Abstract
The paper examines iconic Indian-international broadcaster, Melville de Mellow’s, television documentary series Now and its role in mapping poverty in 1970s India during the National Emergency (1975-77), a period of political dictatorship. Building on his earlier nature-travel series Perspective, de Mellow shifted focus from landscapes to human populations, particularly the poor in rural and urban settings with a similar cartographic consciousness. The analysis situates Now within the global poverty discourse of the 1960s-70s, when international organizations like the UN and the Ford Foundation promoted technocratic population control, while visual representations of poverty became central to development narratives. I locate the state apparatus of television in relation to “planetary” notions of poverty that originated at this point. What was this archive, how was it produced, what visual regimes did it draw upon, and how did de Mellow negotiate it, shaped by multiple forces? The essay argues that de Mellow’s Anglo-Indian identity enabled him to deploy both “insider” and “outsider” perspectives, justifying authoritarian practices including forced sterilization and slum demolitions. Through sophisticated cinematographic techniques and ethnographic documentation, Now constructed the poor as bio-political subjects requiring upliftment or disposal, concealing the structural violence of the Emergency behind a performative mask of state welfare and humanitarianism.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Television Documentary, Intermedial Aesthetics, Bio-politics, Humanitarianism, Third-Worldism, Politics of Poverty
