Provincializing Bollywood

Situating it at the intersection of vernacular media production and the infrastructural-political reordering of provincial north India, the book shows that Bhojpuri media's characteristic 'disobedience' is marked by a libidinal excess - simultaneously scandalizing and moralizing - to address the inexact calculi of Bhojpuri speaking region's 'underdevelopment'.

This brilliant book, boldly comparative and bristling with ideas on every page, reads the re-emergence of Bhojpuri cinema in the new millennium as symptomatic of an "overflow" of north Indian provinciality. The "scandal" of this new Bhojpuri cinema and media prompts a deep meditation of what it means to be a province. Akshaya Kumar provides critical insights into how "libidinal belligerence and skewed entitlements" find expression in the "comparative media crucible" while negotiating local, regional, provincial, and vernacular imaginaries in popular culture. A deeply rewarding and provocative read.

Akshaya Kumar's ultimate interest is the political formation of contemporary India. Kumar argues that transformations in capital in contemporary India have found their expression in intensified regional identities. When the subaltern speaks here, they are speaking Bhojpuri. To account for this political identity, Kumar has to rethink the operations of cinema and the broader media ecology in which it operates. The result is an ambitious, relentlessly inventive book, opening up new domains for film and media studies.

Akshaya Kumar is assistant professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore.