'1973: Key Events

• The former Mysore State becomes Karnataka.

• A Special Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court restricts Indira Gandhi’s constitutional amendments of 1971, impeding her efforts to make parliament the supreme authority in the country’s constitution. In retaliation, Mrs Gandhi selects and appoints a new chief justice, a ‘blatant attempt . . . at undermining the independence of the judiciary’, according to the Supreme Court Bar Association.

• Jayaprakash Narayan, the former socialist later associated with the Gandhian Sarvodaya Samaj, warns against the erosion of democracy.

• All private wholesale trading in wheat is banned; only the Food Corporation of India, and similar organisations, are authorised to purchase wheat. The fixing of procurement prices, coupled with the relative failure of the wheat crop, leads to large-scale hoarding and a major black market in food.

• The FFC becomes the channelling agency for the import of raw stock, a role until then played by the State Trading Corporation of India. A 250% import duty on raw stock is imposed.

• First Haryanvi film: Beera Shera. Bobby reinvigorates the love story genre.

• Ankur is a commercial success, starting the ‘middle-of-the-road’ cinema of the independently financed, commercially designed art-house movie, a genre that soon dominates state-sponsored film and television.

• Launch of the Bombay-based weekly trade paper Film Information, providing the most reliable listings of Hindi cinema.