Towards Anarchy - An Utopian Order

My initial reaction to AAP's dharna in Delhi was one of ridicule... I felt that AAP should realize that it is no longer a political outsider who is free to engage in ad hoc protests against political insiders but they are now an incumbent insider and they should act more responsibly towards their constituents... But after taking a closer look at the recent events in Delhi I now get the feeling that AAP is aiming to march towards a notion of democratic governance (you may call it Kantian Anarchy, if you will) that the great EMS once envisioned... But Kantian Anarchy is utopia and it certainly can not be achieved over night.

IMDB: Status order stability despite rigged quality ratings

I checked the IMDB top 250 list after about 5 years... I am not a risk taker when going to the movies and IMDB served the purpose of informing me about the quality of a movie... The IMDB top 250, I felt, was a very reliable list of best movies the world has seen. But several movies made in India never made the list even when their individual rating was above 8.5 and some times above 9. For example, Nayagan, Roja and The Apu Trilogy were rated by the Time magazine as some of the best movies every made based on careful evaluation by two seasoned movie critics, but these movies were not in the IMDB's all time top 250 list. It perhaps had to do with the number of people rating it and many Indians were not even aware of IMDB back then and the predominantly US users of IMDB were ignorant of Indian movies. So, I made peace with that. But I lost all faith about the list when (that was also the last time, before now, I remember checking) Dark Knight Rising topped the chart... Not that it isnt a good movie or a bad movie (it certainly wasnt my kind of movie), but the movie was only a few days old... how come so many people rated it as a perfect 10? Then I realized the power of numbers... it might simply be that Batman fans would have gone out of the way to rig the ratings to pay tribute to Heath Ledger. Anyway, the IMDB top 250 list lost its credibility.

Today after about 5 years I checked the IMDB top 250 again... and I found, as usual, the status order at the very top has been restored... Shawshank Redepmtion was at the top, Godfather I and II were at second and third spots respectively, and Pulp fiction was at number 4... of course, Dark Knight was still undeservingly sitting in the top 5, perhaps the impact of 2008 rating riot by Batman fan's was still having an impact. But that was not the surprise... As I scrolled through the list, I saw three Indian movies in the top 150 and 1 more in the top 200... These do not include Gandhi and Slumdog Millionaire, both of which are films made about India but arent Indian films. So, Indian audience have started attacking IMDB. The funniest thing was, all of these four movies are by Aamir Khan. Not one from actors like Kamal Hassan or Mohanlal or directors like Maniratnam and Sathyajit Ray. So the message is clear, Aamir Khan fans are very very active in IMDB. I would not be surprised if we have populist melodramatic movies by Sharukh Khan, Salman Khan and perhaps even Rajnikanth in that list

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top