Image via Indiatoday.com
Even the most passionate supporters of free markets as the best means to organize production and distribution of resources are now questioning their beliefs after Sajid Khan’s ”Humshakals” earned over 40 crore at the box office. Economics professors from the University of Chicago, the citadel of free market fundamentalism, are leading the charge, saying the entire canon of neo-classical economics based on the assumption that humans are rational agents now ought to be debunked.
“There were enough jokes going around on Twitter about the movie. And if that wasn’t enough, those posters of Ram Kapoor dressed in drag should have scared people off. But no, in contravention of all laws in the economics literature, this movie goes on to collect 40 crores. Someone shoot me,” was the frustrated rant of leading American economist, Larry Summers.
A disturbed Raghuram Rajan for his part said that if the collapse of Lehman and the financial crisis of 2007 had shaken his faith in free markets, then the stupendous success of ‘Humshakals’ has shattered it. The suave RBI banker now considers Sajid Khan to be an even bigger threat to capitalism than ‘too big to fail’ banks or crony capitalists. “My next book, titled ‘Saving Capitalism from the Sajid Khans’, will explore this in depth. Both financial markets and markets for entertainment such as Bollywood need regulation to save mankind,” a disturbed Mr Rajan conceded to The Unreal Times.
Meanwhile, Sajid Khan, basking in the glory of his latest success, doesn’t understand what the fuss is about. “I always knew shitty movies will do well. The key is to make the right type of shitty movie so that it falls under the ‘so bad that it’s good’ genre. In fact, I must thank all those trolls for those Humshakals jokes that fueled curiosity about the movie and powered it to box office success,” the chubby director revealed.
The movie has also led the Modi government to breathe a sigh of relief. “If so many people can buy Rs. 500 tickets to what ”Humshakals”, surely they can afford a 14% hike in rail passenger fares,” a visibly relieved Narendra Modi told The Unreal Times.