Movie Industries And Languages Of India

MOVIE INDUSTRIES AND LANGUAGES OF INDIA

How are the Telugu and Tamil movie industries the biggest movie industries in the country (after Hindi) - though Maharashtra and Bengal are bigger than Andhra Pradesh (old) and Tamil Nadu? The usual answer is that south Indians watch movies more than north Indians. Is there any data for this?

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) has a question: "Do you usually go to a theatre or cinema hall to see a movie at least once a month?". Column 2 of the table shows this data from the latest NFHS (2019-20)*. We see that 32% of Telugu speakers and 30% of Tamil speakers watch movies regularly - almost double the national average of 16%. But only 21% of Marathi speakers and 9% of Bengali speakers watch movies regularly. If we multiply this by the number of people who speak the language (column 1) we get the number of regular movie watchers in that language (column 3). Thus the highest number of regular movie watchers is for Telugu (2.8 crore) and Tamil (2.4 crore) - more than for Marathi (2 crore) and Bengali (1 crore).

That is why the Telugu and Tamil movie industries are the biggest movie industries in the country . . .

*Note: For Tamil Nadu, I have taken the data from NFHS 2015-16. The state had a severe drought in 2016-17 and this affected its data for 2019-20.