Assorted

Thalabathi starrer, Mersal provokes BJP: Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights (and firecrackers), is the time blockbuster vacation-time films are released in India. But it's been fireworks of the political kind this Diwali over a film, Mersal, that hit screens in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu last week. Mersal is a crowd pleasing film about a vigilante hero seeking to shine a light on the ills commoners suffer due to political interference and apathy in the healthcare sector. In the film, Vijay plays a character named Dr Maran, who takes a hard look at the state of public healthcare in the country. In the controversial climax scene, Dr Maran takes up the recent introduction of the Goods and Services Tax levied by the federal BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In June, India replaced its numerous federal and state taxes with the GST, designed to unify the country into a single market. Under the new system, goods and services are taxed under four