How has Raj Theatre Survived

In the days when movie watching was a luxury, my father proudly recalls how he saved money to watch his favorite hero Dilip Kumar in Mughlae Aazam 5 times in the Raj Theatre.
At some point in time there were 4 very well known theatres in this small city of Hoshiarpur, the place I belong to. Now there are 3 left and none of them has a decent infrastructure.
One day when I passed in front of ‘Raj Theatre’, the most notorious of the three as most of the time it screens C grade adult movies, set me thinking because – it happens to be in the centre of the main market.
The location of Raj theatre is quiet precarious for its business as in a country like India people would prefer to watch such movies in places where they are lesser known and buy them from shops in other cities. Moreover, Hoshiarpur is such a small city that almost everyone knows one another. Surprisingly the theatre has survived at the same place for quiet a long time which made me curious of the reasons of its success.
For almost two and a half hours I watched people around the theatre and passing in front of it. Almost everyone tried to ignore the lewd scenes on the posters on the theatre walls (currently showing “Doosra Pati”). Lack of time restricted me for further investigation but I certainly thought over the reasons for Raj’s survival –

1. These movies are targeted to people in the lower section of the society. And in Punjab the majority of this section comprises of migrant population from the Hindi belt of India. In the past decade, the population of these migrants has almost exploded. The last census showed that the official figures stand at 8.7% migrants of the total population of Punjab. But I believe this figure to be around 15 to 20%. This increasing population majorly comprises of males who leave behind their families in villages and are the right targets for such theatres.


2. Punjab’s Sex Ratio is one of the lowest in the country, the second lowest among Indian states, standing at 874 against the national average of 933. This also adds up indirectly to the thriving business of such theatres.

Amazingly, these are the two most disturbing problems Punjab is facing today.
My conclusion thus stands that these two problems have started exhibiting themselves in almost every part of our life today.
When one can deal with the problem of lowered sex ratio through increased awareness and education (which is on full swing), the problem of migrant population is the one which plagues even the most developed nation also.
In this case it’s the genesis of the problem lies in the skewed growth and development of different Indian states. While Punjab is among the most advanced state, the states in the Hindi belt are plagued with extreme poverty and illiteracy. It is something like spilling ones tea on someone else’s shirt. Hence, the onus of rectifying Punjab’s problem lies with the government of the lesser developed states. Punjab government can think of –

1. Finish the counting of this population within 3 to 6 months with the help of police stations and other government bodies. The police are given the charge and authority to restrict the migrants inflow in their areas beyond a specified limit decided upon by the local administration in accordance with their limited resources for civic amenities and the economic condition of the area.


2. The government of Punjab can further help these states through exchange of expert technology in agriculture. It can further arrange for the farmers of Punjab to take some workshops in these states exchanging their experiences and helping the farmers of these states solve some of their problems.

All these are definitely a very short term solution which has to be complimented by a rapid infrastructure development in these states.