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By:

Rajeev Puri

24 October 2024 at 5:11:37 am

Before Sholay, there was Mera Gaon Mera Desh

When the comedian and television host Kapil Sharma recently welcomed the veteran screenwriter Salim Khan onto his show, he made a striking claim. India, he joked, has a national bird and a national animal; it ought also to have a national film. That film, he suggested, would surely be Sholay. Few would quarrel with the sentiment. Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy,  Sholay  has long been treated as the Everest of Hindi popular cinema -quoted endlessly, revisited by generations and...

Before Sholay, there was Mera Gaon Mera Desh

When the comedian and television host Kapil Sharma recently welcomed the veteran screenwriter Salim Khan onto his show, he made a striking claim. India, he joked, has a national bird and a national animal; it ought also to have a national film. That film, he suggested, would surely be Sholay. Few would quarrel with the sentiment. Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy,  Sholay  has long been treated as the Everest of Hindi popular cinema -quoted endlessly, revisited by generations and dissected by critics. In 2025, the film marked its 50th anniversary, and the release of a digitally restored, uncut version introduced the classic to a new generation of viewers who discovered that its mixture of revenge drama, western pastiche and buddy comedy remains curiously durable. The film’s influences have been debated almost as much as its dialogues – from scenes taken by the Spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, particularly ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968) or to the narrative architecture of ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Others note echoes of earlier Hindi films about bandits and frontier justice, such as ‘Khotey Sikke’ (1973) starring Feroz Khan. Yet, rewatching ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh,’ directed by Raj Khosla, one cannot help noticing how many of the narrative bones of  Sholay  appear to have been assembled there first. Released in 1971,  Mera Gaon Mera Desh  was a major hit at the box office, notable for holding its own in a year dominated by the near-hysterical popularity of Rajesh Khanna. The thematic framework of the two films is strikingly similar. In  Sholay , the retired policeman Thakur Baldev Singh recruits two petty criminals - Jai and Veeru - to help him avenge the terror inflicted upon his village by the bandit Gabbar Singh. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the set-up is not very different. A retired soldier, Jaswant Singh, seeks to protect his village from a ruthless dacoit and enlists the help of a small-time crook named Ajit. Even the villain’s name seems to echo across the two films. In Khosla’s drama, the marauding bandit played by Vinod Khanna is scene-stealing performance is called Jabbar Singh. In  Sholay , the outlaw who would become one of Indian cinema’s most memorable antagonists was Gabbar Singh. There is an additional irony in the casting. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the retired soldier Jaswant Singh is played by Jayant - the real-life father of Amjad Khan, who would later immortalise Gabbar Singh in  Sholay . The connective tissue between the two films becomes even clearer in the presence of Dharmendra. In Khosla’s film he plays Ajit, a charming rogue who gradually redeems himself while defending the village. Four years later, Dharmendra returned in  Sholay  as Veeru, a similarly exuberant petty criminal whose courage and irrepressible humour make him one half of Hindi cinema’s most beloved buddy duo alongside Amitabh Bachchan as Jai. Certain visual motifs also appear to have travelled intact. In Khosla’s film, Ajit finds himself bound in ropes in the bandit’s den during a dramatic musical sequence. A similar image appears in  Sholay , where Veeru is tied up before Gabbar Singh while Basanti performs the now famous song ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan.’ Other echoes are subtler but just as suggestive. Ajit’s pursuit of the village belle Anju, played by Asha Parekh, anticipates Veeru’s boisterous attempts to woo Basanti, portrayed by Hema Malini. Scenes in which Ajit teaches Anju to shoot recall the flirtatious gun-training sequence between Veeru and Basanti that became one of  Sholay ’s most cherished moments. Even the famous coin motif has a precedent. Ajit frequently tosses a coin to make decisions - a flourish that would later appear in  Sholay , where Jai’s coin toss becomes a running gag. Perhaps most intriguingly, the endings of the two films converge in their original form. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the villain is ultimately killed by the hero. The uncut version of  Sholay  reportedly ended in a similar fashion, with Gabbar Singh meeting his death at the hands of Thakur Baldev Singh. However, censors altered the climax before the film’s 1975 release, requiring that Gabbar be handed over to the police instead. All this does not diminish  Sholay . Rather, it highlights the alchemy through which cinema evolves. The scriptwriting duo Salim–Javed took familiar ingredients and expanded them into a grander narrative populated by unforgettable characters and stylised action. On the 55 th  anniversary of  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , Raj Khosla’s rugged western deserves a renewed glance as the sturdy foundation on which a legend called  Sholay  was built. (The author is a political commentator and a global affairs observer. Views personal.)

India’s Long War on a Very Old Killer

Tuberculosis will not vanish by decree, but India’s unfinished battle against it is reshaping public health.

Tuberculosis is as old as civilisation and as stubborn as poverty. The disease scarred Egyptian mummies long before it stalked the slums of modern megacities. Two millennia later, it remains one of humanity’s deadliest infections, killing about 1.25 million people a year and sickening more than 10 million worldwide. In India, which shoulders more than a quarter of the global burden, tuberculosis is a test of governance and the promise of development itself.


TB spreads invisibly, riding droplets released when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or even speaks. Around one in four people globally carry the bacteria in latent form. Most never fall ill. But when immunity falters because of malnutrition, diabetes, HIV, stress or age, the disease can erupt. Untreated, TB kills more than half its victims. Worse, the bacterium is learning to outwit medicine. Multidrug-resistant TB, which defies the two most commonly used first-line drugs, and extensively drug-resistant TB, which resists even more powerful treatments, are spreading. In 2023 some 400,000 people developed multidrug-resistant TB worldwide, with India contributing a large share.


The disease is also more protean than commonly assumed. TB is often imagined as a lung infection marked by coughing blood. Yet it can lodge almost anywhere: lymph nodes, bones and joints, kidneys, the spine, even the brain. This extrapulmonary TB is harder to detect because its symptoms mimic other illnesses. In India roughly one in five TB patients has this form, with higher proportions among children and people living with HIV. Studies suggest women are disproportionately affected.


Demography complicates matters further. TB prevalence rises steeply with age, and adult men suffer pulmonary TB at roughly three times the rate of women. Yet among young people aged 15 to 24, infection rates between males and females are strikingly similar. The pattern hints at delayed diagnosis, stigma and unequal access to care.


Against this backdrop India set itself an audacious goal. In 2018 it declared that TB would be eliminated by 2025—five years ahead of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal and a decade before the World Health Organisation’s own target of 2035. The deadline was knowingly unrealistic. Its purpose was to shock a complacent system into action, mobilise political will, and turn TB from a neglected affliction into a national priority.


Improved Diagnostics

The response has been substantial. India’s National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination fused new science with digital governance and social support. Diagnosis, once a weak link, has improved dramatically. For decades the backbone of testing was sputum microscopy, a blunt tool that missed up to half of all cases. Today rapid molecular diagnostics such as GeneXpert and Truenat, combined with AI-assisted chest X-rays, can confirm infection and detect drug resistance within hours. From only a handful of machines a decade ago, India now operates more than 6,000. In 2023 alone, 25.1 million people were tested. A 100-day national campaign identified more than 700,000 new patients, many of whom would previously have remained invisible.


Treatment has been transformed too. Traditional therapy required six months of daily pills, while drug-resistant TB demanded up to two years of toxic injections with dismal success rates. Newer drugs such as bedaquiline and delamanid are safer and more effective. Regimens like BPaLM - a four-drug combination - can cure many drug-resistant cases in six to nine months, with success rates approaching 90 percent in controlled settings. Such advances do not merely shorten suffering; they reduce the chance that patients abandon treatment and seed further resistance.


Prevention, however, remains the hardest frontier. The century-old BCG vaccine protects children from severe disease but offers little defence for adults, who account for most transmission. India is investing heavily in new TB vaccines and adult immunisation strategies, with several candidates moving through clinical trials. Yet the most powerful preventive tool is also the simplest: food. Undernutrition accounts for nearly half of India’s TB cases, weakening immune systems and trapping households in a vicious cycle of illness and poverty. Recognising this, the government’s Nikshay Poshan Yojana provides Rs. 1,000 per month in nutritional support to TB patients. By late 2024 it had reached more than 11 million people, underscoring that calories can be as important as capsules.


Digital infrastructure has stitched these efforts together. The Nikshay portal tracks millions of patients in real time, flagging missed doses and treatment gaps. A parallel initiative, the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan, enlists volunteers known as Ni-kshay Mitras to ‘adopt’ patients, offering food, financial help, or simply companionship. Such community engagement matters because more than half of TB patients first seek care from private doctors. Their participation has grown steadily: over 600,000 now notify cases through Nikshay, ensuring patients are linked to free diagnostics, medicines and nutrition support rather than falling through the cracks of an unregulated market.


Since 2015 India’s TB incidence has fallen by about 18 percent, and deaths by roughly 24 to 25 percent. In 2023 the country reported a record 2.5 million notified cases. Cure rates for drug-resistant TB have climbed to around 70 percent, a remarkable improvement on a decade ago. Researchers have sequenced 10,000 TB bacterial genomes, laying the groundwork for sharper diagnostics and more personalised treatment.


Incremental Improvements

Yet progress is patchy. A handful of states account for a disproportionate share of cases. Uttar Pradesh alone reported about 0.56 million in 2024, more than one-fifth of the national total, while Maharashtra added nearly 0.19 million. Targeting molecular testing hubs, drug-resistance work-ups, and nutrition transfers in such hotspots yields faster gains per rupee spent, particularly in high-burden districts where delays are deadliest.


Even so, the arithmetic is sobering. The World Health Organisation estimates India’s TB incidence in 2023 at 195 cases per 100,000 people. Elimination is defined as fewer than one case per 100,000 - a reduction of roughly 99 percent. To reach that threshold would require annual declines of nearly 10 percent. India’s current pace is closer to 3 percent.


But that failure need not be fatal to the mission. The systems India has built will continue to save lives well beyond 2025. Wider access to modern tests in rural areas, better funding stability, and sustained engagement with vulnerable groups could accelerate progress. A breakthrough adult vaccine would change the trajectory altogether.


TB strikes hardest between the ages of 15 and 45, cutting down people in their most productive years and threatening India’s much-vaunted demographic dividend. Delays in diagnosis are often driven by fear and stigma rather than ignorance. A young construction worker in Delhi waited weeks to seek help, worried about lost wages and social judgement. By the time he arrived at a clinic, his disease was advanced, his treatment longer, and his family’s income already damaged. Every untreated case ripples outward, impoverishing households and communities alike. Testing and treatment are free; delay is the most expensive option of all.


Economically, the case for persistence is overwhelming. Every Rs. 100 invested in TB care yields several times that amount in avoided illness, preserved incomes and higher productivity. Socially, the disease exposes fault lines of nutrition, housing and inequality. Politically, it tests whether sustained attention can outlast headline-driven campaigns.


India has beaten daunting diseases before. Few believed polio could be eliminated in a country of its size and diversity. Yet through door-to-door vaccination, relentless monitoring, and international cooperation, it was done. TB is more complex, slower, and more deeply entwined with poverty. But the lesson endures: determined states, mobilised communities, and patient investment can bend even ancient curves.


With more than a quarter of the world’s TB burden, India is a laboratory for the global fight. Success here would reverberate across Africa and Asia; failure would slow progress everywhere. The 2025 deadline may slip into history, but the long war against tuberculosis will shape India’s health, economy and moral standing for decades to come.


(The author is a scientist with the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Views personal.)

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