In Print: ‘Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-First Century India’

Publication title

Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-First Century India

Purdue author

Megha Anwer

Authors

Megha Anwer

Anupama Arora

Publisher

University of Michigan Press

Publication date

September 2025

About the book (from the publisher)

“Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-First Century India” explores the role that Hindi films play in how precarity is mediated by film and what that mediation reveals about both contemporary India and the social life of the movies. This study moves away from the history of Hindi cinema’s articulation of precariousness, focusing instead on filmic renderings of precarity — a distinct and historically contingent condition produced by neoliberalism. It examines 19 Bollywood films that constitute India’s precarious public sphere, characterized by a pervasive and profound sense of professional-personal insecurity experienced by the vast majority. The authors argue that post-2010 Hindi films may be thought of as contentious cinematic terrains that record India’s transition from the glee and gusto of liberalization in the 1990s to a nation contending with the failures and inadequacies of neoliberalism’s promises and the ascendency of the material-affective redressals offered by authoritarian politics. Incorporating film and media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and South Asian studies, “Screening Precarity” is an intervention in the politics of representation, particularly of how marginal identities are shaped, scripted and screened when neoliberalism and authoritarianism enmesh. It is also a cultural analysis of how the biggest film industry in the world is embedded in global media networks and marshals state power and star power, national histories and transnational fantasies, structural impossibilities, and individual agency to tell the story of a period marked by incredible insecurity, violence and the absence of collective political alternatives.

About the Purdue author

Megha Anwer is a clinical associate professor and associate dean for research in the John Martinson Honors College. Her research centers on perspectives and theories from urban studies, critical race studies, feminist studies, postcolonial studies and violence studies in a global and transnational context. She has received multiple teaching awards during her tenure at Purdue, including the Exceptional Early Career Teaching Award and the Pillar Award for Student Leadership Development.

About the In Print series

To celebrate our faculty’s excellence in scholarship, Purdue Today’s weekly book series highlights faculty expertise across diverse subjects and disciplines. Find out more about the Purdue University Books Initiative and how to suggest a book for the In Print series on the Office of the Provost website.