Talk:Rekha

Rajya Sabha

I'm wondering if there's a particular reason why this article has no mention of Rekha's remarkably low attendance and participation record during her Rajya Sabha tenure. Since I don't live in India, I only learned about it recently (and find it somehow very Rekha and quite funny), but apparently it was considered newsworthy at the time. I personally am interested in her acting and not her politics or lack thereof, but this omission seems a bit strange to me. And I don't particularly want to spend time looking up sourced statistics on this, only to get immediately reverted if the veterans here feel strongly about keeping politics out of the article. 82.131.63.86 (talk) 03:19, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Can you provide a source here? Shahid • ^Talk2me 11:19, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Came across these during a whimsical "I guess I've never looked at whether she did anything interesting in RS" search:

Zee News (2017-03-30): DNA: Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha under fire over low attendance in Rajya Sabha "attendance 3 days in 2016, 16 days during the entire 60 months"

India Today (2017-08-01): Sachin Overtakes Rekha In Rajya Sabha Attendance "attendance 18 out of 348 days, 0 questions raised, 0 debates participated"

I was thinking about backing this up with the actual RS statistics, but then started wondering if there was a tacit ban on this topic here, since this must have been well known in India. 82.131.63.86 (talk) 23:03, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

There should be a written source, which actually criticises her low attendance. Please find one and I'll mention it in the page. We can't deduct it's bad based on our POV, we must show it was actually an issue. Shahid • ^Talk2me 11:52, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Sachin Tendulkar, Rekha Draw Curtains on Their 'Absent' Parliamentary Career. (news18.com)

"Rekha has since April 2012, attended just 18 sessions, she has asked no questions and introduced no bills during her tenure. She has earned Rs 99.59 lakh, or nearly a crore, as an MP in the last six years."

"Their poor attendance record and almost negligible participation in Parliamentary affairs have often become subject of other MPs' ire."

Rekha, Sachin Tendulkar's Rajya Sabha tenure coming to an end (zeenews.india.com)

Subhead: "During her six-year tenure, Rekha did not introduce any bill, nor did she ask any question in the House."

"The two were nominated to the Upper House in 2012 and have since faced severe criticism over her low attendance record." (that 'her' should probably be 'their')

These are just sample quotes, pick whatever you like. There are mentions of specific criticisms by other members. It's also commented that she might have been "arm-twisted" to join RS in the first place. I can look for more on that if you want, but it would obviously still remain speculation. I still intend to find the official RS stats as well.

Just to be clear here: I admire Rekha enormously and never intended to dig up negativity on her, and It's very unfortunate if she was pressured to join without having any real interest, but she was still in public office. RS is not a book club, nor should membership there be treated as a "lifetime award". She was in RS for 6 whole years, so just the terse mention that she was there without anything about what she did (or, in this case, didn't do) doesn't seem appropriate, when other 6-year periods of her life get detailed treatment here. 82.131.63.86 (talk) 15:23, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you so much! There's absolutely no problem with offering such additions, which are most helpful and will help balance out the page. Shahid • ^Talk2me 23:37, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

@82.131.63.86 You seem to be new here so take this word of advice my friend. You don't need to get permission from Shahid or anyone else. He deserves respect for all his work but he's not the boss of anyone or gatekeeper. If you have good material you can always make your own edits. 41.78.247.249 (talk) 23:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

You're absolutely correct, 41.78.247.249, thanks for clarifying this - actually I should have. I assumed 82.131.63.86 was just not experienced enough in editing and would thus prefer to discuss it first (which is always the preferred course of action for contentious ideas, which this one really isn't) and have someone's help. Anyway, I've expanded this part according to this discussion with good sources. Shahid • ^Talk2me 01:35, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, I've made my share of edits over the years, but mostly small corrections and 2-3 line additions, so I wasn't quite sure how to position this bigger topic in the article structure, etc. Mainly I was concerned about getting into an edit war, because when the article is being actively edited but a particular topic is oddly untouched upon, that kind of makes you wary. I guess I was overthinking things as usual. :) Thanks, Shahid, for getting this in there, and sorry about the adamancy above!

As for the RS official stats, their interface is so arcane that while I was able to verify her attendance (a sum of very deliberate-looking once-per-session-s with a few nils for garnish), there's no overall total to link to, only the search page as such where you'd then have to do ~20 per-session searches... With questions it's also iffy, because it's no real surprise to find nothing for her, but Sachin Tendulkar reportedly had some questions and I couldn't find any for him either... (Jaya Bachchan has lots, though, so maybe Rekha just didn't want to tangle with her. :) ) Anyway, looks like the media refs will have to suffice. 82.131.63.86 (talk) 02:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Haha loved your comment about Jaya. Anyway, thank you for your contribution. Please do consider starting your own account, that'd be great. Shahid • ^Talk2me 13:25, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Rubbish

It's very believable that Rekha-ji felt reassured and validated by the Khoon Bhari Maang award like she says in the remaining interview, but I took out the Simi interview reference and quotes because unfortunately she had mixed too much rubbish into that one. No offense to whoever added it to the article, but all that talk about "the first time", how prior to the KBM award acting was "just a job" that she "didn't like doing", and how she sleepwalked through all her earlier movies never made sense. It has even been contradicted by herself previously when she said it was indeed like that in her early years but Ghar made her turn on to acting. Let's not forget Ghar was also a Filmfare Award nominated movie for her, so who really knows even about that claim, seems to be a pattern here. She always says things like "you're not going to believe this" because she knows very well how much she exaggerates and tells tales. It's also funny how she always has little tells when she does that in interviews even though she can be 100% convincing in movies.

By the way the section title is "Setback and resurgence" but I think I just added the first mention of a setback only now. 180.15.163.207 (talk) 19:16, 16 December 2023 (UTC)