As the Indian General Election draws closer, Asia Society India Centre presents the Mumbai screening of the new documentary film The Magnificent Journey: Times and Tales of Democracy, directed by Abhijit Banerjee and Ranu Ghosh. 

Drawing on critical interviews with would-be voters and local leaders in the towns and villages of north India, the documentary resists the idea that democracy is an elite preoccupation and underscores the enormous challenge of making the right choice. The film emphasises the humour, passion and intellectual depth that participants bring into their decisions. Celebrating the average Indian voter and those players in the political system that remain on the fringes, the narrative traces different perspectives on development, socialism, people’s rights and concerns regarding the acquisition of their land for developmental purposes, and how these have impacted the politics of various parties in West Bengal, Bihar, Delhi and Rajasthan in the regional and national elections. Bringing together a range of material, from live footage, to animations by artist and graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee, this multi-layered journey invites us to champion democracy even when it does not deliver what we want.

Join us for the screening, followed by a conversation between the Director, Dr. Abhijit Banerjee and Regional Director, Dalberg, Gaurav Gupta on the state of democracy in India, the upcoming elections and other aspects of the film.

This is the fourth programme in our India Elections Series, where we discuss the themes of governance, leadership and institutions in the run-up to the General Elections.

Dr. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D in 1988. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003 he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan and remains one of the directors of the lab. In 2009 J-PAL won the BBVA Foundation Frontier of Knowledge award in the development cooperation category. Banerjee received the 2009 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences and Economics, and in 2011 he was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers. He has authored a large number of articles and three books including Poor Economics which won the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. He finished his first documentary film The Name of the Disease in 2006. Most recently, Banerjee served on the U.N. Secretary-General’s high-level panel of eminent persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Gaurav Gupta founded Dalberg in Asia. Dalberg is a global advisory firm focused on helping clients maximise social impact. Gaurav works on a wide-ranging set of issues that include energy access, financial inclusion, access to education, and inclusive business strategies. Outside of Dalberg, Gaurav has been a founding partner in a string of social ventures including two eco-resorts, a sustainable online tourism platform, an organic tea plantation, and an eco-friendly fair-trade fashion label. He sits on the Boards of various educational organisations including Educate Girls, one of India’s largest education NGOs. Prior to Dalberg, Gaurav was with the Boston Consulting Group in Sydney and London and also setup a leading Australian Think Tank on Indigenous governance and development. He holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University and a postgraduate degree in development economics from Yale University. He was also a Fairfax scholar at the United World College of Hong Kong.

RSVP: [email protected]