Did you know that the humble harmonium, that simple, mellifluous, wooden casket of music, was once banned by state-owned All India Radio? Hark back to 1940, and one learn that the ban was promulgated as "its tempered scale, adapted from the organ, is (was) considered antithetical to the shruti or microtones that give Indian music its continuous scale." This was the same year that the All India Muslim League adopted the 'Pakistan Resolution' at Lahore as also when Devika Rani took over Bombay Talkies. Cut ahead to 1979 and one gleans that this year was the only occasion when the film industry attempted to start a political party of its own -the 'National Party' with a predominantly pro-industry rightwing manifesto.

Politics and films? Yes. Tracing the roots of Indian cinema since 1896 when India saw its first screening of a film at Watson's hotel, Bombay, by Lumiere cameraman Maurius Sestier, this encyclopaedia weaves with elan the political, social and 'filmy' happenings. Completely revised and updated, the book (this being the second edition), with 400 new entries on films and individuals, is the most comprehensive guide to Indian cinema ever produced. It covers every film-producing region and all the major languages, and has entries on individual stars, directors, studios, genres and movements.

Each film entry includes cast and credit details and concise and often challenging evaluations. With more than 1,700 entries, the encyclopaedia spans over a hundred years of the world's biggest and most diverse film industry. The book's indices, filmographies and film entries have now been updated till 1995. There are entries on actors, filmmakers and composers who have made their mark in the 1990s, and a vastly expanded section of film entries wherein covering mainstream productions from the 1970s to the 1990s. One of the new features includes an exhaustive index of names other than the ones featuring as independent entries. The cross-indexing of films, actors, filmmakers, film companies and other film personalities makes this section a clincher.

Talking about the scope of the encyclopaedia, co-author Paul Willemen of the British Film Institute writes in the preface: "India has been taken here not as a fixed entity, but as a socio-cultural process, a changing and contested set of overlapping frameworks (always temporarily) stabilised by governmental institutions, be they the colonial administration, the Indian government or the various institutions seeking to regulate (or deregulate, which is only a different type of regulation) the interface between culture and economy within, at any given time, specific territorial limits. In the end, our main guideline has been to focus on the works, the artists and the institutions which have addressed Indian cinema as a constituent part of India as a sociocultural process."

All that is fine. But read between the lines and you will realise what, as one major contributing factor, has sounded the death knell of the so-called New Indian Cinema. The compendium accords too much space and, perforce, too much importance to ephemeral stars of mainstream, narrative cinema who have had little or nothing to contribute to the cinema that has brought respect and, at times, awe the world over. The Indian media's obsession with pulp films mid-80s onwards hammered one nail after the other into the coffin of good cinema. This book willy-nilly (more, nilly perhaps) writes its epitaph in print, and for good.

All said, done, and forgiven, there can be no better collection of facts and figures on Indian films as a whole as this one. The grouse against the yielding too much significance to inconsequential, mundane and cliché-ridden cinema notwithstanding, this book is worth a buy.

Anthony Baez was playing football with his brothers one December evening in New York in 1994. The football accidentally hit a parked patrol car. An infuriated police officer grabbed Anthony and held him by the neck, then other officers knelt on his back as he lay down on the ground. Anthony choked to death. It emerged that the officer had a long history of brutality - there were at least 14 prior complaints against him - yet he was still on duty. He was put on trial but acquitted. The tragedy of Anthony's family is not isolated - the United States Justice Department receives thousands of complaints of police abuse each year. Many feel this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Amnesty International does not assert that federal, state or local authorities pursue policies deliberately designed to repress particular groups or violate human rights. It probes deeper to affirm that the wide variety of jurisdictions across the country, practices persist which result in real and serious abuses. Some arise from individual misconduct, encouraged by an institutionalised failure to hold officials accountable. Others result from inadequate systems of control or an outright refusal to recognise or respect international standards for human rights protection. In some cases, economic policies and political trends are creating conditions in which these violations are becoming more widespread and increasingly severe.

Systematic brutality by policemen has been uncovered by inquiries into some of the largest urban police departments. In each case, the authorities ignored routine abuses. In each case, police officers had covered up misconduct by fellow officers. Majority of the victims have been members of racial or ethnic minorities. Many dies, many were seriously injured, others deeply traumatised. Each year local authorities dish out millions of dollars in compensation to victims, yet successful prosecutions of police officers are rare.

There is even more violence behind the walls of prisons and jails. Where more than 1.7 million people are incarcerated, some prisoners are abused by other inmates with guards failing to protect them. Others are assaulted by the guards themselves. Women and men are subjected to both sexual and physical abuse. Overcrowded and underfunded prisons, many of them privatised, control inmates by isolating them for long periods and by using methods of restraint that are cruel, degrading and sometimes life-threatening. Victims include pregnant women, the mentally ill and even children.

Though the US was built by immigrants and claims to stand against oppression and persecution, US authorities themselves have been persistently violating the fundamental rights of people who have been forced by persecution to leave their countries and seek asylum. As if they were criminals, many asylum-seekers are placed behind bars when they arrive in the country. Some are held in shackles. They are detained indefinitely in conditions that are sometimes inhuman and degrading.

International human rights standards exist for the protection of all people throughout the world, and the US has been centrally involved in their development. Some are legally-binding treaties, others represent the consensus of the international community on the minimum standards which all states should adhere to. While successive US governments have used these international human rights standards as a yardstick to judge other countries, Amnesty International argues that they have not consistently applied those same standards at home.

It is difficult to believe that the global upholders and staunch advocates of human rights cannot practice what they preach in their own backyard. But now we know why the great purveyors of human rights and the vehement critics of rights abuses in communist and erstwhile Communist countries never raise a voice of concern over unabated throttling of democratic norms and practices in the Gulf countries. The fault does not lie in the stars - the fault lies with them, they are the underlings. The hallowed are, after all, hollow.

A century of remarkable progress has revolutionised health conditions the world over. Among high income countries, life expectancy has increased by 30 to 40 years. Most of today's low and middle income countries have experienced even more dramatic gains that have transformed quality of life and contributed to economic growth. That is sadly where the goods news ends. The bad news is that over a billion people will enter the 21^st century without having shared in these gains: their lives will continue to be short and scarred by disease. Many others fail to realise their full potential for better health because health systems allocate resources to interventions of low quality or low efficacy related to cost. Increasing numbers of people forego or defer essential care or suffer huge financial burdens resulting from an unexpected need for expensive services. The continuing challenges to health ministries will be enormous.

The World Health Organization (WHO) feels there is a need to reduce greatly the burden of excess mortality and morbidity suffered by the poor. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Development Assistance Committee has established a target of reducing to half the number of people living in absolute poverty by 2015. This would mean focusing more on interventions that can achieve the greatest health gain possible within prevailing resource limits. It will mean giving renewed attention to diseases like tuberculosis as well as malaria and HIV/AIDS.

What must also be done, WHO suggests, is to proactively counter potential threats to health resulting from economic crises, unhealthy environments or risky behaviours. A global commitment to tobacco control, for instance, can potentially avert scores of millions of premature deaths in the next 50 years. Preparing effective responses to emerging infections and countering the spread of resistance to antimicrobials will help insure against the prospect of a significantly increased infectious diseases threat.

There is also a need to develop more effective health systems. In many parts of the world, health systems are ill-equipped to cope with present demands, let alone those they will face in the future. The institutional problems which limit sector performance are often common to all public services in a country. But despite their importance, they have been relatively neglected by governments and development agencies alike. Dealing with issues such as pay and incentives in the public sector, priority setting and rationing, and unregulated growth in the private sector constitute some of the most challenging items on the international health agenda.

Another must is the need to invest in expanding the knowledge base that made the 20^th century revolution in health possible, and that will provide the tools for continued gains in the 21^st century. Governments of high income countries and large, research-oriented pharmaceutical companies now invest massive resources in research and development oriented to the needs of the more affluent. Much of this investment benefits all humanity, but two gaps remain. The first about research and development is relevant to the infectious diseases that overwhelmingly afflict the poor. The second is about the systematic generation of an information base that countries can use in shaping the future of their own health systems.

The international community, WHO advocates, should avoid using its resources for what individual countries can do for themselves. International resources should, instead, concentrate on functions where international collective action is required. These include: global leadership and advocacy for health; generating and disseminating an evidence and information base for all countries to use; catalysing effective global disease surveillance; setting forms and standards; targeting specific global or regional health problems where the concerted action of countries is required.