Bollywood to lose in the next plan

In the total budget, the Planning Commission is scrapping schemes worth Rs 290 cr, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Jan 11, 2007, 23:39:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Bollywood cannot expect star billing from the government as far as finances go in the next plan period.

Many of I&B ministry’s schemes which will be scrapped relate to film promotion, training students in film institutes and developmental publicity programmes. The worst-hit will be students in Pune and Kolkata film institutes.

Of the total budget of about Rs 600 crore, the Planning Commission has recommended scrapping schemes worth Rs 290 crore.

In a list of 27 schemes to be discontinued prepared by the Planning Commission are the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata.

The younger generation will have to give films of their favourite cartoons a miss as the government is likely to stop funding the International Documentary, Short and Animation Film Festival.

Children in municipal schools will no longer enjoy the occasional Children’s Film as the government is in no mood to continue the scheme. The Museum of Moving Images which was to be set up is also to be put on the backburner.

The government will not provide money for export promotion of movies through the Film Festivals in India. Only the International Film Festival in Goa will be continued.

The government’s publicity programme will also be hit as the Rs 2.59-cr scheme for developmental publicity programme and research and evaluation studies of government’s image in media will be scrapped.

Planning Commission officials said the focus would be on equipping the 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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.