Minister Ambika Soni Graces Valedictory Session

Information & Broadcasting minister Ambika Soni applauded the industry on their proactive nature to solving problems and expressed her desire to introduce positive reforms to aid the industry in solving its issues. "I sincerely appreciate the film industry's depiction of the plurality of India and therefore accelerating tourism over the years. I do believe in the industry's role in also creating employment." Commenting on script examination she explained, "It would demoralize us to compare ourselves to a European country. In our country, there exists a great deal of plurality and laws are in place so as to safeguard our culture. Moreover, our plurality means that we also have a large number sensitivities to keep in mind. In the last three years 98 films have been shot in India. There cannot be a more liberal government than the present one under Dr Manmohan Singh. She pointed out that the film fraternity should understand from her presence that she is keen to support their endeavors and alleviate their problems.

On the subject of liberalization in films, the minister agreed with the industry stand on communities or groups - after the film is released - taking objection to content in the film. She agreed that the Censor Board's decision should be taken as final but did reason that it might be a challenge to come up with a law against protestors.

Manmohan Shetty, the Guild president, requested the minister to look into prior pleas put forward by the film industry in order to raise funds for the industry to grow larger and also help the industry in the form of tax benefits. While Soni reasoned that the matter was in the hands of the Finance ministry she expressed her willingness to look into the matter and initiate dialogue on it.

Meanwhile, other industry issues cited by the audience included piracy, cinema tickets being exempted from VATable commodities (as this would be to the industry's detriment) and high entertainment tax in some states - which audience members stated goes as high as 40 per cent. Soni informed, "A meeting has already been called between individual state Information & Broadcasting ministers to discuss the issues of your industry. Piracy is first on the agenda." She also added that a tax structure being planned, called 'general sales tax' should take care of a lot of taxation issues including VAT. Archiving of old films is another concern that the industry put forward suggesting that the treasure of know how could be lost due to lack of storage facilities and maintenance. Soni informed, "We have identified 8000 films to be archived out of which 7000 have already been digitized and restoration work has already begun on those that have been digitized. In Pune, a temperature controlled facility for these has already been achieved.

The hon'ble minister added that she would be willing to call a meeting with concerned ministers (of ministries that the film industry faces issues with such as health - for disallowing smoking cigarettes on screen, welfare - for disallowing use of animals on screen, HRD - for piracy copyright problems) provided the Guild would be willing to put together a small group to put forward suggestions to these ministries.