The Great Indian Illusion: A documentary that questions India's banking narrative

By Devidas Tuljapurkar 

The documentary film "The Great Indian Illusion" by the young and promising filmmaker Varun Sukhraj arrives at a critical historical moment. The Indian banking sector is increasingly being projected as a spectacular success story through carefully curated balance-sheet figures, rising profits, and declining non-performing assets (NPAs). Yet beneath this glossy narrative lies a far more disturbing reality of deepening inequalities, growing corporate concentration, privatisation pressures, and the systematic marginalisation of ordinary bank employees, rural customers, and small borrowers. The film deserves appreciation because it courageously attempts to dismantle this manufactured narrative and bring before the public the structural contradictions of India's neoliberal banking model.

At one level, the documentary is about banking. At a deeper level, however, it is about political economy—about who controls finance, whose interests banking serves, and who ultimately pays the price for policy failures. The film effectively situates banking within the broader framework of neoliberal reforms initiated in the 1990s, when public institutions were gradually transformed from instruments of social development into profit-oriented commercial entities increasingly aligned with corporate interests.

One of the documentary's most powerful aspects is its refusal to reduce banking merely to numbers and quarterly profits. It reminds viewers that banking is fundamentally a social institution built on public trust and people's savings. Public sector banks were historically created not merely to earn profits but also to support agriculture, small industries, employment generation, and regional development. The documentary successfully argues that the current obsession with profitability, privatisation, and market valuation has weakened this social character of banking.

The film also deserves appreciation for exposing the contradiction between official claims and ground realities. On paper, banks are portrayed as financially healthy, efficient, and globally competitive. Yet the documentary raises uncomfortable questions: If banking has become so successful, why are bank employees overburdened and branches understaffed? Why are rural branches disappearing? Why are Business Correspondents struggling to survive? Why are small borrowers increasingly dependent on microfinance institutions and informal lenders? Why is customer service deteriorating despite technological advancements? These are important questions that mainstream financial discussions often ignore.

A particularly commendable aspect of the documentary is its critique of privatisation, especially in the context of IDBI Bank and broader efforts to reduce the role of public sector banks. The film correctly identifies banking privatisation not merely as an administrative reform but as a transfer of public wealth and public financial infrastructure into private hands. The ongoing IDBI Bank disinvestment process has become a national test case for financial-sector privatisation. The documentary recognises that privatisation is not an isolated economic event but part of a larger ideological project aimed at shrinking the public sector and expanding corporate control over finance.

The documentary also deserves appreciation because it gives visibility to workers' and unions' voices that are often excluded from mainstream media narratives. In contemporary corporate media discourse, bank unions are frequently caricatured as obstacles to reform. This film challenges that perception by showing that employees and unions remain among the few organised forces questioning reckless privatisation, job insecurity, aggressive sales cultures, and weakening public accountability. In this sense, the documentary performs an important democratic function.

One of the documentary's strongest interventions is its exposure of financial inequality. It implicitly raises a fundamental question: Who benefits from the financial system? Over the last decade, large corporate write-offs, substantial haircuts under insolvency processes, and the concentration of wealth have increased dramatically, while ordinary borrowers continue to face stringent recovery mechanisms and shrinking access to affordable credit. The documentary suggests that banking reforms in India have increasingly socialised losses while privatising gains.

Equally significant is the film's critique of the illusion of "digital empowerment." While digitisation is promoted as inclusive and modern, the documentary highlights its hidden costs—shrinking employment opportunities, the exclusion of elderly and rural customers, cyber vulnerabilities, and growing dependence on private technology platforms. It warns that technology without social accountability can deepen exclusion rather than democratise finance.

Artistically, the documentary is effective because it translates complex financial and policy issues into language accessible to ordinary citizens. Discussions on banking are usually confined to economists, regulators, and financial journalists. By employing visual storytelling and people-centred narratives, the film democratises economic understanding. That, in itself, is a political act.

The role played by unions and collective platforms in supporting such a documentary is historically significant. Traditionally, trade unions communicated through pamphlets, meetings, and strikes. By entering the realm of documentary cinema and digital communication, banking unions are attempting to engage a younger generation that increasingly consumes politics and economics through visual media. This experimentation deserves appreciation because ideological battles today are increasingly fought in the sphere of media and narratives.

At the same time, the documentary should not be viewed merely as a nostalgic defence of the past. Its real strength lies in compelling society to debate the future direction of banking. Should banking remain a public utility serving developmental goals, or should it become another profit-maximising corporate industry? The documentary forces viewers to confront this fundamental question.

In many ways, "The Great Indian Illusion" is not merely a film about banking. It is a critique of the broader neoliberal development model that prioritises markets over people, valuation over welfare, and profits over public purpose. It reminds us that behind every balance sheet are millions of workers, depositors, farmers, pensioners, and small entrepreneurs whose lives are directly shaped by banking policy.

The documentary therefore deserves to be watched widely—not only by bank employees and union activists, but also by students, researchers, policymakers, and ordinary citizens. At a time when public discourse is increasingly dominated by corporate narratives and media spectacle, such films become essential instruments of democratic questioning and public education.

In the final analysis, "The Great Indian Illusion" succeeds because it breaks the silence surrounding uncomfortable truths. It challenges official triumphalism, questions privatisation, defends the social role of banking, and restores human beings to the centre of financial discourse. That makes it not merely a documentary, but an important political and ideological intervention in contemporary India.

---

Devidas Tuljapurkar is Chairman of the Banking Education, Training & Research Academy. This article was first published in CFA website