PRESIDENT, FILM FEDERATION OF INDIA

PRESIDENT, BENGAL FILM AND TELEVISION CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

We are living through a quiet revolution.

Not the kind that flashes headlines or floods social media—but the kind that hums beneath the surface. It’s happening in modest edit suites, in XR labs powered by borrowed laptops, in bedrooms where a 22-year-old from Silchar animates a story about his grandmother’s war memories. It’s happening in villages where children binge Bengali detective series on their smartphones, and in studios where Tamil scripts are being dubbed into 17 Indian languages—by AI.

This is India at the crossroads of art and code. And for once, the fork in the road leads home.

A Soft Power Waiting to Erupt

For too long, Indian cinema was measured either by Bollywood’s box office or by its international festival nods. That was a narrow lens. What we missed was the quiet potency of what lay in between: folk realism, tribal myth, indie animation, grassroots gaming—forms that weren’t marketable in the 90s but are monetizable today.

The current government, to its credit, has sensed this tectonic shift early—and acted on it with clarity and intent. Initiatives like WAVES 2025, the Create in India Challenge, and WaveXcelerator are not just policy-level signals. They are declarations that India’s creative capital is a national asset, and that storytelling is no longer an ornamental by-product of culture, but an engine of diplomacy, innovation, and economy.

Because storytelling is no longer just emotional currency—it is economic capital. The AVGC-XR sector alone is expected to reach ₹45,000 crore by 2025, growing at nearly 17% annually. OTT content consumption has surged by 20% year-on-year, with regional content now making up over 55% of total viewership (FICCI-EY 2024). This is not a trend. This is a new content economy taking shape—and this time, it’s multilingual and multi-geographic.

From Myth to Market: The East Awakens

Let’s speak plainly. If India truly wants to become the content capital of the world, it cannot remain Mumbai-Delhi-centric. The next leap in global storytelling must rise from the East and the North-East—from lands that have long offered India its most original literary, musical, and philosophical voices.

These regions are not underdeveloped. They are underconnected. They are not lacking stories. They are brimming with originality—from the oral mysticism of the Ao and Khasi to the lyrical realism of Bengali cinema, from Santhal epics to Bodo sci-fi allegories.

What they’ve historically lacked is access—to structured markets, to affordable tools, to distribution, and to the right platforms. That, thankfully, is beginning to change.

Today, Kolkata is emerging as a strategic gateway to this corridor of untapped brilliance. With production-ready studios, an abundance of trained technicians, world-class post facilities, and an intellectual culture that blends heritage with experimentation, Bengal is poised to become India’s next great content hub.

Add to that its proximity to Assam, Tripura, Sikkim, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal, and what we’re looking at is not a region, but a creative ecosystem waiting to be activated.

The locales? Astounding. The costs? Manageable. The crews? Hungry. The infrastructure? Growing.

From Storytelling to Story-Architecture

In the digital age, stories do not stop at “The End.” They loop into new formats—memes, games, animated spin-offs, immersive exhibits, AR experiences. Content is no longer linear—it’s circular, interactive, dynamic.

And India, with its rare marriage of technical fluency and artistic soul, is uniquely equipped for this era.

We are a nation of poets who code. Our filmmakers think in verse and syntax. Our animators build algorithms out of allegory. When a Manipuri XR artist creates a walk-through museum of tribal memory, or when a Bengali AI startup helps rural writers turn scripts into motion comics, it’s not assistance—it’s a new grammar of cinema. And it’s being written right now.

The Government’s Quiet Bet on the Creative Class

For the first time in recent memory, the Indian government is betting big—not just on commerce or hard infrastructure, but on creativity as national capacity.

Through grants, startup incentives, co-production platforms, and festivals like WAVES, it is redistributing the right to dream. It is saying: you don’t need a family legacy in film to pitch to Netflix. You can be from Jorhat or Jalpaiguri. You don’t need to walk the corridors of Juhu. You need a story—and a structure that lets it breathe.

And here’s where a humble suggestion arises: just as this government has repositioned India as a soft power superpower in diplomacy and technology, it could now go one step further—by taking these summits beyond the metros.

Let WAVES happen next in Kolkata. Let Guwahati host the next animation lab. Let Agartala launch India’s first tribal story market. Because when creators from these regions see that the national spotlight is not just reserved for the few—they will rise. And with them, India will rise.

A Culture of Scale, Not Just Scope

But for this republic of storytelling to flourish, we in the industry must also evolve. We must move from gatekeeping to scaffolding. From owning stories to enabling storytellers. From asking, “What’s the ROI?” to asking, “What’s the risk of ignoring this talent?”

Because if we don’t build this narrative architecture now, someone else will. And we will be left playing catch-up in an economy we could have led.

The Future Is Multiple. And It Speaks in Many Tongues.

WAVES 2025 will gather creators, coders, producers, and policymakers. It will showcase immersive tech, original IP, and India’s narrative nerve. But its true impact lies not in what’s staged—but in what it signals. That the next chapter of global entertainment will not be written in just English, Hindi, Spanish or Korean. It will emerge in Assamese, Bangla, Nagamese, Oriya, Nepali, Mizo or Garo —built in Unity, laced with code, streamed in 4K, and subtitled for the world.

The world will look East. And when it does, India must be ready. Not just with events. But with enduring structures of access, equity, and excellence.

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