B'wood directors dipping into young blood

For Bollywood filmmakers, student politics has always provided a successful backdrop for a potboiler. Because nothing makes for headier drama than the combination of youth, college, dissent, angst, ideology and intrigue! Throw in a bit of romance and action, and it’s the perfect masala flick, albeit a thought provoking one.
Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti, to be released in June, is said to be inspired by the Mahabharata.It has a young Katrina Kaif pushed into the world of elections and public podiums and builds its story around the suppressed and rising political aspirations of youngsters adamant to break into the political arena and bring about changes.
In the same year, Hazaaroon Khwaishein Aisi, starring Kay Kay Menon, Shiney Ghosh and Chitrangda Singh, presented the most vivid accounts of Naxal politics and the events which occurred in the aftermath of the Naxal uprisings in West Bengal in 1967. It was a sensitive portrayal of youngsters in a newly independent India struggling to find their feet and build a nation while pursuing social change.
Dil, Dosti, Etc, directed by Manish
Tiwary, released in 2007 and showed the politics of the late 1990s, where students struggle to carve out a new slot in the political theatre, realising the fact that a liberalised economy has thrown up the options for honest manoeuvering. It goes deep into the complex and manipulative process that is the university election, as a ticket to bigger political aspirations in the future.
Raj Kumar Santoshi’s Halla Bol in 2008, presented a picture perfect drama of student power and rebellion shaking up the corrupt system, leading to social change and a comfortable balance of politics and youth.
In 2003 came Haasil, directed by
Tigmanshu Dhulia, which is based on Allahabad University politics. It draws upon protagonist Arvind’s dreams (played by Jimmy Shergill). His humble Brahmin family background with the usual middle class inclination towards studies, coupled with his romance, is in constant conflict with the prevailing norms of university politics, which gives way to a debate on the very nature of politics in the Hindi heartland.
The latest addition in 2009 was Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal. A showcasing of vernacular expression and caste affiliations, it was a power packed display of rural badland politics, the hunger to rule and the role of students either used by leaders to further their own ends, or those having their own larger than life political ambitions.
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