There is no question Bollywood is an industry in trouble. Although, revenues
have increased over the past five years, losses have mounted as well, reaching Rs. 3
billion in 2002 ("Bollywood Cash," 2003) . In particular, Bollywood’s fortunes during
2001 and 2002 illustrate how rocky the ride has been. 2001 was a banner year: "Lagaan"
and "Monsoon Wedding" enjoyed worldwide success while "Gadar-Ek Prem Katha" and
"Dil Chahta Hai" were hugely successful with audiences. In contrast, 2002 yielded little
but grief with one unequivocal super-hit, "Devdas", and a string of expensive flops (Tan,
2003). Out of 132 films released that year, only 8 did not lose money. South Asian
industry veterans have long blamed "the forces of globalization" as a big reason for this
kind of performance. But as we shall see, the effects have been more varied. One of the
things it has done is to throw into relief the flaws and shortcomings of Bollywood.
Consequently, Bollywood has made efforts over the years to be more competitive and
there are signs it may indeed be emerging from the doldrums. How Bollywood has
attempted to weather the huge changes in the Indian media landscape wrought directly and indirectly by "the forces of globalization" is what we examine in the rest of this thesis.
In Chapter 2, we look at the history of Bollywood, prior to the 1990s and
globalization. Chapter 3 presents a timeline of the relevant events. Chapter 4 discusses
the challenges faced by Bollywood during the 1990s, the advent of globalization whereas
chapter 5 delineates how Bollywood has evolved to meet these challenges. Since
globalization is intended to be a two way street, we conclude with an examination of how
Bollywood has started to influence world culture in chapter 6.