The Cultural Industries of India

The Cultural Industries of India is the first book length study dedicated to the Indian cultural and creative industries. By covering specific aspects of the cultural and creative sectors in India– from film festivals to music and performing arts, from cinema to tourism, including a policy review on innovation in the creative industries – the various chapters offer a comprehensive overview of the relationship between the cultural and creative industries and the wider economic, social, cultural and political processes taking place within India and its diaspora. The study of cultural and creative industries in India is important not only for their potential for economic growth and its knock-on effect on social and cultural development, but also because their analysis reveal the ways in which cultural production shapes politics and identities, income generation and urban renewal. This volume focuses on questions of structural inequalities within the sector at the local level, and to account for asymmetries in economic power and the possibility to circulate and access symbolic content within and beyond the boundaries of the Indian nation.

This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of creative and cultural studies, economics, history, development studies and media studies in India. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Cultural Trends.

Rohit K. Dasgupta is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Industries at the University of Glasgow, UK. His most recent book is Mapping Innovation in India’s Creative Industries (2023). He is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Clelia Clini is Lecturer in Postcolonial Media and Culture at London Metropolitan University, UK. She is also a Visiting Fellow in Postcolonial Memory in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University. Her research cuts across disciplines as she works across migration and diaspora studies; postcolonial theory; memory and cultural heritage; film and media studies.