Nearly 1000 actors, filmmakers and other members of film industries in India have sent a letter to the information and broadcasting ministry against the Union government’s decision to shut down all the branches of the Films Division, National Film Archive of India and Children’s Film Society of India before the end of January.
“Since the MIB’s announcement of re-assessment of these units in January 2019, we have followed several notices issued by the government. We hoped that an exercise as important as this will involve detailed discussions with the stakeholders including members of film fraternity and the employees of the above mentioned institutions amongst others,” read the letter.
The Narendra Modi government’s decision to proceed with the matter without having consulted important stakeholders has led to speculation in the media about its agenda to privatise the national archives and government properties destroying the rich national film heritage of India, the letter claimed.
“Hence, it was a surprise to know that the High Powered Committee under Shri Bimal Julka submitted its report without engaging with the primary stakeholders,” read the letter.
In the letter, dated December 19, the signatories asked the government to put on hold the restructuring of the public institutions till the pending matters related to transparency and consultations are addressed.
Some of the prominent signatories as of now are: Bina Paul, Naseeruddin Shah, Nishtha Jain, Batul Mukhtiyar, Surabhi Sharma, Jabeen  Merchant, Gitanjali Rao, Nandita Das, Ramani RV, Anupama Srinivasan, Ramachandran PN,  Anand Patwardhan, Varun Grover, Pushpendra Singh, Sanal Kumar Shashidharan,, Payal  Kapadia, Anamika Haksar, Sameera Jain, Subasri Krishnan, Christopher Rego, Vani  Subramanian, Rafeeq Ellias, Suresh Rajamani, Sourav Sarangi, Maithili Rao, Hemanti Sarkar,  Arjun Gourisaria, Karan Bali, Priya Sen, Nandan Saxena, Gargi Sen, Haobam Paban Kumar,  Anjali Monteiro, K P Jayasankar, Sunanda Bhat, Sanjay Kak, Shilpi Gulati, Prateek Vats, Priya  Thuvassery and Amrit Gangar.
According to the reports, over 400 employees of these bodies in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune and other cities would be affected by this decision.
The letter urged the ministry to clear the doubts of filim fraternity to “assuage the suspicions arising at this stage and take immediate action to safeguard the history of Indian cinema and the future of Indian filmmakers.”
The main demands can be summarized as:
- The report of the High-Powered Committee headed by Shri Bimal Julka should be released immediately.
- Public funded institutions like FD, NFAI and CFSI must not be merged with a corporation like NFDC.
- Consultations in a transparent and open manner should be undertaken with various stakeholders including filmmakers and employees vis a vis these institutions and how they see them – with full autonomy, enhanced state funding and commitment to their original mandates.
- The government must declare the FD, NFAI, CFSI archives as National Heritage– funded by public money and belonging to the general public. It must commit to protecting the archives and give written assurances in the Parliament that they will not be sold or auctioned either now or in the future.
- Concerns and anxieties of the employees working at these public institutions should be addressed at the earliest.
