Is it easier for film stars to fight elections? It should be. It can’t be much different from enacting a scene at a shooting. The accoutrements are much the same. The make-up man and hairdresser still hover around; the costume department sets out a line-up of appropriate clothes, with three-four changes, for each campaigning day; a dialogue writer functions as the speech writer, and if the actor is smart, he/she would have a director dropping in each morning of campaigning to ensure that the get-up, dialogue delivery and acting are upto the mark, and to put them through a suitable number of rehearsals.
Fortunately, stars realise pretty quickly that the public wants a powerful performance from them during the campaign. Their job is to deliver it effectively – as in a film. This is exactly what Urmila Matondkar is doing nowadays. She looks the part – like playing a politician in a Ramgopal Varma film, though her political persona seems more inspired by the Mahesh Manjrekar kind of films. She comes across as fiery, feisty politician, delivering earthy dialogues, rooted in the ground, and, undeniably, looks glamorous, draped in the right kind of saris. She’s also Maharashtrian, so speeches in the local language connect with the masses more effectively. Whether all this will help her win the election or not is for the future to decide but it is quite obvious that Urmila has prepared for the role and is giving it her best shot. As in films, in politics too, the public has the final word.
As suspected, a host of film stars have jumped into the poll battle. It is, as explained above, an easy assignment for them. Like shooting for a film, political campaigning demands, they stay in character for about six-eight weeks, and then, if box-office results are positive, they can make-believe, they are in a TV soap that would run for a minimum of five years. After that, they would need to worry about an extension, which is exactly what most TV stars of long-running soaps go through. So, elections are easy pickings for film stars with the inclination to essay a role that calls for more intimate contact with the public.
The producers of their new shows are political parties that have signed them on. As in films, marquee value matters in politics too. If the star is current and popular and has substantial following, he/she is pitted against the top political opponents. For instance, Bhojpuri film star and singer Dineshlal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ has been thrown into poll battle by the BJP against the former chief minister and current political boss of Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav. The purpose is twofold: the star can be expected to give the political leader-opponent a run for his money, and would also tie him down to his constituency to limit his campaigning across the state. For much the same reasons, Smriti Irani contested against Rahul Gandhi in 2014 in the latter’s home constituency, Amethi. She lost but managed to reduce Rahul’s margin substantially, and also compelled him to spend more time in Amethi than he would have liked. These 2019 general elections, she’s at them again, fighting it out in Amethi against Rahul Gandhi. According to media reports, she stands a good chance of wresting the seat from him and has forced him to flee to Kerala to contest from a second, much safer seat. Using stars in this fashion isn’t a new tactic. Way back in 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi took over the Congress Party after his mother, Indira Gandhi’s assassination, he prevailed upon Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest Bollywood star of those times, to contest elections against Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, who was seen as opposition’s potential prime ministerial candidate. Bachchan, as history shows, won handsomely.
Another good reason why film stars are welcomed in political parties is best explained by the Hindi phrase: bali ka bakra. The Congress had lost the Bombay North constituency in 2014 by a huge margin of over four lakh votes. The Congress candidate of 2014 did not want to enter the fray from the same constituency and pleaded with the high command to give him a ticket from some other Bombay constituency. The high command obliged but was left with no credible candidate for Bombay North. In that context, Urmila was God-sent to the party. She could be expected to put up a good fight and even if she lost, it would not be too much of a loss for the party. Of course, Urmila Matondkar is fighting it out and may still triumph because of the character she has decided to essay during campaigning. It is up to her to show that even a film, not expected to do well at the box-office, can come up trumps.
While political parties clamour for glamorous faces to front for them in some constituencies, it is generally expected that they don’t have much use for them after elections. Most just make up numbers in the back benches and offer photo-ops entering and exiting the Parliament. Yet, there have been some remarkable success stories. Sunil Dutt reached what should be regarded as the pinnacle of his political career, as sports minister in the Union cabinet and did a splendid job. Shatrughan Sinha, now estranged from BJP and having party-hopped to Congress, a party he treated as villain for more than 20 years, was also a minister for some years. Vinod Khanna also held some kind of an innocuous position in government but Smriti Irani has enjoyed the most heady success of all from the Hindi entertainment industry. She has been in charge, more or less all through her term, of a few ministries, and is seen as a prominent political leader of the BJP. Her TV avatar has got locked away and today, she is as much of a political animal as Narendra Modi or Sonia Gandhi.
There have been many stars/film celebrities who have got into the political industry to perpetuate their public careers, and at a time when their film career was on the wane. But the second career is as demanding as the first, and the ones who were not serious, like Govinda, have fallen by the wayside. Stars like Shatrughan Sinha and Smriti Irani, who subsumed their film/TV career into their political one, put in the hard yards, have results to show for it. Perhaps, politics too demands full-time commitment and sustained effort, which stars are not so used to. They are more comfortable working on a project for some months or a year, and then shifting focus to something else. This is not possible in politics. But, obviously, it can be done. The path to proving to political parties that they are much more than glamorous crowd magnets is tough, and possibly takes years, but the stars who do it manage to regain the same prominent place in society that they enjoyed as A-list film/TV stars.
By the end of May, 2019, the country will come to know the stars who would be seen in Parliament. There are bound to be some major victories and some abysmal failures but that is no more than to be expected. The purpose of political parties would be served in putting up known Bollywood faces on election posters. What the Bollywood faces do as politicians will always remain a big question mark. What About Bollywood? It should be natural for Bollywood to whole-heartedly support film personalities in their election campaigning, irrespective of their choice of political party. However, that is not the case for two simple reasons: one, the industry is vertically divided in its preference for the two national parties and quite virulently too; secondly, film personalities who do make it to Parliament generally do zilch for Bollywood. Not a single film person who has made it to the Union cabinet has actively espoused Bollywood’s causes. Why this should be so is difficult to understand. It is as if having reached the upper echelons of government, they are confronted by much bigger national issues which they need to focus on and Bollywood recedes way down in priority, as has been the case with all ministers across parties and governments right from Independence. So, dealing with issues of education and sports and textile cottage industries employing millions of artisans makes these film star-politicians feel, the film industry can take care of itself and needs almost none of their time or consideration.
If so, this is such a flawed outlook. Active and energetic promotion of the film industry is essential to the well-being of the country. For instance, just an amendment of laws to facilitate rapid expansion of cinemas in the country would lead to unimaginable benefits. The construction of cinemas would generate employment, bring in FDI, create entertainment hubs across the nation, and each cinema would employ at least 15-20 people. Other related industries like F&B would expand, generating further employment and revenues. Entertainment tax (now GST) would shoot up, providing revenue for government; film industries would prosper with revenues from additional cinemas which would be ploughed back into filmmaking, creating even more employment possibilities. Cinemas also create a sense of well-being in societies and help release the pressure cooker the modern-day life style hasbecome. Creating centres like Bombay’s Film City in each city would boost not just filmmaking and film culture but also generate revenue from tourism and create jobs for thousands and maybe lakhs of people.
Entertainment industries internationally are geared to expand exponentially in the coming years. IT industries have boomed in India and there’s no reason why the entertainment industry can’t follow the same successful path, if it is given the right patronage by governments. Unlike the IT industry that employs only the well-educated, a boom in the film industry would provide gainful employment across all sections of societies, including the relatively uneducated – and in very large numbers, too.
It is, therefore, astonishing that the film people who end up in powerful positions in government don’t realise this and they do nothing to provide a leg-up to the film industry. And, frankly, the film industry doesn’t need money from the government to get on with its job and create prosperity. It just requires mere easing of rules and regulations and a concerted effort to bring about an ease of doing business. For instance, since decades, the film industry has been going abroad if the script requires shooting outdoors – in streets or railways or tourist spots – because the number of applications and babus to be crossed (and sometimes bribed) to get the written permission in India is like an obstacle course. It just made more sense to take a small unit abroad and get the job done. Now, just very recently, governments have created a single window to issue these clearances but it has been after so many decades!
The film personalities who become politicians in high seats of power could do much about these issues but they have rarely bothered. Even they, like seasoned politicians, end up looking down on the industry, treating it like a well-fed man begging for alms. The industry doesn’t beg for alms; it only asks the government to create a more conducive environment to do business, in exactly the same way that IT industry or telecom industry or steel industry and all other industries do. It is the politician’s jaundiced view of the film industry that distorts their vision of reality.
Hopefully, the new lot of film personalities who make it to Parliament will take their responsibilities more seriously. And do something for the film industry.
