeply entrenched caste and ethnic divisions, Maoists waging war in more than a third of the country, all neighbouring countries irritated and annoyed with India and opening up to China, the wealth of few cities never trickling down to the poor let alone lifting the poor out of poverty at one big go, endemic corruption and institutional inability to undertake massive projects (CWG anyone?).


And the western world thinks India will outpace China’s growth?


Interestingly as I am writing this China like Soviet Union is falling under its own weight may be not because of weak economy like Soviet Union but because of atrocities committed by its ruthless communist leaders specially in the past few decades. The details of which I may cover in my next article.

Meanwhile while writing at Uttarakhand Portal I cannot forget its ex-CM N D Tiwari. Otherwise a charismatic leader his particular human weakness has made his life picture partly dirty. His fight over paternity with Rohit Shekhar, obvisouly his son for most people is like the proverbial last (dirty) nail in his coffin given his age of 86 years. Perhaps it is time he takes a cue from Vidya Balan and before the police forcibly takes his blood sample for DNA test as per order of the Supreme Court to pinpoint paternity he accepts Rohit Shekhar as his son and washes his picture clean.

Moreover, by doing so while most old men in these days are losing the love of their wards at this age he may gain it in ample measure. After all what he is to lose? As for paternity almost all people already believe Rohit is his son. Yes, he may have to share some property with him, but so what? He cannot take it with him and he will be giving it to his other progeny anyway.

Or he is afraid of many more Rohit Shekhars coming up to stake claim if he surrenders to one? Let us hope not.

----