FTII PRIVATISATION / COLUMN PUBLISHED ON BBC HINDI

(This is the English version of an article published on BBC Hindi on September 22, 2015)

DESTINATION: PRIVATISATION?

The Central government’s unrelenting propaganda against FTII’s striking students and the institution itself hints at a goal that goes beyond ending the current impasse

By Anna MM Vetticad

(Above) A still from this year's Bollywood hit Badlapur starring Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, directed by FTII alumnus Sriram Raghavan who is from the institute's 1987 batch; and (below) Malayalam film actor Vinay Forrt who passed out of FTII in 2009 

This week the Central Government is expected to begin “unconditional talks” aimed at ending the strike at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). About time too. In the 100-plus days since protests began against the Centre’s appointments to the prestigious institution – including actor Gajendra Chauhan as FTII Society president – the sarkar has run a blatant misinformation campaign against the striking students.

Apart from being embarrassed by the strike, the government’s antagonism could be attributed to the ruling BJP’s conviction that FTII is a bastion of Communists. The party insists that students would have objected irrespective of who this government had chosen. Facts indicate otherwise. When actor and BJP MP Vinod Khanna helmed the institute under the previous BJP-led government, students did not question his appointment. His acceptability came from his eminence in the field of cinema.

Interestingly, government propaganda is also being directed at FTII per se, with the repeated suggestion that it has not produced noteworthy alumni for many decades. Chauhan himself has been widely quoted as saying: “Barring Rajkumar Hirani, the institute has not produced any important artiste.”

In reality, FTII has churned out numerous luminaries. Hirani’s batchmate from 1987, Sriram Raghavan, directed this year’s Hindi hit Badlapur starring Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. In theatres now is the Malayalam hit Premam with which actor Vinay Forrt, from the institute’s 2009 batch, has audiences rolling in the aisles laughing. 2014’s National and international award-winning Marathi film Killa is directed by Avinash Arun, who passed out in 2011, and written by fellow FTII-ian  Tushar Paranjpe. The list is endless.

While the government is right in pointing out that the institute is battling major systemic problems (a matter that students themselves have been raising for long), it is insidiously misleading the public about the track record of the institute’s alumni.

A possible motive for this propaganda has been emerging from mainstream and social media commentary by prominent pro-BJP voices. One columnist asked the party to “yank central funding” from FTII and “create a new institution manned by the right kind of academics and intellectuals… friendly to its way of thinking”.

Another alleged that annual government expenditure per student is Rs 13 lakh, four times the amount spent on a student at the Indian Institute of Technology. The figure has since been proved dubious by an RTI application filed by a student, the response to which shows that institute expenses unrelated to the students are being attributed to them (such as a film appreciation course for outsiders, a contest for film schools across India and a contribution to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund).

FTII’s Students’ Association alleged in a press release that during a dialogue on July 3, I&B Minister Arun Jaitley indicated that if they did not end their strike, they could face “shut down and eventual privatisation.” The Ministry has denied this, but film personalities present at the meeting back the students’ version.

Was privatisation on the agenda in June when Chauhan was annointed? After all, a respected artist is unlikely to be as pliable as a non-entity entirely beholden to his sarkari bosses for the post. Besides, most heavyweights might avoid supporting a proposal that has been decried by students and many in the film industry in the past.

The widespread support for the ongoing strike would make it hard for the Ministry to openly propose privatisation for a while now… unless of course it succeeds in convincing tax-payers that the striking students are a talentless, expensive burden on the exchequer and that investment in the future of Indian cinema is a waste of public money.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

Link to original column in Hindi:

http://www.bbc.com/hindi/india/2015/09/150921_govt_mulls_privatising_ftii_pm

Photographs courtesy: 

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badlapur_(film)

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinay_Forrt

Note: These photographs were not sourced from bbchindi.com

Related article by Anna MM Vetticad: “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” published in The Hindu Businessline

http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2015/08/pro-hindi-pro-bollywood-propaganda-film.html

REVIEW 318: BADLAPUR

Release date (India):	February 20, 2015
Director:	Sriram Raghavan
Cast: Language:	Varun Dhawan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Yami Gautam, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Divya Dutta, Kumud Mishra, Zakir Hussain, Vinay Pathak Hindi

“Don’t Miss The Beginning” is not just a promotional tagline we saw in the trailer. As it turns out, Badlapur: Don’t Miss The Beginning is the full title you will see on the Censor certificate and opening credit plate of director Sriram Raghavan’s latest cinematic offering.

It’s almost like an announcement and you’d better believe it, because the first 10-15 minutes of this film are perfectly edited, intelligently directed and very cleverly written. I think I stopped breathing for part of that time, initially caught up in intrigued anticipation, then in utter shock and then overwhelmed with curiosity about what might follow.

Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t match up. The primary reason is that the denouement is anti-climactic. Badlapur also needed to quicken its pace and take a surgeon’s knife to its flab.

The aim appears to have been to create a ruminative, calm and collected thriller. It might have worked too if so many well-crafted scenes raising expectations weren’t followed by dampeners. This is a disappointment for those of us who loved Raghavan’s excellently paced Ek Hasina Thi and Johnny Gaddaar (let’s pretend we never saw Agent Vinod).

Here’s how Badlapur goes. A bright young Pune-based ad executive called Raghu (Varun Dhawan) loses his family to two bank robbers. One escapes the police while the other is caught, refuses to reveal his accomplice’s name and is sentenced to 20 years in prison. As Raghu unravels before our eyes, three questions seem designed keep us viewers hooked:

Why did this criminal give up his liberty rather than give up his partner in crime?

Why did he choose (yes he actually chose) to be the one who is caught of the two?

Did he have a specific plan that would benefit him more than his abettor?

You may accept that the answer to Question 1 is: loyalty, with a resultant financial pay-off being the light  at the end of that dark tunnel. You may assume, once you’ve watched the post-interval portion, that the answer to Question 2 is: Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) was sure Harman (Vinay Pathak) would buckle under the pressure of a police interrogation or prison. Fair enough. The utter let-down is the answer – or the lack of it – to Question 3.

Where Badlapur gets things right though, it really gets it right: that introduction; the strength of the writing when the going is good (a pity about those intermittent troughs); Sachin-Jigar’s songs; and some wicked editing between murders that leaves the audience briefly confused. 

Siddiqui rules. The man just outdoes himself in each scene. Badlapur is his master class in acting. The supporting cast too is amazing, in particular that lovely girl Radhika Apte who we need to see more in Bollywood, Pathak, Kumud Mishra and Zakir Hussain who shines though he gets just a few minutes on screen. In fact, a Siddiqui-Hussain face-off is Badlapur’s best scene.

As for Varun Dhawan, no, I will not say he is a pleasant surprise because it was clear from Student of the Year (SOTY) that both he and Sid Malhotra were capable of much more than fluff (Alia Bhatt proved herself only subsequently). Dhawan doesn’t yet have the depth of his co-stars in Badlapur but it’s clear that he’s got the potential to grow into that depth. He has also evidently worked hard to largely subsume that cutesy drawl with which he speaks naturally and which is fine in bubblegum pop cinema but not in a grittier film like Badlapur. It is a joy to see that this young star, with a triad of box-office hits in the young romance genre – SOTY (2012), Main Tera Hero (2014), Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014) – is keen to expand his repertoire and range.

The only point at which the director becomes slightly conscious that Dhawan is a star with teen fans leads to an entirely superfluous moment in which Raghu needlessly strips off his shirt to display a deliciously ripped torso and arms, right before he commits an act of extreme violence.

SPOILER AHEAD

A more troublesome superfluous moment comes during the song-and-dance accompanying the closing credits, during which Huma Qureshi throws come-hither looks at Dhawan, which is jarring since Raghu had repeatedly raped her character, a sex worker called Jhimli/Shabnam. Why does Bollywood so often divorce the closing songs of films from the preceding story? In this instance, was Team Badlapur being thoughtless? Or can it be that they take rape lightly? Or do they, like so many others, believe that assaulting a sex worker is not as heinous as raping other women? Odd, because Raghavan showed such sensitivity towards his heroine in Ek Hasina Thi. 

Badlapur then is inconsistent, often praiseworthy, too often not, occasionally even tacky – oh why wasn’t that aspiring-to-be-profound game of Scrabble scissored out?! The film raises some interesting questions about what vengeance does to those who seek it. It also boasts of many memorable scenes peopled with brilliant actors. The overall feeling though is one of a sporadically, episodically effective film that doesn’t quite add up.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	135 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badlapur_(film)

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KEoZanqlOE 

Trailer courtesy: Everymedia PR