Davos, meet Bollywood
Last year 'Bombay Dreams' ran on Broadway, and now Davos will be overrun by Bollywood. ‘India’ is one of the eight subthemes of this year’s Davos meetings and the country is taking advantage of this audience with the who’s-who crowd of international business to promote itself.
"India: the world's fastest-growing free-market democracy," proclaims one sign… Waiting for visitors at their hotel rooms will be gifts from India -- a pashmina shawl, an Apple iPod loaded with Indian pop and classical music, a piece of traditional art, some ayurvedic oils -- along with a CD packed with all sorts of economic information about the country.
… Indian speakers will be featured in 60 of the conference's 300 sessions. To put its best face forward, India has assembled a 115-strong delegation. That's nearly four times the size of the Indian contingent at Davos in 2005 and enormous compared to China's 30 delegates.
Also catch scheduled appearances by Bollywood choreographer Shaimak Davar, the hot DJ Aqueel, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and actress/activist Shabana Azmi.
Update: See also Sepia Mutiny and the Indian Economy Blog, who point us to the 'India Everywhere' site.
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Bollywood (Hindi: बॉलीवूड, Urdu: بالی وڈ) is the informal term popularly used for the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film industry.[1] Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the largest in the world.[2][3][4]
The name is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a real physical place. Though some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Bollywood is commonly referred to as Hindi cinema, even though "Hindustani", understood as the colloquial base common to both Hindi and Urdu, might be more accurate. There has been a growing presence of Indian English in dialogue and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see films that feature dialogue with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. There is a growing number of films made entirely in English
Posted by: Aamber Mehmood | Dec 3, 2008 5:10:11 AM