Planning Democracy by Nikhil Menon

Author:Nikhil Menon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354924071
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2022-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Motion Pictures

The Films Division of India produced the moving images that solidified the state’s vision in the popular imagination. Established in 1948 as a branch of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, it was an institutional holdover of the colonial Informational Films of India. Apart from promoting officially endorsed imagery of the nation, the primary effect of the Films Division’s stream of frequently preachy and ponderous productions was, as Srirupa Roy argues, to present the state as signifying the nation.100 The films, newsreels and documentaries by the Films Division visually identified the State, allowing Indians to quite literally ‘see the state’ and the activities it was taking on behalf of the nation.101 In the second half of the twentieth century, the Films Division of India was the largest producer of documentary films in the world, with a production catalogue of more than 8,000 short films, documentaries and newsreels. Its audience was massive because their prints were supplied to the Department of Field Publicity and the Ministry of Welfare for screenings in the countryside. Until 1994, they were also played mandatorily in all cinema theatres across the country for up to twenty minutes before any commercial movie. It was a distribution network that reached 8,00,00,000 per week.102

Nearly 40 per cent of all the films produced by the Division between 1949 and 1972 were related to development and planning, the largest share by a distance.103 As Peter Sutoris puts it, the documentary was used as ‘a tool for legitimizing the development regime’.104 During the first plan period, thirty-three documentaries related to Plan themes, and that number rose over the second plan period to 123.105 In fact, from late 1953 onwards the Films Division began producing films specifically to match the publicity requirements of the Five-Year Plans.106 Within the Division, they came to be referred to as Five-Year Plan Publicity Films. The films weren’t only meant as updates tracking the progress of nation-building; as their audience was largely uneducated and illiterate, they endeavoured to teach as well. As Congress leader S.K. Patil explained, these documentaries had an important role to play in ‘educating our masses and more particularly in inducing their voluntary cooperation for the successful implementation of our Second Five-Year Plan’.107

In Sarey Jahan Sey Achcha (Better Than All The World), a black-and-white Hindi movie released in 1958, planning is portrayed as engineering the return of India’s historic greatness. The Plans represent a phoenix-like resurrection of an ancient land with an inspiring past. As the curtains part in the opening scene, an achkan-draped narrator walks on stage: ‘Today we will present a glimpse of India’s golden past, its present, and its hope-filled future.’ The story of India then follows in a highlight reel of myth, history and religion—its tradition of ‘satyam, shivam, sundaram’ (truth, goodness, beauty). In a succession of images, we witness the legendary Raja Harishchandra handing over his crown to the sage Vishwamitra; the divine Ram and Sita with their loyal accomplice Hanuman; a scene from the Mahabharata in which Vishnu’s

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