The Most Ineffective Ban Ever

Gaurav Sabnis
Nov 20, 2003
Pakistan’s Ban on Indian Entertainment

What is common to , , , and ? Besides being neighbours of , these countries also live under the fear of Indian hegemony. And no I don't mean the Indian fire-power but the Indian culture.

Now when I talk of the Indian "culture", I am using the Indian "entertainment products", i.e. Indian , soap operas and albums as the tool of culture, even though some may disagree.

Indian are THE most popular in all these countries. Surprisingly, many of these countries have also imposed a ban on Indian . and , taken together would total to about 1/3rd of ’s . The governments of these 2 countries have, under the influence of the mullahs, banned Indian . This has to be THE most ineffective ban of any kind ever in any part of the world. Ask any average Pakistani or Bangladeshi about the last movie he saw and it will be a Bollywood movie released within the past month. These two countries together form a huge market for Bollywood films, but alas they are banned.

How do they get to see these then? Simple, pirated videos and CDs. In fact this network of piracy is so efficient that even the pirated VCDs sold in are ’Made in ’, most of them manufactured by a company called "Sadaf Video". Now this is not some shady two-bit organisation with a handful of hacks peddling CDs. This is a legitimate (in at least) company, which has posh showrooms in . It even sells its illegitimate wares online in its CD store. Most of the listed here have not been released on video/DVD by the filmmakers. Yet these pirates brazenly advertise their availability on the Internet.

In fact Sadaf manages to release pirated prints days before any movie’s premiere. A friend of mine saw Lagaan one week before its release on a Sadaf VCD.

It is not surprising that such kind of piracy goes on even while Bollywood tries to stop it, in vain.

What should be noted is that the Pakistani has banned these , and yet a company can sell pirated versions of these in proper showrooms and Internet sites.

Why have a ban at all then, one might ask?

I have no idea, maybe the Pakistani people and the Pakistani can throw light on this. We can examine the reasons by listing exactly who loses out and who gains due to this prevailing system.

The Mumbai Film Industry is a big big loser, perhaps an even bigger loser than it realises. According to estimates by KPMG, the industry earns close to $800 million every year. It is also expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 20 percent over the next 5 years. Even after accounting for the lucrative NRI market in Europe and America, it is estimated that almost 80-90% of the revenues come from within . Now let us just do some simple math. If a country of 1 billion earns the industry almost $700 million, the combined markets of and , with a of over 300 million with a similar per capita income would be at least 20% of that.

Bollywood is thus losing out on around $ 150 million every year. So who is gaining? Sadaf obviously gains. It pays nothing to the filmmakers. It may be paying a hefty amount to the people who actually steal these prints and copy them, but even that amount would not be too substantial. Buying a CD and burning a movie on it does not take more than 15 rupees (33 cents), a price that would drop drastically taking into account economies of scale. Yet, Sadaf sells these at $10 per CD, as the website itself claims. You can imagine what a killing they make.

One might be fooled into thinking that because of this ban, the 150 million dollars that would have gone to stay in thanks to Sadaf. However that is not so. By legitimising Indian , would only make the pie bigger. So the piece of the big pie that Pakistanis get will be much bigger than the tiny pie the pirates currently devour. Imagine how great it would be if Pakistanis could have legitimate access to Indian . This would mean that more cinema halls and multiplexes could be opened in . This would generate additional employment as well as revenue. There would be legitimate video shops, sans the Sadaf monopoly and the Pakistani could earn big bucks through taxes.

And more importantly, the Pakistanis who so far are forced to watch those on substandard VCDs with jerky second hand camera work and massive editing (to fit the movie into 2 CDs instead of 3), will get to watch in cinema hall or on high quality VCDs.

Sounds like a win-win situation right?

Wrong!!

The opposition to this comes from the Islamic extremists, and the mullahs in and . Partition occurred on the basic premise that we are two (!!) nations merely on the basis of . The cultural roots of the subcontinent Muslims were largely ignored by this theory. The theory is perpetuated by the establishment in , which tries to Arab-ise the country. So we have the MMA provincial governments banning celebration of ’’ a festival celebrated by the people of the subcontinent for thousands of years. The ban on the and Indian channels is similarly motivated.

The mullahs and the establishment are scared that if people watch Indian and soap operas, they will lose this feeling of separateness that they have worked so hard to create over the last 55 years. They fear a cultural "invasion" from , an invasion that will break the back of the two-nation theory.

For what , like any work of , essentially reflect the culture of the society they are made in. While the Hum Aapke Hain Kouns reflect ties in the subcontinent, the Dil Chahta Hai’s represent the changing and their changing . Bollywood gives us a snapshot of present day middle class urban , and what the mullahs fear is that once Pakistanis and Bangladeshis see this snapshot, they will realise it is not very different from their own urban middle class.

This is why they ban Indian entertainment. However these bans show how miserably they have failed to Arab-ise the subcontinent. People still prefer Indian and there are hardly any takers for Lollywood . There are voices within asking the to give a boost to create an Urdu film industry. They feel that by setting up their own private channels and their own film industry, they will be able to tackle this Indian invasion. However I think this will fail because of two main reasons. Firstly, it is not very easy to set up an entertainment infrastructure so easily, because it requires more than just physical infrastructure. It requires a social acceptance for the field of entertainment as a profession. So it will be decades before a parallel industry is set up in .

Secondly, even if it is set up, I don’t think its products, if they have to be popular, can be much different from what Bollywood churns out. If there is an attempt to make , which fully comply with the Shariah guidelines, I am afraid no one is going to watch those . An illustration of this is the comparative popularity of Zee (when it was shown) and PTV. This is what had led to Cable operators in threatening a strike some weeks back if they were not allowed to show Hindi channels.

So Indian and soap operas are going to be more popular, no matter how loudly anyone invokes the Quran to stop this from happening. Indian culture, or rather the South Asian culture that has embraced is a dynamic one, which combines traditional with modern ideas inspired from the west. For the true meaning of culture is that which is continuously evolving. The opponents of this culture in and are in denial of this very definition. They feel that the Quran and the Hadith are all it takes to lead a complete life. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, let me say that this is delusional and overly simplistic.

So, what is going to happen?

Nothing, I guess things will continue the way they are for a while. These people will keep making film-pirates richer by watching low grade VCDs. But when the WTO and the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) gets going again after the Cancun problems are sorted, will have to grant MFN status within 5 years or so. And after that, a smart Minister for External Affairs can start making noises asking to take action against the Sadaf pirates, which will be mandatory under WIPO conditions.

Of course if Mush is around, he can tell us "There is no company called Sadaf in " or "No Pakistanis are involved in piracy of Indian " or "No Pakistani watches Indian since they are banned here"...........in very much the same breath that he says "Dawood Ibrahim is not in ".

Pakistanis should realise that is not going to be threatened by Indian entertainment. And even if it going to be, then watching Aishwarya sizzle a big screen in a cinema hall is not much more threatening than watching her sizzle computer/ screens through low quality VCDs. It is easier on the eyes and pockets though.