Banning Bollywood. Healthy Or Limiting?

Recently, after an exchange of heat between the two countries, Pakistani actors were told to return to their country. In a response to India, Pakistani cinema industry has decided to ban Bollywood movies and have stopped screening them from immediate effect.

People across the country have taken this step as a good move. Citing that this will give our movies a broader platform and a chance to earn more revenue which would help us grow our industry. However, banning Bollywood movies is not a solution to our growing industry. In fact, showcasing only Pakistani movies is limiting our audience to what we have to offer to them. Bollywood movies are highly successful. They have a high production value. They are more structured. Even when they may seem to lack on story lines, they are aware of what their audience wants to see and they give what they want.

Bollywood movies is a competition to our movies. Having a competition is good for your growth, since it sets up a bar which can tell you if you are up against quality standards or lagging behind. If we eradicate our competition, we're pretty much lost in our own bubble. It is quite obvious that at this point, Bollywood has higher quality movies than ours. Banning them from local cinema means we are eliminating competition. We won't have that bar to reach anymore and therefore we'd be isolated within our own standards.

Having a competition is healthy. Take a burger shop for example, which is the only one in town. People would go and buy burgers from that place since they do not have a choice. Now another burger joint opens next to it which offers burgers with cheese and fries, an option that the old burger shop doesn't have. All the buyers would shift to the new and better burger joint that offers not just burgers but also an extra taste of cheese and fries. If the old burger place wants to keep up, he would have to introduce at least same level of quality of burgers, if not better. But once it meets the higher standard set by that new burger joint, the buyers now get better quality burgers with cheese and fires from both burger joints. Had there been no new burger joint who introduced cheese and fries, people of that town would never experience that new quality of burgers.

Same is the case for any business. If you want better quality and higher production values, competition can bring that out from your business.