The government recently came up with a proposal to allocate ₹2,000 crore - nearly a fifth of the outlay of ₹10,000 crore from the PM eDrive initiative - to setting up 72,000 EV chargers nationwide. The Union Government has asked states to secure land and install infrastructure (such as transformers and sub-stations) to avail the subsidy, enabling rapid deployment of 72 k chargers across the country. Since the government has not announced a detailed structure for setting up the chargers, it is likely that this fund may get utilized more in urban areas where more EVs are being sold. I would argue however that we should be doing just the opposite. This may sound counter-intuitive, but one of the largest hindrances in rapid adoption of EVs is the range anxiety people feel when—even if only occasionally—they embark on a longer drive, typically on highways. Many potential buyers think: “I drive locally 80 % of the time—but what if that one out-of-town trip leaves me stranded?” In India, t...
As I was idling on Social media over the weekend, I chanced upon this video of BR Chopra 's interview with his younger brother Yash Chopra where he talks about the only remake in his lifetime - Dastan , which was a remake of his own movie Afsana . And that took me down the rabbit hole ... As I researched more about Afsana, I discovered that it was a trend setter in many ways: first of ' double role ' with identical twin brothers separated in childhood, an oft-used plot in Indian Cinema; second one of the first to use the international literature [notably its plot is inspired by The Corsican Brothers ]; and third, a pioneer in Film Noir category in Hindi cinema. What impressed me is that the movies were so well integrated with what was happening on the global scene (even though adapted to the Indian audience). I set out to search more on this subject of how Indian cinema was inspired by literature and film making of the rest of the world. So let me take you through my...