An entertainment boost

Performing artistes in India may rule hearts at home but they have failed to impress the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Published on: Jun 26, 2006, 02:26:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Performing artistes in India may rule hearts at home but they have failed to impress the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Disappointed over India’s performance at international film festivals and musical events, the ministry has recommended the creation of a council to promote the country’s entertainment industry.

In a proposal submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office on “Creating a global presence for strategic purposes” earlier this month, the ministry suggested that the council should identify events where India needs to project its image of growing power via entertainment.

“India needs to project its culture in national interest. India is yet to capitalise on the huge economic opportunity that is waiting to be exploited through the export of the entertainment sector,” the ministry said in the proposal to the PMO.

Even though Indian films and music are very popular among NRIs, the country's share in the global entertainment market is minimal. According to estimates, the world entertainment industry is a $1.5 trillion business and India’s share is just a measely $6 million. “India is the only culture to withstand American movies and music,” said a senior ministry official.

The president of the Film and Television Producers Guild, Amit Khanna, had a suggestion on how to bring better returns for the industry: The government should select a theme every year and the country should sponsor events surrounding the theme in different parts of the world.

According to officials, the council can help promote the entertainment industry by identifying events all over the world where Indian culture can be projected. “There is a plethora of genius works in India, which can be sold to people overseas. We have people like Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal and Bimal Roy whose works can be projected alongwith contemporary ones,” an official said.

The ministry is contemplating to take the help of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in this regard. The CII has India Brand Equity Fund, which can be utilised to identify events and concentrate on them to achieve the maximum impact.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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