Jaitley hints at privatisation of NFDC, DFFI and FTII

By MSM Desai
The ministry of information and broadcasting appears to be toying with the idea of privatising its sick units such as the National Film Development Corporation, Directorate of Film Festivals and Film and Television Institute of India, the performances of which are dismal.

This indication was given by I & B Minister Arun Jaitley while talking aloud about the poor performances of his Ministry’s agencies with producers like Yash Chopra and others at a dinner meeting on June 20 in Mumbai. The minister commented that these bodies had lost their utility value considering that private parties were doing far better, despite their limited resources.

As accused by the NFDC union earlier in its letter to Arun Jaitley, the NFDC has a liability of Rs 20 crore. Its pact with Doordarshan in showing films on Doordarshan has also not borne good results. The NFDC has also failed to bag any awards for the films it has financed. No doubt the NFDC has a big library of films but they have little commercial value, the minister reckons.
As regards the DFFI, its performance has been dismal, too.

Earlier, the Janata government had offered to let the film industry take over the DFFI, but the bureaucrats who run the festivals did not agree to the idea. DFFI director Malati Sahay has been unable to lend credence to the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) which has been reduced to the status of an insignificant festival on the international circuit. She has been unable to shop for better films and secure the participation of important film personalities at the recent editions of IFFI, despite travelling widely abroad and attending several other film festivals. On the contrary, private festivals held in Mumbai, Calcutta and Thiruvananthapuram have become big festivals attracting a wider array of recent foreign films and the participation of film personalities. If the government is willing to part with the DFFI, film industry may not hesitate to take over the directorate, and organise the film fests. As it is, the Film Federation of India, which is a member of the world film producers body, Federation of International Associations of Film Producers (FIAFPP), has to be consulted before the festivals are organised.

FTII, Pune, has also been embroiled in several recent controversies. It has seen several strikes by the students and resulted in a change of leadership at the helm. The government has been wondering why it should spend as much as Rs 11 crore for the sake of 40 students. By this time, FTII ought to have become the best film institute at least in the whole of Asia, but frequent strikes and change of directors has brought a bad name to the institute. Meanwhile, many film institutes have sprung up besides the ones in Bangalore and Chennai, which have been doing quite well over the years.

The fact that Subhash Ghai announced in New York he that proposes to start a Rs 200 crore film and television Institute gives credence to the theory that the film industry may not be averse to investing in FTII, if the government-owned FTII is privatised.

The film industry may also not hesitate to run the NFDC even if it is in the red now. It can be made viable if private corporations decide to take over. It may be recalled that when the government set up the Indian Motion Picture Export Corporation (IMPEC) in the early 60s, the film industry personnel had bought its shares. But later, the government developed cold feet on the issue, and returned the money it had got from the industry’s investors, since it wanted IMPEC to be a 100 per cent government body. In the early 70s, IMPEC along with the Film Finance Corporation was amalgamated into the NFDC as a government unit. Initially, the NFDC developed into a big body with several activities such as setting up a sub-titling unit, financing theatres, distribution of foreign films, exports of films and running a film society. But in all these, the NFDC’s performance has been far from satisfactory.