.in for motion

A visual essay about the dramatic change that the world’s largest democracy is going through for the past two decades. The process of economic liberalization, and the IT revolution took place simultaneously in a country where the real industrial revolution hasn’t happened, and we saw how radical the impact was on the people, culture, and life


Change happened in every direction. The cities expanded vertically and horizontally, the consumables changed in variety, choice. The Citizen realized his power as a consumer, democracy’s fundamental unit assumed a new identity. The country witnessed an ever-increasing drain of inhabitants to the cities, towards liquid cash; fields of traditional crops gave way to industries or cash crops.

The population, once considered a burden, today coupled with education and professional exposure appears to become the nation’s biggest wealth. Today, the country provides thousands of highly qualified professionals, for the ever-growing global IT industry, forming world’s largest contributor to the same. Thousands of young people In the ITES sectors like the mushrooming call centers assume fake identity, language and culture to provide services to an unseen end-user across the globe in an working environment one couldn’t imagine before. The country is more tuning into investment driven, export & service oriented economy. Still, is the picture all that rosy?

Looking back at the history, India has been Asia’s first country to build computers indigenously, way back in 1950.Those huge and mysterious machines called The Computers were built to assist the statistical survey, which was the need of the hour to understand and govern the newborn nation and to develop its air defence & nuclear program. Eighties saw the fall of the socialist block and the change in global polarity. Academics & fundamental research was the first to lose attention and patronage, the crème of the young minds started migrating towards the west. In over 20 years India saw a paradigm shift in work ethics – from working for the pleasure of work to the money minded one.

And now IT has returned in a big way, it has come to reach the mass, with new hope of liberty, democracy & free expression. It has provided a new platform way beyond the limit of the state’s control.

Does globalization usher a new hemisphere of liberty? Does the open market mean a more open society? Does it really foster democracy? There is no end to these dialectically opposing views and beliefs. This film will neutrally record the reaction of the country with a population of over 1000 million people, extremely vast in terms of terrain, and equally diverse in terms of ethnicity, language and culture… a subcontinent.

One development erases the memory of the previous and also retains within itself the seed of its own annihilation. When we record, in the process we help erase the thousand other interpretations or reflections of the reality. The film will neither take a regressive nor a progressive stand. It will try to put forward & try to explore all these questions through different small stories spread across India without imposing any preconceived value judgment. The film will constantly be self-reflexive; returning to the beginning point of the search… What’s the change in a larger perspective of time!

an hour long documentary, HDV/ HDCam


funded by Jan Vrijman Fund (Amsterdam)
in association with BBC (UK), YLE (Finland),
Majade (Germany), Steps India