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Media Industries and the State in an Era of Reform >> 39

cultural industries and Bollywood in particular in raising “awareness, as
39
never before, about India.” Citing the London-based Selfridges’ month-
long event that involved transforming the store into a Bollywood film set,
the British Film Institute’s Imagine Asia festival, and screenings of Bolly-
wood films at various film festivals, Swaraj went on to argue that “culture”
was now more than just a vital economic sector. In her view, the cultural
industries had played a central role in redefining relations between India
and the diaspora:

This entertainment and media explosion has brought India closer to our
diaspora. More important is the fact that the diaspora has also majorly
contributed in fueling this growth. Perhaps geographical divisions between
Indians in India and the Indian diaspora is blurring if not disappearing alto-
gether [my emphasis]. And with the announcement made by the Hon’ble
Prime Minister at yesterday’s inaugural session, the dual citizenship will
bring the diaspora closer to us not merely due to our cultural bonds but
also by a legal system. 40

However, shifts in notions of citizenship and rearticulations of the boundar-
ies of the “national family” do not fully explain the state’s decision in the late
1990s to rethink its relationship with the media and entertainment indus-
tries. The other dimension to state-media ties concerns the material and
symbolic crises facing the film industry during the 1990s, and the emergence
of a discourse of “cleaning up” (safai) that posited corporatization as the way
forward.

From Bhais (Dons) to Bankers: Cleaning
Up Bombay and Its Film Industry
On May 10, 1998, at a national conference on “Challenges before Indian Cin-
ema” held in Bombay, Sushma Swaraj announced that the government had
decided to accord “industry” status to the business of filmmaking in India. 41
The justification for this policy change that the BJP-led government offered
centered on the issue of financing. As Swaraj asserted:

If you are committed to good cinema, you will have to provide good
finance. By according the status of industry, we have given pictures the
much-needed eligibility to seek funds from legitimate places. Thus, a sem-
blance of order is now possible in what has been a rather confused and
convoluted state of affairs. 42