ABSTRACT
The chapter starts with a discussion of the economic reforms of 1991 and their larger implications for the Indian film industry, specifically for the NFDC and New Cinema. It then evaluates the NFDC's successes and failures under the shadow of the Babri mosque demolition, Bombay riots, and blasts in 1991–2. While the demolition gave an unparalleled cultural shock to India, it opened up an alternative right-wing, regressive, and fundamentalist politics in the country, which affected the ways the film industry would be dealt with. After the exposing of a deeper nexus between the underworld and the Bombay film industry through money and muscle, the government became cautious of the Indian film industry. The NFDC's proactive involvement with Doordarshan and television is discussed, continuing from the previous chapter, along with its effect on New Cinema. The chapter also continues the thread of conversation on the rationality of New Cinema and the NFDC, bringing in fresh evidence from the 1990s to highlight how Naseeruddin Shah was turned into a subject of Filmfare gossip, with a call for the total shutdown of the NFDC. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the granting of industrial status and its implications on the Indian film industry in 1998. After this declaration, the very need of having an organisation like NFDC was questioned, as low-budget films no longer needed its patronage, or so people thought.
