Should The Government Fund The FTII Anymore?

Bearded men and women talking about Marx and Ray in a haze of all kinds of smoke, has been a familiar sight to those who know the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune fairly well. The medium of film, having been used by the Left in its fledgling years and heyday, has been astoundingly political even after the fall of the Soviet Union. The best way many “thinkers” of film in India could think was through inhaling smoke and exhaling politics in an old-fashioned way of resenting the bourgeoisie. The past has slithered into the present.

In India, the only country where the Left is given a voice louder than the rest, kurta-pyjama clad FTII students take to their university campus, shouting slogans against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan – a mediocre actor who happens to have connections with the RSS.

While applicants to the FTII knew of Gajendra Chauhan many moons ago as they desperately tried to find out the date of admissions (his name was already added to the prestigious Chairman list), the talk of BJP and right-wing propaganda (well that’s not new hearing either!), has created a frisson of ire among students and alumni alike.

Luckily, the IIMs have largely been world-class temples of learning excluded from crass politics – reservations and suicides being the only two issues deservedly heightened by the media. The FTII has been dragged into contemporary Indian politics of a peculiar kind that says, government-run film schools need the same class as the management and technology ones despite the lack of talent and professionalism coming out from schools like the FTII.

Given that the State is evil for most of the lumpen world, why bother to allow the State to intervene in the education of aspiring film people?

Students have been known to manifest their political views in their films and in their campus activism at the FTII campus for decades. At the same time we cannot deny that there is a class of people like the Shabana Azmis and Naseeruddin Shahs who have been in, and have produced, some fine works of art. No matter their oddities and odd fulminations in public life.

FTII is everything but apolitical.

When Ananthamurthy and Girish Karnad supported the Congress by showing solidarity with Nandan Nilekani, why didn’t anybody speak out? Think of the FTII as a playground for scenes where the political, the pseudo-socialist and the government, greet and meet each other on a campus that is nothing compared to the IIMs and IITs of higher learning. The fact that former FTII Chairmans like Karnad and Ananthamurthy got away with their ideological inclinations (due to their positions in society) shows.

The IIMs have been known for their vast campus-splendor AND excellence. The IITs have been prodigious centers of technology learning AND continue to produce a good deal of talent. Government-run centers of higher education are reputed – but are they unprecedented when it comes to film making? Film is facing a crisis.

Do we need the government to fund places like the FTII in the first place, now that the yesteryear Shabana Azmis and Naseerudhin Shahs have been replaced by today’s very few Rajkumar Raos? Of late, the FTII hasn’t had graduates who can match the level of their alumni. It is time to ask the question: Should the government fund the FTII anymore?