Hindi
‘Badmashiyaan’: Nothing of that sort
When one watches a film like Badmashiyaan one can’t help but wonder: where do such films come from? A banter over drinks? Or, simply, a desire to feel the glamour and glitz of the film industry and an overwhelming desire to belong? For as soon as the film starts to unwind, you know it is a disaster unreeling on the screen.
There is this girl, Suzanna Mukherjee, who pretends to fall in love with vulnerable men for the sole purpose of conning them. Fall in love, promise marriage, and vanish via the loo after looting them. Her first victim is Sidhant Gupta, a café owner in Chandigarh. Totally besotted with her, he begs, borrows, steals and buys a two crore house to settle his future wife, Suzanna. On a date at a café, she takes time off to go to loo and never returns.
Gupta is heartbroken while Suzanna has found a new target, Sharib Hashmi, a Haryanvi don notwithstanding the fact that we have had too much of these UP, Bihar and Haryanvi dons, comic as well as caricatures.
Suzanna makes away with some five lakh of the don’s cash, her accomplice is picked up and stripped naked by the don’s man. In case you happen to watch the film and miss it, this is supposed to be the comic element in the film! On his part, the don does not want his money back (despite wasting an hour of running time beating up this poor sod and stripping him to find where the money is), he has fallen head over heels in love with Suzanna and he wants her instead.
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Producer: Vijay Gutte Director: Amit Khanna Cast: Suzanna Mukherjee, Sharib Hashmi, Sidhant Gupta, Karan Mehra, Gunjan Malhotra |
If watching this film is an ordeal, writing about it is even bigger torture.
Nobody performs in this film and that includes the writer, director and actors.
In a year that has seen some of the worst films being released, Badmashiyaan takes the crown for the first quarter of 2015.
‘Dirty Politics’: What’s the other kind?
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Producer: Nihal farhat Director: K. C. Bokadia Cast: Suzanna Mallika Sherawat, Jackie Shroff, Ashutosh Rana, Anupam Kher, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah |
Eons back, celebrated and one of the most gifted filmmakers, Kundan Shah, was working on a script about a Maharashtrian Tamasha girl going on to become the Chief Minister of the state. I suppose the film was too regional in flavour besides the fact that political themes don’t go down well with our audience and, hence, never made.
Here, a similar theme seems to have been used for titillation rather than to weave a story around the idea that in politics, anything is possible.
Mallika Sherawat, a dancer, has a powerful politician fan in Om Puri. Their proximity sows the seeds of political ambitions in her. But, alas, come elections and she is not on the list of nominees. So she decides to use her ticket to attain her goal: CDs of close encounters between her and Puri, which would defame Puri and ruin his political career.
How corny can a plot get when people nowadays don’t care who sleeps with whom as long as they deliver? (Reminds me of a prominent politician spokesperson cum lawyer whose explicit videos were on public domain and he still continues to be all that he used to be!) What follows is predictable. Sherawat goes missing and all sorts of corny plots and subplots follow.
The film stars some of the great actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Anupam Kher besides Jackie Shroff and Ashutosh Rana but the script, the direction and Sherawat make sure they are rendered ineffective totally; they are neutralised by everything in this film of which they had no reason to be a part.
Hindi
India’s telecom subscribers cross 1.32 billion in February 2026
Broadband base swells past 1.06 billion as Jio and Airtel tighten grip on the market.
MUMBAI: India’s telecom sector is ringing in steady growth once again adding millions of new connections every month while the race for broadband supremacy continues to heat up like a fiercely contested cricket match. According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 1 April 2026, the total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 1,321.31 million at the end of February 2026. This marked a net addition of 7.31 million subscribers during the month, translating into a monthly growth rate of 0.56 per cent.
Wireless subscribers (including mobile and Fixed Wireless Access) stood at 1,273.31 million, registering a net addition of 6.97 million and a growth rate of 0.55 per cent. Within this, urban wireless connections grew to 730.75 million (growth 0.70 per cent), while rural wireless subscribers reached 542.56 million (growth 0.35 per cent).
Wireline subscribers, though much smaller in scale, showed slightly faster growth. The total wireline base increased to 47.99 million, with a net addition of 0.34 million and a monthly growth rate of 0.70 per cent. Urban areas continued to dominate wireline connections with a share of 89.41 per cent.
Overall tele-density in India improved to 92.66 per cent. Urban tele-density stood at 150.68 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 60.02 per cent.
The broadband subscriber base crossed a significant milestone, reaching 1,059.05 million at the end of February 2026. This reflected a healthy net addition of 6.33 million subscribers and a monthly growth rate of 0.60 per cent from January’s figure of 1,052.72 million.
Segment-wise, mobile wireless access continued to drive the majority of growth with 996.52 million subscribers. Fixed Wireless Access (including 5G FWA) added 16.51 million, while wired broadband stood at 46.02 million.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. maintained its commanding lead with 519.64 million broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd. followed with 364.14 million, Vodafone Idea Ltd. with 129.36 million, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. with 28.70 million, and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.38 million.
Together, these top five players command a massive 98.60 per cent share of the total broadband market.
In the wireless (mobile) segment, private operators continued to dominate with 92.59 per cent market share, leaving public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL) with just 7.41 per cent.
Out of the total 1,257.29 million wireless (mobile) subscribers, 1,177.60 million were active on the peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) date, representing an impressive 93.66 per cent activity rate. Bharti Airtel led in this metric with 99.42 per cent of its subscribers active.
Meanwhile, 14.47 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February, indicating healthy competition and customer churn across zones.
While urban areas still lead in absolute numbers, rural connectivity is slowly catching up. Rural wireless tele-density stood at 59.46 per cent, compared with the much higher urban figure of 142.32 per cent.
Fixed Wireless Access using 5G technology also showed promising traction, growing to 11.93 million subscribers. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the primary players driving this segment.
The data paints a picture of a maturing yet still rapidly expanding telecom ecosystem. With total telephone subscribers now well past the 1.32 billion mark and broadband users comfortably above 1.06 billion, India continues to solidify its position as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic digital markets.
From bustling city streets to remote villages, more Indians are staying connected than ever before proving that when it comes to telecom, the country’s appetite for growth shows no signs of hanging up anytime soon.
