 We're here with Swara Bhaskar here today. I don't think she needs too much of an introduction and we will be getting a little bit into how Swara got into the film industry in any case to begin with. So let's get straight into it. Swara, you're from a military, academic family. You studied in Delhi at DU and then JNU. How did you think of making the trip to Bombay and getting into Bollywood? I was, you know, I'm a product of the 90s, the early 90s. I grew up in the early 90s and we didn't have cable because cable had newly come to India. But plus my parents were like, you don't do your homework. So they didn't let us have cable. So my only source of entertainment on Doodharshan, apart from Krishi Darshan and all the Krishi programs that used to come, was Chitrahar at Superhit Mukabda. And so I was obsessed and I wanted to be in Chitrahar. So that's actually how basic my desire to be in Bollywood films was. And I was studying in JNU. I did my master's and I was actually going to take my GRE to pursue my PhD in Anthropology, which my entire class was doing. And I just kind of had this thought. I was like, if I don't do this now, then it's going to remain like a fantasy, this wanting to be an actor and be in films. And I was just like, you know, I have to do it now before my head turns white because it's just practically like as a woman heroine aspirant. I think that the thing that actually struck me the most about Bollywood was how feudal a film set is. It took me a long time to wrap my head around the fact that a film set, the way it's run, and maybe, and I'm not saying this in a judgmental way. Maybe that's the only way films can be made is that, you know, everyone has assigned roles on the film set, and those are not roles of equal importance. And everyone knows that very well. So if you're an actor and you're a lead actor in a film, then you are at a certain place in that hierarchy, which is pretty high up. But if you are, say, a junior artist, then you're kind of lower down. If you're a production assistant or a spot boy, then you're quite low. So it took me a while to understand this whole thing. Like I remember my first film, actually, remember I was walking, I had free time because there was some other scene being shot. And I was walking out and I saw that there was this guy who was the production boys, they called spot boys, lifting these petty out of like a embo. And I was like, you know, it was like, I was just like, oh, you know, I kind of went and started helping him because I thought it's heavy. And he was like, ma'am, please, ma'am, please don't do this, please, please, don't do this. So it was quite, you know, it was like that kind of thing. It took me, I used to feel very awkward initially when, you know, people hold the chat for you. And I just was like, no, this is our job. So that took me a while to understand. But I think that I've understood that, you know, if in your own mind you don't view any workers high or low, then it's okay, everyone's playing a role. And I can tell you that on a film set, actually speaking, everyone has an important role to play. If we don't have spot boys, you know, people who give us tea and chai coffee and water and all, if they are not available on a film set, you can't shoot. Because you're not going to be able to shoot without being sustained with some food, some drink, some water in the kind of conditions. Often times that films are shot. So since we are talking about the roles that people play on the set in a film and how labour is essentially organised, tell us a little bit about, Bollywood is one of, or the film industry is one of the few industries that has maintained a union structure. Tell us a little bit about how that works in real life, in real life sort of situations. Well, yeah, Bollywood is a very highly unionised industry. We have each department has its own union. So there's a union for actors, there's a union for writers, there's a union for directors, there's a union for camera team, there's a union for the light boys, for the spot boys, for junior artists. So there's a lot of, so in that sense it is very highly unionised. You have to, even actors, even like big celebrities need to have a union card, otherwise you're not allowed to shoot. If you're shooting without a card and there's a raid or an inspection, then you'll have to pay a fine, your producers will be called up, you'll have to pay a fine and so on. But I must admit that I have not taken as much of an interest in the actors' union as perhaps I should have, but because it's also very large and I've been a little busy. But I don't think the writer's union is doing some amazing work. I know that sometimes the union actually becomes a representative of some not very positive kind of things because like there was, most recently I think there was a case that a female makeup artist filed with the Bombay High Court. What was it? The Supreme Court in India, I don't remember. And I didn't even know this and in Bombay, only men can do makeup in the film industry as per then the union rules and all the women had to be hairdressers. So if you were a female makeup artist, you wouldn't get a card from the union. I'm talking about as recently as 2015-16 and then there was a female makeup artist who challenged that in the courts and the court passed an order saying that this is completely bizarre and it's not possible. The reason that, I mean, it's very complicated how that structure developed because it was basically to kind of, you know, I think maybe protect the men from a certain working class background who couldn't afford to go to London or France or the US to study makeup because it was your dadas who were the traditional makeup artists who kind of learned on the job and so on and to protect their interest against, you know, this westernized kind of foreign educated whole bunch of people coming in even foreign makeup artists coming into work. But, you know, so I think that they are complicated issues that we have to handle but I think it's great to have a union. I know that the like, like some of the unions have a good reputation for being very sort of really kind of standing up for the rights of their people. Sometimes payments go directly to the union and the union pays the workers. So I think it's a great thing. So do you think it serves in some way to establish a basic minimum that if you're doing a day's labor? Yeah, I think that for sure. I think that there is a minimum wage in all departments in Bollywood that producers have to pay from the first round of labor like the spot boys, the art team, the like men. There's a basic minimum per day wage that everyone has to get and then of course it moves up or down depending on but you know, I think that one of the problems with the union and this is again something that I haven't directly dealt with but it's something that the workers like people who are working have told me is that in some unions the rate of joining and getting a card is very high. Like it could be in lakhs, two lakhs, five lakhs. I feel like is that what are you defeating the purpose then? If your entry fee within courts into the union is going to be in lakhs, then what is the point? As a female actor in the industry who's doing sort of female-centric roles and more leading roles What is your take on parity of pay between male and female actors? There is a huge gap. There is a huge gap between what men and women own and I realized this when I happened to be having a conversation with a co-actor in a film and he happened to mention in a throwaway sense how much he was getting paid for that film and it was three times what I was getting paid and I was just like what? And that day I was like I have just hiked my price three times. Like in my next film that I do this is how much I'm going to ask for. He's like what is this? But I think that again you know I feel like the thing with Bollywood is that it's a very complicated and nuanced setup and a structure. So you know you can't yeah you can come in and be like oh it's so patriotic oh it's so sexist and you can write it off but if you examine it closely you will realize that you know it isn't as first of all the reasons are something else and that things can change it's just a question of you know someone has to put in that fight so my own take on this on the gender like on the income disparity and gendered income disparity is that I believe that you have to have equal pay for equal work. As actors our work is judged by the number of days we put in and the kind of work we do. I think that if an actor and an actress are both working or shooting for say a hundred days for a film or two hundred days for a film then of course they must be paid similar or at least close to each other. But if the actress is doing fifty days of work and the actor is doing two hundred days of work then I don't I think it's okay if the actress gets paid less because it's not she has not worked for the same maybe on a different film she's worked that much. I know things are changing because I know that I've been the highest paid actor in some films where I have the most number of days of work or where I have the biggest role. So I think that now that actresses are also becoming conscious of it they have begun to assert themselves and I always feel that the thing with changing a status quo is that the people who are on the powerful end of the status quo are changing. The people who are not on the powerful end it's like saying the blacks were not handed out civil rights on a black girl. Somebody had to be like I am not going to stand up for a white person in this bus and somebody received flak for that a whole bunch of people did but that changed it come about. So I think that fight has to be our fight as actresses. We have to you know together sort of way lead that charge. Look at the women's centric films that are working today. In some cases we do have female stars who are guaranteeing some kind of an opening and that should reflect on how much they are paid. But you don't think it happens? Actresses are becoming conscious of that. So I don't actually buy this. I don't like this logic because I think that you can't everything cannot be judged by that opening weekend. Some films are films that need to breathe and look at Queen it made its money over time. Look at Piku it made its money over a certain period of time so you have to also take that into account. So for me I always feel that equal work is a good base principle to go by. Do you think that the film and television industry in India is moving away from creating content that is more meaningful and transformative towards pure entertainment just taking people's minds off the troubles of everyday life? I think that both things exist. I think that we're actually at a time in Bollywood where you see both kind of content being created. I think there is the kind of formula, big budget formula film which is a little bit like kind of hang your brains out there before you come in. Being made and that's also working and making money. And equally there is the very high content heavy films that are getting made and now people are watching those also. And some of them are working in the box office. I mean I can tell you from my experience that Nilberti Sanata which is a very, you know I think that it's very interesting. You've never seen a film that didn't, that was like in pivotal roles because there was a single mother who's a maid and her daughter. No love interest, no husband, no glamour, looking only like a very sad looking person. So I think that the fact that that film worked in the box office it was a time when the film division or the NFDC actually funded films that were highly critical of the government. If you look at the kind of films that happened at middle cinema time if you look at the kind of films that for example Salim Langari Pematro or Mammo and Albert Pinto ko kusta kyon aata hai so many of these films, if you look at those films they are very sharp critiques of the society of that time and of even sometimes government, I mean in a larger sense they will make no critique of government, of society of can we do that now? I mean look at the situation we are in now where you have a situation where a film like Padma Vati is, I mean now that that controversy has now gone beyond meaning also. Now it has become completely meaningless. So do we expect, I don't know but doesn't that put more responsibility on you as an actor and someone maybe who is interested in how films are made and all of that to sort of push for, I mean if society is going in one direction which is the opposite direction of what you might believe should go in, then doesn't the owners come back to you in some way to try and develop that kind of content? Well sure but it's an odd situation if the money is mine, the risk is mine the danger of being stoned is mine the theatres which will be attacked where the film is going to be screened that film is mine and no help coming from the government I'm paying a really high entertainment tax no why should I care about content then? You are making me so vulnerable that everything that I mean where I have more and more and more and more at stake with no reassurance of any kind of protection and when I say protection it's not in the you know like a kind of godfather sense of the space in our constitution that it provides citizens that I don't have the guarantee of that thing being protected why should I risk my whole everything I have to make one political point? I mean I may still do it I'm saying then why would normally a producer do that? Look at how vulnerable we are rendering our makers and our artists and our producers these are people who have crores and crores of rupees on the line Invested You are telling me that after this entire mess of Padma Vati that anybody else is going to want to put money on a historical film about a historical where there is a character in a pivotal role that's Muslim Are you really telling me that anybody is going to want to touch that subject again and then we ask ourselves why we don't get the Oscar you know crown was being made in the UK and how amazing and this great content yeah they have the space for great content because their society their government allows for expression we are in a situation where these two films one was called Nude and one was called S Durga got taken off the iffy screening list despite the fact that the jury selected it then why are we having an iffy so I mean I'm completely okay so I'm saying that you know it's just it's all very well to blame Bollywood for not producing content but are you really in an atmosphere where content is going to be appreciated so there is this disconnect and I was talking about a couple of these massive protests that happened in Delhi over the past couple of weeks one of which the Kisan Sonser that you came out in public support of so let's start with why farmers issues are something that you believe need to be addressed and why is it something that you took up personally well you know honestly I must admit that I don't actually know a great detail about exactly what are all the issues that are facing farmers I don't understand a lot of that economy either I don't understand what that agrarian economy exactly is I don't know the nitty-gritty of it I just know basic things that you know that there is a huge agrarian crisis in our country I see or read fitting in paper statistics like that they have been about 3 lakh deaths in a span of 20 years in India farmers suicides I think that's a staggering number then there was I think 6 months ago there was a protest in Madhya Pradesh of farmers and that the police lot he charged and that a bunch of people died now to me it seems and I'm saying this in a very lee sense to me it seems that there's something very wrong if the people who feed us are killing themselves because I'm like isn't that where our food grows right so if there is something that is so pressingly critical that is happening and people are dying then firstly we should know about it we should know more about it and we should care about it so we are so caught up and I think that we are you know we live at a time when just because we have this phone in our hand and you know now everything comes home so you have your whatsapp, you have your twitter, you have your facebook you can sit on twitter and be part of a protest or seem like you are part of a protest from the comfort of your armchair you can order food online, you can order groceries online very subsies come home now online so there is actually it's almost like you live in a time where on the one hand you are fully you can consume whatever you want sitting in your house now you have drones coming and dropping things not in India but in the US, Amazon has got drones that come and deliver stuff to your window so on one level you have become such a complete consumer and such a pure consumer that you actually do not need to leave the house to consume and on the other hand you have become so isolated that you actually don't need to even be in touch with the reality of the world anymore people of our generation or my generation today know more about what is going on in the lives of American Hollywood celebrities or Justin Bieber or whatever then we know about what is happening or the number of people who got lynched to death over beef lynchings in our country so I think that that is a very dangerous disconnect let's look forward to that then thank you so much for your time