1951: Key Events

• The First Five-Year Plan is announced, with an outlay of Rs 2069 crore.

• Shyama Prasad Mukherjee starts the Bhartiya Jan Sangh on 2 October, an earlier version of the BJP, as the political wing of the RSS.

• The S. K. Patil Film Enquiry Committee, appointed in 1949, reports on all aspects of cinema, noting the shift from the studio system to independent entrepreneurship. Its critique of the mass-cultural idiom, including black market money and the star system, is accompanied by recommendations for major state investment in film production, the setting up of a film finance corporation, a film institute and film archives. The report is ignored for a decade.

• Film Censorship is centralised under a Central Board located in Bombay.

• The Film Federation of India is formed, joining up all sectors of the industry, with Chandulal Shah as president.

• Anjali Devi and Adi Narayana Rao start the Anjali Pictures Studio.

• The success of Patala Bhairavi? transforms Telugu cinema.

• P. Subramanyam? starts the Merryland Studio in Kerala.

• The weekly newspaper Screen is set up by the Indian Express group. Pudovkin and Cherkassov tour India with a major Soviet film programme.