India’s Mumbai: City of dreams ruled by nightmares

Saif Ali Khan, a Bollywood “A”-list actor, is attacked — stabbed with a knife inside the fortress-like confines of his penthouse home. Non-Marathi-speaking employees of a bank are beaten up on camera by goons of a regional political party that has failed to win a single seat in several successive elections. Audience members who watched a comedian’s routine are sent notices by the Mumbai police (a dubious first in India), because while we take huge pride in being the world’s largest democracy, our dear leaders must not be mocked.

All this happened in Mumbai — the beating heart of India Inc., which accounts for more than half the corporate taxes levied in India. Mumbai is also the centre of Bollywood — India’s undisputed soft power and our cultural ambassador to the world — which is currently in near-death throes, facing a creative crisis, the stranglehold of nepo babies, and an all-pervasive fear of telling stories that matter.

The Brihanmumbai Corporation has a budget of over Rs 500 billion — more than most small states. Yet BMC elections are postponed indefinitely while it is used as a piggy bank for notoriously corrupt legislators.

Mumbai has given India so much and, in return, got virtually nothing. Whether you’re a star, part of a legendary couple, a corporate leader, a comedian, or an aam aadmi (common man), the authorities will treat you with blithe indifference — unless you wield serious political power, in which case you’ll get laser-eyed focus.

What accounts for Mumbai’s squalid condition? The short answer: short-sighted, power-hungry politicians who want to control the coffers, the levers of power, and Bollywood — to do their bidding.

Take the ridiculous notice by Mumbai Police to audience members who watched comedian Kunal Kamra’s routine. I can only compare it to breaking a butterfly on a wheel. Now, you may find Kamra unfunny and feel angry that he mocked you — but Freedom of Expression (FoE) is meaningless without the right to offend. Even unfunny jokes are FoE.

What happened to Kamra — the venue being attacked by thugs, a bulldozer running over parts of the premises, police cases lodged against him, his mother being unable to leave the house, being forced to seek anticipatory bail, with teams of Mumbai Police visiting him in Chennai — made it seem like all crime had ended. Mumbai was now Ram Rajya, with Kamra as the only criminal.

The reality? He mocked Eknath Shinde — demoted from Chief Minister to Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra after being downsized by his ally, the BJP. To add insult to injury, Shinde, who had broken the original Shiv Sena to fulfil his dream of becoming CM, is now being completely marginalised in the Maharashtra government by his erstwhile deputy, Devendra Fadnavis — while the BJP systematically poaches his party members.

Kamra is a soft target — a way to vent frustration and show the lumpen cadre that Shinde still calls the shots, especially with the indefinitely postponed BMC elections possibly on the horizon.

Similarly, take Raj Thackeray, who these days only makes news when his ever-diminishing thuggish cadre beat up hapless bank functionaries or prevent a railway recruitment test — ostensibly in the name of securing jobs for the “Marathi manus.”

Thackeray, a Balasaheb Thackeray doppelgänger who once fancied himself his heir, was a firebrand speaker with good communication skills. But Balasaheb preferred the son Uddhav over the nephew — and the bitter nephew left the family fold to found his own party.

Raj Thackeray is essentially a lazy politician who couldn’t be bothered to do the hard work of building a party. He’s hopped from ideology to ideology and now can’t win a single seat — resorting instead to attacking those who can’t hit back.

Regional pride and securing jobs for locals are excellent planks. But despite Maharashtra being the second-most industrialised state in India (after Tamil Nadu), none of these leaders — Shinde, Thackeray, or even Fadnavis — dares question how all major new infrastructure projects are handed over to Maharashtra’s favoured neighbour, Gujarat, while Maharashtra faces a humongous unemployment crisis.

To question this favour flow to Gujarat would mean questioning the real power of India’s ruling duo. So, Kamra and a helpless bank employee are easier targets for these quixotic displays of strength.

Bollywood is India’s favourite export to the world, yet the thought police must be obeyed — and they’ve all but killed the golden goose. Content is monitored, and extra-constitutional censors such as the Karni Sena offer bounties to cut off actors’ noses. The three Khan superstars — Shah Rukh, Aamir, and Salman — face routine boycott calls when their films release and are now, at 60, aging out.

The fake drug case against Aryan Khan and the weaponisation of Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide were cautionary tales for Bollywood A-listers — and they listened.

When you kill creative imagination, you kill the stories. What remains is the mediocre mulch starring nepo babies — films that flop with monotonous regularity. Readers of SWAT Analysis may remember my earlier column, where I revealed that re-releasing old hit films is now more profitable than producing these fresh, forgettable nepo-star vehicles.

Bollywood is slowly dying, and two forces are killing it: a dearth of fresh talent (once, anyone could come to Mumbai with big dreams and a shot at stardom — now it’s a nepo-closed shop) and political interference.

Actors and directors know they’re soft targets — forced to perform command pieces, not tell real stories. Off the record, many tell me they play it safe, even on OTT platforms, where invisible red lines abound. “Politics is killing Bollywood,” a top director told me, “I can’t work with a thought police watching my every move.”

Mumbai once prided itself on being unlike Delhi — not obsessed with politics 24/7. But the politics of smash-and-grab — driven by some leaders and a party desperate to rule Mumbai at any cost — has brought us here.

The two regional parties — Shiv Sena and NCP — were broken. The BJP cobbled together support, while a comatose national party, the Congress, watches its fragments being chipped away by fear and inducements.

Oh, and Saif Ali Khan, with whom I began this column? The man arrested for the attack says he is being framed. Meanwhile, the all-powerful BCCI has decided to retire the Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi Trophy — named after the legendary Indian captain and Saif’s father.

This is where we are in Mumbai — and the times we live in, in India.