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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.)

Lowering the Bar or Fixing the Ladder?

The furore over the NEET-PG cut-offs misses the real malaise in how the country trains its doctors.

AI generated image
AI generated image

The January 13 notification from the National Board of Examinations regarding lower cut offs for eligibility to enter post graduate courses in India has ruffled feathers has ruffled feathers well beyond the medical fraternity, unsettling media commentators, policymakers and the wider public.


The proposal to lower cut-offs did not emerge from bureaucratic whimsy but from the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest body of doctors practising modern medicine. Its motivation was practical given that an uncomfortably large number of postgraduate seats remain vacant even after the final round of counselling.


India now has close to 800 approved medical colleges. Their rapid proliferation has exposed a structural weakness in form of an acute shortage of full-time faculty. Empty postgraduate departments threaten the functioning of medical colleges themselves. It was against this backdrop that the IMA urged a relaxation of eligibility thresholds.


Yet, as in medicine itself, a treatment can provoke side-effects that obscure its intended benefit. The National Board of Examinations’ notification had precisely that effect.


A sharp reduction in cut-offs - what critics deride as a “percentile shift into negative territory” – has triggered a national backlash. Alarmist questions followed in quick succession: was meritocracy about to be eclipsed by mediocrity? Was India, long admired for producing world-class specialists, now preparing a generation of underqualified and hesitant doctors?


The answer to both is an emphatic no.


Lower cut-offs in an examination with 25 percent negative marking do not dilute competence but merely extend eligibility. Candidates who previously failed to obtain any rank at all can now be ranked, despite modest scores. Eligibility, however, is not entitlement.


Qualifying for a postgraduate seat does not automatically confer entry into coveted clinical specialties. By the time relaxed cut-offs come into effect, seats in disciplines such as ophthalmology or diabetology are already taken by higher-ranked candidates. What remains are disciplines that attract few takers but are essential to keeping medical colleges alive.


Here too, the answer is a firm no as all the seats of clinical branches would have already been exhausted. 


So, what remains are the seats of pre-clinical subjects for which there are no takers. The question arises that if nobody takes those seats, how does one run a medical college? 


The reason for decreased marks need not lie with a doctor's knowledge component, but largely to his ‘knack’ in solving an MCQ exam with negative marking. It is always better to leave a question and get a zero, rather than answering it incorrectly and getting a negative mark. 


The bigger flaw lies in the curriculum itself. Is it humanly possible to cram fifteen subjects taught through five-and-half years of the MBBS curriculum into one year and excel in the exam? It is like asking a Commerce student to study the five years of B.Com. course in one year and sit for an M.Com. exam.


That said, do we have a solution to this method of gradation? The answer is a strong yes. Just as the government brought reforms in the GST, it can bring reforms in this NEET PG exam, too. The solution lies in the Super Speciality entrance exam pattern itself. 


As a general surgeon in clinical practice who aspires to be a neurosurgeon, I will sit for a neurosurgery Super Speciality entrance of a premier institute like AIIMS where 50 percent of my exam questions are based on neurosurgery and the remaining on subjects like general surgery which relate to neurosurgery. 


Similarly, as an MBBS doctor, if my interest lies in ophthalmology, my NEET PG MCQs paper should contain 50 percent questions on ophthalmology and the rest should be based on allied topics like surgical anatomy of the eye. 


What is the point of asking a budding ophthalmologist questions related to indications of caesarean section or prolapse intervertebral disc or National Malaria Eradication program? And then if he scores negative marks which usurp his positive tally in ophthalmology, he will be branded as a poor clinician in the making. 


But the truth is that he could be a pioneering ophthalmologist of the future who would be doing path braking research in retinitis pigmentosa.


The government needs to sit down with stakeholders and take proper feedback to make detailed policies which are practical, thereby giving impetus to cover not only the problem of vacant PG seats but also good specialists who will make our country proud.


 (The writer is ex- Secretary, IMA Maharashtra State, 2015-18. Views personal.)


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