Press Release

Press Release Date: 19th November, 2010

The emergency Governing Council(GC) unanimously rejected the Hewitt report and announced that the DPR will be prepared by FTII by a Group of Experts (GOE , popularly regarded as Nair Committee ) headed by Mr. PK Nair (founder NFAI) with a stated vision of “Revitalising and upgrading FTII”.

The student community has been vociferously protesting against the Hewitt report, which intended to remodel FTII on the lines of ‘Public-Private-Partnership’ and the Planning Commission’s policy to turn the Institute “self reliant and revenue generating”.

“We have found the report inadequate and decided to terminate it. Our purpose is not to commercialise the Institute but to provide inclusive education to students. A detailed report will be prepared by a new team of experts in three months. The focus of the report will be to revitalise and upgrade FTII on the lines of the vision of FTII”, said Shri U.R. Ananthamurthy, Chairman FTII.

The GOE is headed by Mr. PK Nair, with Kundan Shah, Chandita Mukherjee, Shaji Karun, Nachiket Patwardhan, one faculty representative (to be appointed), staff representative K Jagdeeswaran, and student representative Samarth Dixit as its key members. Co-opted members are Saeed Mirza, Shama Zaidi, Jabeen Merchant, and Hansa Thapliyal. The ‘GOE’ is empowered to co-opt more experts if required. Administrative Officer of FTII has been appointed by the Governing Council as the coordinator of the GOE .

The GC also promised that that the concern about Planning Commission’s plan of a ‘revenue generating’ Institute will be aptly communicated to the I & B Ministry by the members of the GC. It was also mentioned that a new batch would not be admitted till the pressing issues of inadequate infrastructure are satisfactorily resolved.

However, widespread apprehensions remain as the Joint-Secretary Films, Mr. DP Reddy refused to address the students and to clarify the I&B Ministry’s stand on its vision for FTII. He also refused to answer all the questions related to the arbitrary allocation of FTII land to a proposed Gaming Institute which has vested private interests. When students raised this issue in the Governing Council Meet they were asked to leave along with the Official minute taker. Hence , there is no official record of the meeting which carried on for an hour.

Further, the GC employed the nomenclature of a Group of Experts and shied away from giving an independent stature of a ‘ Committee’ to this group of experts headed by Mr PK Nair. There is a real danger of the GC undermining the final recommendations of the DPR and the Ministry of I&B may exercise the option of rejecting it.

“ We are glad that the Chairman has supported our demands and the Hewitt report has been rejected. However, we are still apprehensive that the decisions taken here will not be approved by the Ministry in Delhi, and they will continue to push their policy of privatisation,” said Samarth Dixit, President Student’s Association.

Student’s Association – FTII
E-mail: ftiistudentsbody@gmail.com
Website: ftiistudentsbody.blogspot.com