New Delhi: With Dhurandhar breathing fresh air into box office sales, Bollywood and its fate have once again become a topic of deliberation in the global media.
In Financial Times, Krishn Kaushik and Chris Kay write about the Hindi film industry’s successes and battles over the last decade. “Like cinema industries and cable television channels across the world, Bollywood has been hit by the streaming revolution,” they write.
The report, citing one industry executive, says Bollywood is “on a ventilator”. Cinema attendance fell 6 percent from 2024 levels to 832 million last year, the lowest in a decade outside the pandemic years, according to Ormax Media, which tracks India’s entertainment sector, it notes.
“While box office receipts have recently edged back, helped by rising ticket prices and a smash-hit thriller that heaps praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insiders and analysts say Bollywood is a shadow of its former self,” says the report.
“Once a force that shaped national narratives, it now produces a glut of predictable films, often with nationalist overtones.”
Critics have alleged that Bollywood executives have a “herd mentality”, relying on a familiar pool of stars who no longer draw audiences as they once did but still command high pay, according to the report. It highlights that earlier films acted as mirrors “to the lives and aspirations of ordinary Indians, allowing society to reflect on issues such as the caste system, corruption, inequality and women’s safety”.
Now, after the Modi-led BJP came to power in India in 2014, the dominant movie theme has been “Hindu pride”.
While Bollywood’s films reflect India’s political and economic trends, the industry is also being shaped by global pressures.
The report cites director-producer Karan Johar as telling FT correspondents: “We are combating gaming, we’re combating streaming, we’re combating sport, we’re combating attention span, because of reels and Instagram.”
The problem, as the report points out, also lies in the power big stars wield when it comes to a film’s finances. Male leads in particular influence “which films get made and command salaries that are far in excess of what female actors can demand.”
Bollywood has also remained largely closed off to outsiders for most of its history. Big production studios like Sony, Paramount and Fox Star all set up shop and failed. The industry is dominated by family-run production houses, according to the report.
In the BBC, Mohammad Sartaj Alam reports on Indian sailors who have finally returned home after being stranded at sea due to the West Asia war. “The men were part of an 18-member crew—16 Indians and one each from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh—on a ship seized by Iranian authorities who alleged they were smuggling fuel,” says the report.
While eight crew members had returned to India in early February, eight others reached home only this Sunday. The ship, MT Valiant Roar, operated by Dubai-based Prime Tankers, was seized on 8 December while it was in international waters.
Some crew members were taken to a jail in Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, while others were detained on the vessel, it notes.
In January, their families approached a court in India seeking government intervention, after which the foreign ministry secured consular access. The release order for eight Indians was received only on 27 February. A day later, US and Israel began their strikes on Iran, disrupting flights and border crossings in the region.
“We could only watch helplessly as missiles fell around us through the night,” Vijay Kumar, the ship’s captain, told the BBC. He added that Iranian authorities had removed key navigation and safety equipment from the ship when they seized it, making it impossible to move to a safer location.
On 15 March, the crew finally headed toward Iran’s border with Armenia, passing through bombed areas and sheltering in Jolfa for three days while awaiting visas. They crossed into Armenia on 27 March, reached Yerevan, and then flew via Dubai to Mumbai, arriving in India on 29 March, the report says.
Andy Mukherjee writes for Bloomberg on how ‘India’s gas shortage will make dal compete with data’.
“With the war in Iran now in its second month, India’s cooking-gas shortage is turning serious. Policymakers must view this as more than a temporary blip; it is a crisis that may permanently shift how the world’s most-populous nation consumes energy,” says the report.
Induction cookers are getting sold out: Amazon’s local unit reported a 30-fold jump in sales, it notes.
“Assuming 10 percent of households switch to electric and 70 percent cook dinner simultaneously, the extra 28-gigawatt demand equals nearly a tenth of the summer peak load. This additional load is more than the power-guzzling potential of all data centers under construction globally,” it says.
Mukherjee opines that solar energy and piped natural gas (PNG) are the way forward. “Should the LPG squeeze worsen, planners may have to tell Silicon Valley firms investing in India to go slow. They want to lower the cost of AI tokens by tapping India’s solar power, but New Delhi must prioritise human welfare over artificial intelligence.”
India’s grid is strong, but substations, as the report points out, require upgrades. “The neighbourhood transformer that has adapted to an increasingly air-conditioner-heavy lifestyle might fry if everyone cooks dal at 8 pm,” says the report.
“New Delhi is aggressively pushing urban households toward piped natural gas, or PNG. This is the right short-term move,” it adds.
“Energy planners must decide what matters more: spending electricity on exporting AI tokens to the West, or keeping dosa and dal affordable for local families. Now is not the time to do both.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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