Bollywood to lose in Govt's next plan

Govt will not provide money for export promotion of movies by organising Film Festivals, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 9, 2007, 23:25:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Bollywood should not expect much financial help from the government in the next plan period.

Many of I&B ministry’s schemes slated for scrapping are related to film promotion, training of students in film institutes and developmental publicity programmes. The worst suffers would be students in film institutes in Pune and Kolkata as the government plans to scrap the scholarship schemes for them.

In a list of 27 schemes prepared by the Planning Commission with the help of the Finance Ministry for discontinuation from the next financial year, the worst hit are expected to be Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata. Eight schemes related to the institutes including scholarship and exchange programme may not get any central funding.

The younger generation of film lovers may miss globally well-known cartoons, as the government is also likely to stop funding for the International Documentary, Short and Animation Film Festival. The film had failed to generate much interest among children, an official said.

The poorer children in municipal schools may miss the occasional children’s film as the government is in no mood to continue the scheme. Also, setting up of a Museum of Moving Images may remain a distant dream, as government may not fund the project anymore.

Besides the indirect impact of Bollywood, the only direct consequence may be that government would not provide money for export promotion of movies by organising Film Festivals in India. Only the International Film Festival in Goa may be the sole venture of the ministry.

The government’s publicity programme may also take a slight hit as the Rs 2.59 crore scheme for developmental publicity programme and research and evaluation studies of government’s image in media may also be discontinued. Some schemes of Film Division, Photo Division and Central Censor Board are also on the list of discontinuation.

Planning Commission officials said the focus would be equipping media, film and entertainment industry with new technologies. "We have proposed government help to set up community radio and television centres. Also covering entire country with digital television by end of the plan period is another priority of the government," a commission official said.

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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