Bring in a new head at FTII

There is a simple solution to the crisis engulfing the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). The government can accept it has been wrong in making a very questionable choice of a film personality without the right credentials to head the institute as chairman. It is in sticking to its stand, against snowballing public opinion, on Gajendra Chauhan’s suitability that the information and broadcasting ministry has caused a huge embarrassment to the Centre. Exacerbating the situation has been the midnight crackdown on the students who, however, have not distinguished themselves, either in their persistent strike action or in besieging the director for seven hours.

The manner in which the students were handled does not look good for the simple reason that alienating young minds is never an option. No fascist overtones are to be attributed to the police action, which came to the rescue of a beleaguered executive head of the institution. The fact of the matter is that a minor issue regarding an institute which should be administering itself with greater autonomy through the governing council is being allowed to hijack national attention, maybe because films, like cricket, are a national obsession. To call for a meeting of all stakeholders and take a collective decision on a more suitable personality to head the FTII would be the best course of government action.

A committee of famous past presidents of the society, like Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mahesh Bhatt and Girish Karnad, should be roped in to head-hunt a suitable president-chairman to get the FTII going again. Apparently, it is not only the contentious chairmanship of the moment that is amiss. Diploma projects running for seven years now have not been assessed, which means that students hanging around rather than being creative may have to be shown the door. It is hard to be empirical in such a creative field as cinema, but scholastic discipline is a must if the system is not to allow mediocrity to dull a school of excellence.

Politics has overtaken the issue with the students allowing Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to take up their cause. Given the extreme centralisation of the mode of governance in the present dispensation, even this matter of a film institute may have to go to the PM. It would be wise of the part of the PM to listen to the universal assessment of the unsuitability of the present head and put in motion the process to find a replacement towards which he should rely on a committee of accomplished filmmakers rather than the ideological wings of his party. To accept an error has crept in would be statesmanlike, a quality needed in this situation.