Who is the flag bearer of nepotism? by Juhi Meshram

Since past few years we hear, read or talk frequently about nepotism, specially in Bollywood. That how top production houses in Bollywood launch star kids in bulk every year and spend a whole lot of money to keep their career going. Well, there is no denying on that. To an extent, it does toughen the way of aspiring outsiders who work hard on their craft and struggle harder to enter the fraternity. 

But Bollywood is not just an association giving fair chances to people, it is foremost a business that runs on profits. It is not an institution backed by government but an industry run by individuals and productions, who invest their money and labour into every movie they make. Now how do we think a business works? It needs profits. And where does this profit of Bollywood come from? Simple, from us. 

Every feature film, digital content, short film or documentary earns by theatre collections or views which we are directly sourcing. Now a production, say Karan Johar can launch as many Varun Dhawans and Ananya Pandays he wants, they will only succeed if we keep watching them.

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Sure, we cannot stop them from giving opportunities to the ones already uplifted after all it is their production, their personal business. But do we know what actually makes them repeat it every year? The demand. Yes, sadly no matter how much we deny we want to watch Shahrukh Khan’s son on big screen and will pay fortunes to watch even if he chooses to debut from ‘Student of the year 3’. We want to see what Taimur eats, drinks and shits. We want to see their Diwali parties and no matter how much we criticise Koffee with Karan, we enjoy actors or directors mocking other actors or directors and delivering headline worthy statements. We watch who Alia marries, kills or hooks up every year even when the list never changes. We want glamour and ‘masala’ and the so called ‘stars’ know how to put a show.

I find nepotism in Bollywood and content in Tiktok quite similar. In both instances we keep taking shit into our brain and then blame the source for providing. And when there’s a crowd shouting for fairness we join the voice. 

They keep making pathetic movies because we keep watching them. We know there comes a trailer before the release of a movie, right? We know we can watch that trailer and decide whether it has got a content good enough to spend our time and money, or it is just another star kid promotion and protection material, right? We know if it is the latter and we keep on boycotting such movies it will shake the entire foundation of nepotism, right?

If we want them to make better movies with better talents then we should stop treating movies as mere entertainments. How many of us just go watch any movie on a weekend to kill time. We are the people who ridicule every Salman Khan movie then make it a super hit. Start treating movies like art, realise that this industry actually represents us globally. They say who we are. If we want ‘biggies’ to take outsiders seriously, then we should start taking them seriously.

Don’t watch any movie to pass time. Our brains are not dustbins to dump garbage. And we don’t actually leave our brains home when we go to theatres. Don’t enter theatre looking for known faces but true talents and we will find more of Sushant and less of Suraj every time. And then, it will truly be fair. Don’t forget, what we are served again is what we readily consume.