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Media Industries and the State in an Era of Reform >> 49

“strategies implied in any invocation of culture, any invention of tradition,
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in relation to some purpose or goal.” Bollywood’s presence in settings such
as the World Economic Forum and the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Day of the
Diaspora) was not just a reflection of the growing economic importance of
the cultural industries. Rather, such events reveal that the transformation of
the Bombay film industry into Bollywood was caught up in a larger process
of the state realigning its understanding of “culture as resource” away from
well-worn developmentalist paradigms toward meeting the demands of new
circuits of capital.

Conclusion

This chapter has traced the sociocultural and political transformations that
set the stage for the reimagination of the Bombay film industry as Bollywood,
focusing on changing relations between the Indian state, the Indian diaspora,
and the media industries. My goal in doing so was to locate this moment of
transition in the media and entertainment industries within a wider histori-
cal and spatial terrain marked by a range of other reforms undertaken and
negotiated by the state, and as part of the redefinition of the nation-space in
an era of globalization. In arguing that a discourse of safai (cleaning/cleans-
ing) defined state practices in a number of domains (urban space, diaspora
relations) in a conjuncture marked by policies of economic liberalization, I
want to emphasize the role played by the state in the production of a “clean,”
corporatized, and global media industry. The reconfiguration of Bombay’s
media space and the emergence of Bollywood is, in other words, part of a
larger process of spatial restructuring in which the state participated.
However, as my account of the inaugural session of FICCI-FRAMES
2009 in the previous chapter signaled, the transformation of the Bombay
film industry into Bollywood was not just a matter of balance sheets, clean
financing, and globally recognized consultancy firms and their business jar-
gon. In postindependence India, the production, distribution, and exhibition
of Hindi-language films has been defined by a vast and intricate network
of private financiers, hundreds of independent producers and distributors,
powerful family-owned production companies, and exhibitors operating a
range of cinema halls across the country. It hardly needs to be pointed out
that the impact of changes in policy, new circuits of capital, and the growth
of the television and advertising industries on existing conditions and struc-
tures are bound to be complex and uneven. It is also crucial to keep in mind
that the transformation of the Bombay film industry into Bollywood has
been unfolding in the context of broader changes in the media landscape,