Bhopal is under a Bollywood spell. From the moment you touch down at the capital of Madhya Pradesh, every taxi driver, tourist guide or man about town hastens to remind you of the biggest news in town: the making of Rajniti. Filmmaker-turned-would-be-politician Prakash Jha’s ongoing production at the city’s old assembly has rustled the town out of slumber, claims the autowallah ferrying us to the spot. He lists the cast — which includes Katrina Kaif, Ajay Devgan, Arjun Rampal, Manoj Bajpai and Nana Patekar — and wisecracks about all the films he’s seen. Additionally, he makes us an offer. He will give us a discount if we manage to smuggle him in for a peek at the stars. We politely turn down the offer.

Inside the old Vidhan Sabha — which has been refurbished as a film set — chaos is at work. A crew dressed in dhotis, kurtas and Gandhi caps shouts out slogans. A bearded man in sunglasses, T-shirt and cargo shorts, is urging the cast to shout their lungs out. His Hindi, loud and clear amid a constant beating of drums, is chaste. The man with the beard, an assistant reminds us, is Prakash Jha.

At 56, Jha’s greying hair and salt-and-pepper beard may betray that he’s getting on, but his booming voice easily dispels those doubts. To boot, he’s doing a repeat of 2004: contesting the general elections. He will fight again from Bettiah in his home district of West Champaran in Bihar. In 2004 he stood as an independent and lost; this time he’s on a Lok Janashakti Party ticket.

“I want to be in Parliament primarily to be in a legitimate position to have access to resources. The 2004 bid was a symbolic gesture. I wasn’t prepared, but I felt the time was right to make a beginning in politics. I decided at the last moment, and just had a couple of months of campaigning,” he says, putting his sunglasses above his head as we enter his car to move on to another set. “My constituency people knew my name but did not know me.”

But 2009, Jha believes, will be different. In the last five years Jha has taken up numerous initiatives to improve conditions in his home town. He runs two hospitals in Bettiah, is on the board of a number of kisan samitis and has significantly helped construct a 110-acre seed park. He was recently allotted land by the state government to set up a sugar factory in Champaran. And he helped rehabilitate people affected in the Bihar floods last year.

All these initiatives, he stresses, are “totally” out of his own investments. “I want to set up the infrastructure for a flourishing agro-based industry in Bihar,” he intones. “Bihar has only two things — agriculture and resources. It honestly needs a system that exploits that huge potential.”

Jha is bristling with so many ideas it seems like he’s running a mental marathon. We get out of the car and enter the other film set, which is supposed to resemble a Communist leader’s office. “The curtains are too expensive for a Commie’s house,” he yells out at a technician. “Cheap, cheap wala material lagao,” he rants.

Inspection over and another car ride later we return to the old Vidhan Sabha, past admiring hordes of people at the gate. On the set Nana Patekar is readying for a scene. Jha takes a close look at his attire, smiles and we break for lunch — a meal of chappatis, dal and potato fries. His mood has altered and we delve into his personal life and films. So what makes him click? Is he an angry filmmaker? After all, his last few hits — such as Gangaajal and Apaharan — revolved around angry and morally upright heroes.

He thinks, strokes his beard, and chews on a bit of chappati soaked in dal before opening his mouth. “No,” he barks, “what for?” “I try and understand why a system works the way it works and once the equation becomes clear I share it with people,” he says, “I have always been critical of the system but never against it.”

Politics is still an electoral victory away. Meanwhile, Jha’s vehicle is his cinema — which reflects the angst of the aam aadmi. But Jha, who takes at least three years before moving from one film to another, never imagined that he’d be a filmmaker one day. Belonging to a Maithil Brahmin landowning family, Jha was a “so-so” student who left Bihar in 1970 to study physics in Ramjas College in Delhi University. By 1972, he was fed up and back in Bihar for a while. “My problem was I didn’t have an aim, but I got it then,” he muses. The painting bug caught him and he began preparing to get into the J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai.

“My family was shocked — they wanted me to be in the IAS. My father didn’t speak to me for years though I kept in touch with my mother,” he recalls.

But Mumbai was tough. He lived in the distant suburb of Dahisar and even worked as a cook in a restaurant. Then he happened to meet a person who lived in Jha’s building. “Agha Jani worked as an art director in films. In 1973, he took me to a shooting of Dharma at the Sun--Sand Hotel and that changed my life.” He now wanted to become a filmmaker.

Jha soon joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and continued doing odd jobs to stay afloat through the length of the course. There he made friends with the likes of Ketan Mehta, Kundan Shah, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Saeed Mirza and David Dhawan — most of whom he’s still in touch with. His first foray into filmmaking was actually through documentaries. Those assignments took him to Europe in the late 1970s, and he lived in London for three years then. “That was real exposure. I started developing my own style, my own voice. And then I thought, now I am ready to make a full-fledged feature film.”

He debuted into feature films with a light, lovely film on football called Hip Hip Hurray (1983) that also starred his future wife, actress Deepti Naval. They divorced in the late 1980s, and have an adopted daughter, Disha, who is now with Jha’s own production house. In 1984, he made a critically acclaimed documentary on the Biharsharif riots of 1981 called Faces after the Storm. “Hrishikesh Mukherjee wept when he saw it,” Jha recalls.

Jha kept going back to Bihar to spend long stretches of time there. And he would keep returning to Mumbai with “new thinking and ideas”.

But even when he is away from Bihar, the state, clearly, is never far from him. “Whenever I go abroad, Biharis tell me ‘Please do something for Bihar’. I ask them, ‘Why can’t you too?’” But he doesn’t stop there. “Over the years of colonialism, Bihar didn’t have movements and intellectuals the way Bengal or Maharashtra did. For the development of any state it is important to have a sense of sub-nationalism. Biharis lack that. We don’t even have a cuisine we can call our own!”

Previously known for his rabid criticism of Lalu Yadav’s tenure as Bihar chief minister, Jha notes the positives of the Nitish Kumar dispensation but desires more action. “The law and order situation and roads have improved. But we still lack power. The educational infrastructure has improved with so many teachers getting appointed in schools and colleges. But there is no infrastructure for industry. The biggest problem for the current government so far is that it’s not been able to get private investment in the state,” he rattles on.

A call comes for Jha; our interview is ending. Patekar’s scene is ready. We’re inside the hall of the old assembly and Patekar is on the speaker’s seat. Arjun Rampal and Manoj Bajpai — both clad like typical Indian netas — trade charges and give each other dirty looks. Patekar’s vigorous eyes absorb both of them and he raises an eyelid. “Cut!” calls Jha. Scene over.

Not for long, Jha would say. It’s a scene Jha would rather be in, than dictate from the outside.