The documentary film ” The Great Indian Illusion ” by young & promising film director of his own style Mr. Varun Sukhraj emerges at a critical historical moment when the Indian banking sector is being projected as a spectacular success story through carefully curated balance-sheet figures, rising profits and declining 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 tear apart this manufactured narrative and place before the people the structural contradictions of India’s neoliberal banking model.
At one level, the documentary is about banking. But at a deeper level, 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 larger framework of neoliberal reforms initiated in the 1 990s, where public institutions were gradually transformed from instruments of social development into profit-oriented commercial entities increasingly aligned with corporate interests.
One of the most powerful aspects of the documentary is that it refuses 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 to support agriculture, small industries, employment generation and regional development. The documentary successfully argues that the present 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 shown as financially healthy, efficient and globally competitive. But the documentary asks uncomfortable questions: If banking has become so successful, why are bank employees overburdened and 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 are customer services 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 the politics of privatisation, especially in the context of IDBI Bank and the broader attempt 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 itself has become a national test case for financial sector privatisation. The documentary appears to recognise 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 systematically excluded from mainstream media narratives. In contemporary corporate media discourse, bank unions are often caricatured as obstacles to reform. This film challenges that propaganda by showing that employees and unions are among the few remaining forces questioning reckless privatisation, job insecurity, aggressive sales culture and weakening public accountability. In this sense, the documentary performs an important democratic role.
One of the documentary’s strongest interventions is its exposure of financial inequality. The film implicitly raises the question: who benefits from the financial system? Over the last decade, large corporate write-offs, haircuts under insolvency processes and concentration of wealth have grown dramatically, while ordinary borrowers face harsh recovery mechanisms and shrinking access to affordable credit. The documentary correctly suggests that banking reforms in India have increasingly socialised losses and privatised gains.
Equally significant is the documentary’s critique of the illusion of “digital empowerment.” While digitisation is projected as inclusive and modern, the film highlights the hidden costs shrinking employment, exclusion of elderly and rural customers, cyber vulnerabilities and growing dependence on private technology platforms. It correctly warns that technology without social accountability can deepen exclusion rather than democratise finance.
Artistically too, the documentary appears effective because it translates complex financial and policy issues into accessible public language. Banking discussions are usually confined to economists, regulators and financial journalists. By using visual storytelling and people-centric narratives, the film democratises economic understanding. That 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, strikes and meetings. By entering the domain of documentary cinema and digital communication, banking unions are attempting to connect with a younger generation that 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 merely be viewed as a nostalgic defence of the past. Its real strength lies in forcing 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 compels viewers to confront this fundamental question.
In many ways, The Great Indian Illusion is not just a film on 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 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 around 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 the Chairman of the Banking Education Training & Research Academy
