[Reader-list] Informal Economies and Distribution Practices : Studying Bollywood

[Veena Naregal]

" A star is  like lipstick. When it  fades, it fades." 

Mr  Bagadia, film distributor, who claims to distribute  films for
their  "prestige", and NOT   for money.

      "…Much as I would like to pay you what you get outside, but
keeping in view that I do not take  recourse  to the  normal ugly 
sources  of  finance, I will be paying you twenty-five lakhs. However,
please  bear in mind that if the film does not  do well, I would  only
pay you a  token sum of Rs. 0. I hope this  finds  your approval."

Bollywood  contract, circa 1999. 

The saleability of its stars notwithstanding, the Hindi film industry
has always been described as a distributor's market.  Mr Bagadia's
seemingly self-effacing words hint at the tension between the star and
distributor in determining their respective stakes. Despite its
estimated current annual turnover of Rs. 5000 crores, and recent
efforts  to corporatise film production and finance,  the industry
continues to be a lucrative but high-risk investment option, relying
largely on off-the-books speculative capital and parallel money
markets for its finance and distribution arrangements. Taken together,
these quotes slyly point towards the routinely ambidextrous practices
the Indian film industry has evolved to address some of its
intractable core problems. Moreover, the implicit melodrama of the
above lines seems to somehow echo the highly-charged resolution that
the actual films will bring to the contradictory possibilities
addressed through their narratives.

As a cultural institution, Indian cinema encompasses  many paradoxes.
Seemingly, the incontrovertibly high levels of cinephilia among South
Asian audiences have not enhanced the industry's ability to be
financially self-sustaining. Since, at least, the post-World war II
boom in film production, film-making has relied on the informal
sectors of the economy for its financial needs as successive
governments were reluctant to recognise it as legitimate economic
activity. Despite its significant contributions to the nationalist
cause, the making of a cultural mainstream and Indian modernity, until
recently, the industry has been mostly reviled as a corrupting 
influence by official culture. Such perceptions have dictated
post-colonial censorship and taxation policies vis-a-vis the industry.
All of this has impacted upon production practices and
representational strategies in major ways.

The distribution and exhibition sector have been key to the industry's
survival.  The Indian film market is roughly divided into five
distribution territories, with the overseas market counting as a sixth
segment.  Recent box-office form of the production banner/director and
cast are factors that determine the price per distribution territory
and how early on in the pre-/production process films get picked up by
distributors. To be declared a trade hit, a film is expected to earn
above 200% of its total distribution cost, if collections exceed 350%
of distribution price, the film is termed a 'blockbuster', if 
recovery is  less  that  50%, it  is  classified  a disaster.  Most
films are  expected  to recover costs from collections over the first
week. Here, as is universally is the case  in the industry, non-formal
agreements and transactions prevail, ensuring that the smallest whiff
of commercial failure will ruthlessly kill a film's chances of staying
on in circulation.

And yet, Hindi cinema and the film industry have seen several changes 
in the past few  years.  Finally, in December 2000, against much
rhetoric of rescuing Bollywood from the clutches of the underworld,
film-making was finally accorded industry status. RBI was asked to
proceed with issuing guide-lines to banks and finance institutions to
consider advancing loans to film-makers. With Bollywood's willingness
to explore openings  in  global markets, a  slew of commissioned
corporate reports have followed, all testifying to the growth
potential of the Indian entertainment industry. Besides the foray of
some big business houses into the  arena of  film production, in a
major shift of policy, institutions such as the IDBI and EXIM bank
have offered schemes to partially finance film production and exports.
In keeping with other changes in the emerging Indian urban scape, a
growing number of multiplexes have sprung up to alter patterns of film
consumption in the major metros.  With multiplexes emerging as a
particularly lucrative segment of the exhibition sector, the idea of
an all-India hit is no longer a commercial imperative, and producers
have shown their willingness to adapt content to selectively tap
specific sectors such as the metros combined with the overseas market,
or conversely, the small-town circuit, to ensure profitability.

 Although the scale of interventions aiming to corporatise film
finance remain relatively small, these  changes raise many questions,
including whether indeed these trends signify a major shift in
relations between the film industry, state and market,  the extent to
which these changes will impact on the distribution sector, and more
generally, on production strategies and business practices within the
industry.  An important  issue  will be whether these  changes in the
film industry will bear  out trends seen in the television services
distribution sector, where one heard similar  talk about how the entry
of corporate players in the  cable TV business  would  reform the
business ethic of the neighbourhood cablewallah.  Despite achieving
some  level of  consolidation in the  cable business, if anything, the
 entry of  corporate  interests  in media  distribution there have
only  strengthened  the role of  informal networks,  as  the 
long-drawn out impasse over CAS amply demonstrates. The experience of
the film industry - what we  have in lieu of a  cultural mainstream - 
might   prove  a  fascinating  opportunity to actually open up 
questions  about the possible parallels and  intersections   between
practices  in the "clean" corporate sector  and its supposed opposite,
the informal sector of the economy.

Despite the salience of reporting on the entertainment industry in the
business press today, scholarly writing has fought shy of any sort of 
documentation or analysis of  industry practices in any systematic
way. Similarly, film/cultural studies practitioners have tended to
overlook focussing on the material processes through which these films
are produced to reflect upon the larger social-historical and cultural
implications of these conditions and how they  influence textual
formats and meanings being generated and consumed.

This study will  initiate the task of  gathering data  on  practices 
in the film  distribution and exhibition sectors.  It will focus on 
representative segments of two major  distribution territories on the 
film circuit: 1) Bombay : comprising of  Maharashtra, North Karnataka
and Gujarat 2)  Delhi and UP .  I propose to use the fellowship to
analyse data pertaining to the distribution strategies and
trajectories for a small number of  pre-identified releases over a 
two-month period, and  comprising  of both "A" and "B" grade films. 
This data  will be  collected from reports in the business and trade 
press and through field-survey interviews with producers, film
directors, distributors, exhibitors, multiplex managers, cinema  hall
proprietors in metros and small towns. Besides, policy-makers, banking
and financial executives, consultants, trade analysts, film
journalists and scholars will also be interviewed in order to  gauge
the significance  of some  of these recent shifts in film finance and
production.

                                                  
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