Ethnic minority accuses India's movie industry of land grab that has brought poverty, hunger
BOMBAY, India, Sept. 8 — A tour of the 500-acre site finds imposing courtrooms, glittery shops, a church, a mountain forest, even rickety shanties.
But it's a movie lot, and nothing here is real. Except the poverty and hunger, its former owners say.
Hundreds of villagers from the Warli ethnic group say farmland their people owned for centuries is being taken by ''Bollywood,'' India's bustling Bombay-based movie industry, leaving them struggling to get by.
Across the hills of Film City — the sprawling hub of Bollywood — there are 16 studios where thousands of technicians work each day at dozens of lavish sets that are routinely built and demolished.
There are also wide swathes of empty land and, in pockets, a few remaining Warli villages.
... The Warlis are the largest group among the estimated 200,000 ''tribals'' living in the suburbs of Bombay, which is also known as Mumbai. They say they have been forced from much of their land by real estate firms and gangsters who have ties to India's movie business, whose annual output of 800 films trails only Hollywood in worldwide reach.
The Warlis are far more frightened of losing their livelihoods to government-backed movie executives than of the tigers that roam the hilly area at night, beasts that killed four Warli children and injured 11 last year.
... At Film City, almost everything is make believe — courts, a huge jail, a shopping arcade, a police station, a church, a shantytown, a log cabin, a thickly forested mountain, a hospital, a helipad — even a lake that sometimes doubles as the revered Ganges River.
Fancy cars cruise in on tree-lined roads to deliver stars. Other actors dressed as doctors, beggars and police officers take smoking breaks or have lunch at crowded canteens.
A few miles away, Devi ka Pada village is another world....
''There is starvation in the entertainment capital,'' [film director Mahesh] Bhatt told AP. ''There is a virtual world and, right there, there is starvation and apathy. It is a study in contemporary India.'' ...
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