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Industry status remains a mirage for dream merchants

B B Nagpal in New Delhi

Thirteen months after Indian cinema was officially given the status of industry, those involved with selling dreams are still waiting for their own dream to be realised: the facilities promised to them still seem far away.

Industry status was conferred on the film industry on May 10, 1998, and there has been no progress since then. Today, Indian cinema is in a position very similar to Prasar Bharati, which is neither an autonomous entity nor a government-controlled media. Cinema has an industrial status without the benefits that accrue to an industry.

The regulation of the film industry in a systematic manner has become important with Hollywood giants entering the field. Hollywood giant Columbia Tristar has entered the Indian film industry by distributing Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi, even as Twentieth Century Fox is to produce an animation series with Ram Mohan-United Studios. And India's first feature film to be insured, Taal by Subhash Ghai, is awaiting early release.

But hopes of finding solutions to problems like video piracy and the irrational taxation policy -- which varies between 66 per cent in some states and 150 per cent in others -- have remained unfulfilled. There were suggestions that cinema must be shifted from the State List to the Concurrent List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, to help the Centre in taking more co-ordinated steps to improve the lot of the film industry

Most states and Union Territories (with the exception of a few like Chandigarh, Mizoram and Nagaland) said during the 23rd state information ministers conference on September 1, 1998 that they were opposed to bringing cinema on the Concurrent List and wanted it to remain in the ambit of the state.

However, the states agreed to the setting up of a committee to examine the issue. They were also not averse to considering revision of the entertainment tax.

Immediately after the announcement, Sushma Swaraj, the then information and broadcasting minister, had announced the formation of three different bodies to help in the transition of cinema from an unorganised entity to an industry.

These bodies were the Core Advisory Committee which had nine members and was headed by the I&B minister, a 39-member Film Development Council, and a 29-member film export forum, both headed by I&B secretary Piyush G Mankad.

The members of the CAC were: thespian Dilip Kumar, maestro Bhupen Hazarika, film-makers Yash Chopra, Aparna Sen, Mani Rathnam, D Rama Naidu and Adoor Gopalakrishnan and star-parliamentarians Shatrughan Sinha and Shabana Azmi.

The FDC which had a term of one year, was to suggest ways and means for sustained all-round development of the film industry and recommend ways for upgrading the technological and qualitative aspects of Indian cinema while the export forum was to consider ways of improving exports of films, television software, music and other forms of audio-visual entertainment products in a co-ordinated manner.

Proposals were initiated with the primary objective of making film production eligible for institutional and bank finance. The finance ministry was asked to include production and allied activities in the list of activities eligible for institutional finance.

Recommendations were also made for rationalisation of certain taxation issues which have a bearing on the film industry. Being the nodal ministry, the I&B ministry also said it was taking steps about the problem of video piracy, which falls under two heads:

It comes under the Copyright Act which is a matter relating to the Human Resource Development Ministry.

In the states, it comes under policing, and law and order.

Industry leaders are sceptical about the moves taken so far, and fear that this decision -- like many other decisions by successive governments -- would remain in bureaucratic files. They also point to one important demand of the industry that has gone unheard for several years: the countervailing duty on raw film stock is illegal since the Hindustan Photo Films does not make colour stock in the country.

Former Film Federation of India president Santosh Singh Jain said that this sector was eminently eligible for direct bank finance and banks should devise a broad strategy to build at least 30,000 cinema screens in the coming five years.

Jain further pointed out that the film production's infrastructure items like film studios, processing laboratories, equipment, publicity accessories and modernisation and upgradation of technologies in all these items also need rapid transformation into a most modern industry.

In separate interviews, senior filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra and actor Anupam Kher said it was necessary to rationalise the tax structure so that film-makers who put in hard-earned money into films get proper returns. Kher said the industry had been functioning in a non-institutionalised atmosphere and would take time to start working in an organised manner.

Shatrughan Sinha expressed optimism that the working of Indian cinema would get more organised. However, even he had agreed that video piracy and irrational taxation were eating into the very vitals of the industry.

Conferring the status of industry to cinema will have little use unless steps are taken to check video piracy which is taking away a large chunk of the income from Indian films, said Chopra.

But it is agreed that the Rs 60 billion Indian film industry will need to organise and corporatise itself to become eligible for institutional and bank finance. The Indian entertainment industry has a huge untapped export potential and could become the highest foreign exchange earner for the country if properly developed.

There is need to project India as an entertainment superpower all over the world, specially in the light of the wide popularity of Indian films, music and television programmes.

Although India is second to none in the wealth of entertainment software produced, it has so far not gained international recognition as a major player mainly due to the fact that the entertainment industry was not accorded the status, recognition, incentives and facilities given to certain other sectors like computer software industry, according to industry observers.

UNI

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