The making of "India Poised"

The Year 2007 marks India's 60th year of independence and it is going to be the year of India! On this occasion India's leading newspaper, The Times of India and TIMES NOW launched a revolutionary campaign, 'India Poised-Our Time is Now'. The face of this unique campaign is Amitabh Bachchan.

“The Times of India called me from Delhi and wondered whether I would be able to do a few words for this programme for their radio. I read the piece. I felt it was very inspirational, very uplifting for the country and I asked them whether they would be interested in making a video out of this, because that would have a much greater impact and much greater reach,” revealed Amitabh Bachchan about the inspiration for this video.

That is how a radio campaign became an inspiration for this public service campaign video which aims at declaring 2007 as the year of reckoning in which Indians should literally seize the moment and it is Big B himself with his baritone voice inspiring a billion Indians.

“I think the piece is very well written. I think there is some amount of truth in the words that have been devised and it was inspiring enough for me to come here,” said Bachchan.

The video was shot at Bandra-Worli sea link in Mumbai which is one of the most ambitious engineering projects in India. Befitting the location was the theme of the campaign, an optimist India versus a skeptic India an India which achieves and not hopes; an India which has faith in success and not fear of failure.

“I though it was a great time to write a script like this. This is the time when the conflict is most vivid,” said scriptwriter Aguello Dias.

“As we are stepping into this 60th year of freedom movement, I think this debate of India vs India, optimistic India vs pessimistic India is very important,” added filmmaker Sujit Sarcar.

Shooting for the video campaign was completed in 7 hours and had a dapper Amitabh Bachchan against the backdrop of the Arabian Sea. And in true Bachchan style, the Big B delivered the lines in both Hindi and English to perfection packing in the punch required for the inspirational video.

“This is a wonderful cause for the nation. Any time there is a call from the nation, one must put aside all personal matters and come forward and help,” suggested Bachchan.

With the year 2007 being the 60th anniversary of India's independence what a better way to celebrate than to rid ourselves of the constraining ghosts from the past and embrace a brand new positive India. “India Poised-our time is now".