Bollywood took a beating at the ballot box Saturday, with Indian voters shunning a surge of high-profile actors and directors who were trying their hand as politicians.
This year's candidate list saw more celebrity names—sports stars and people from the country's varied movie industries—than ever, as parties in a heated race turned to star power to get voters' attention.
But in a better-than-expected victory for incumbent Indian National Congress, many of the big-name candidates didn't get the happy ending they'd thought had been scripted.
Among the losers: director Prakash Jha, Bollywood superstar Vinod Khanna, actor Raj Babbar and TV talk-show host Shekhar Suman.
"You can't win elections if you're only a star," says Sanjay Kumar, a research fellow at the New-Delhi based Center for the Study of Developing Societies.
While some were fresh faces in politics, even long-time actors-turned-politicians lost. Mr. Khanna, who had been in Parliament since 1997, lost for the first time in over a decade.
The losing candidates weren't Bollywood's only disappointment for the day, either. Its other big election campaign—getting the vote out—also didn't pan out as scripted. A number of the biggest names in movies had appeared in music videos and television advertisements, encouraging Indians to head to the voting booth on polling day. (It helped that a strike in Bollywood had left many of them temporarily unemployed).
One, for example, was a spoof on a Bollywood music video. The original was about a young goof "Pappu" who can't dance. The get-out-the-vote version replaced the original lyrics— "He's muscular, he's popular/spectacular, he's a bachelor…But Pappu can't dance" —with "He's handsome, he's winsome, he's awesome…But Pappu doesn't vote."
But the ads, targeted at India's burgeoning young, urban population, failed to hit their mark. In Mumbai, home to India's biggest film industry, only 40% of voters turned out, down from the 44% that voted in 2004. Several of the film stars featured in the ads and music videos didn't vote themselves, either.
For many of the movie candidates who did win this year, it was a sizable party machinery behind them that helped. In Andhra Pradesh, south Indian actor Chiranjeevi started his own party, Praja Rajyam, found a slate of candidates and came in third with 18 seats in the state assembly, which also held elections the same time as the national polls.
"You need the support of the political party to win elections," says Mr. Kumar. "People may turn up at your election rallies to get a glimpse of you…but people want you to work."
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