UPDATE - Chairman FTII Addresses Students

The conclusions of the meeting with the Chairman of FTII on 16th November, 2010, with the administration and the students' body yielded an extensive statement from Dr. U.R. Ananthamurthy, Chairman, FTII.

The unequivocal demands of the students were addressed in the backdrop of a passionate protest which took the form of the whole student community coming together to oppose the credibility of the Hewitt Report, the impending threat of its implementation, and the immediate need for an official ratification of the PK Nair committee's mandate.

The Chairman agreed with the students' demands and announced an emergency Governing Council (GC) meeting on 18th November, 2010. He stated that the GC is being convened to give the Nair Committee official recognition and mandate from the Ministry. He promised to communicate to the Ministry his opposition of Institute’s privatization on the lines of the Planning Commission’s report.

The Director of the Institute, Mr. Pankaj Rag stated that a new batch would not be admitted till the Institute’s infrastructure is upgraded. The students are hoping that tomorrow the GC will ratify these announcements and the Ministry’s representative will take concrete steps for the same.

However, apprehensions remain as in the past three years the GC has continued to subvert a transparent and constitutional process and gone back on its promises to the students.

The constitution of an alternate and credible committee headed by Shri P.K. Nair, an iconic stalwart who has shaped the cultural and artistic discourse on films and its preservation, was approved in the previous Governing Council meeting, with a core committee comprising of Shaji N. Karun, Chandita Mukherjee, Nachiket Patwardhan and Kundan Shah, along with a faculty and student representative. However, the mandate to Nair Committee was never officially ratified and the GC had reverted to the Hewitt report.

To ensure that such a breach of trust will not be repeated in tomorrow’s GC meeting, the students' non-negotiable demands are: rejection of the Hewitt Report with immediate effect and termination of Hewitt's service contract; the ratification of the Nair Committee’s official mandate and the deferment of the admission of a new batch till the Nair Committee’s recommendations are tabled.

The students will continue to push towards the shaping of a larger discourse on the policy level attitude of the I& B ministry towards privatization of education and the Planning Commissions diktat of transforming FTII and SRFTI into 'self reliant/revenue generating/profit generating' Institutions.

The agitation for a truly democratic, functional, autonomous space, where cinema can thrive as a pluralistic art form, not limited by the whims and fancies of a myopic Ministry, will continue.