National Awards: Resul Pookutty calls out President's elitist behaviour in a stinging FB post
We could have been called back on another day!
These are the sentiments of an ordinary technician working in the Indian film industry. The honourable President [Ram Nath Kovind] mentioned in his speech at the National Award Ceremony that “it is indeed a special moment for each of the 125 Award winners”!
I do not know if it was special for all of them, but I’m sure it was special for some of them! Honourable President also mentioned that there are 2,00,000 people directly and many more indirectly working in the film industry. Yes, that is true...
Most of the people who abstained from the ceremony yesterday comprises the majority of that 2,00,000. They are the workforce... they work behind the camera, they carry heavy lights, they carry heavy equipment, they swing booms, they push trolleys, they work more than 18 hours a day! It is their sweat that earns every state government its entertainment tax: UP charges the highest 60 per cent in addition to the GST of 18 per cent, though we are strictly not a service industry. So, in effect, we became the highest-taxed industry!
When your good office had given time to hand over the National Award to only 11 members out of the 125, those smallest people in the whole spectrum got sidelined! Their aspirations and ambitions got crushed! Honourable President mentioned in the speech that India-based films have been successful and foreign studios are coming in. We must encourage every opportunity to celebrate our values.
But the real people who took India’s name to the international map of the world cinemas are these technical teams. Starting with V Santharam who got recognised for Best Sound at Cannes in the early ’50s, or Bhanu Athaiya who brought the first competitive Oscar to India or Santhosh Sivan who got recognised by the American Society of Cinematographers or Resul Pookutty, who got Asia’s first technical Oscar for Sound, and many more such examples exist in our filmic conscience.
Academy Award winner Resul Pookutty on the disturbingly classist way President of India and Smriti Irani ji treated the film technicians yesterday at the National Film Awards. pic.twitter.com/GjIuPHysxt
— वरुण (@varungrover) 4 May 2018
When your good office chose the last 11 from the list of 125, it is these extra-ordinary small people who got left out in their national recognition. We learned from the news that the President’s office was too busy and couldn’t have allowed more than an hour.
We could have been called back on another day! We would have come back with our own expenditure, in trains or buses, would have stayed in the cheapest lodges to avoid extra burden of repeat call for MIB, after all we are used to traveling in trains and buses, when our stars travel by first-class flights, to save the productions’ money. We wouldn’t have felt bad. We felt bad because when your good office chose from the bottom of the list, it was only the stars, and star elements got picked up!
Or, those 11 people could have been the young and first-time awardees!
We would have clapped in joy at your choice... We felt bad because the people who got left out were those raw people, the technicians who are always called first in every award ceremony and edited out in every TV shows.
Stars don’t care for us, businesses don’t care for us; we thought our nation would care for us! The National Award is our nation’s highest recognition; getting recognition from the President’s hand is our privilege, our honour and our dream!
But I felt the nation’s sentiment got left out in the choices that were made yesterday, for it’s the technicians who always get the raw deal!
I plead for your forgiveness, for if I have mentioned anything out of line, after all I’m one of those sentimental ordinary Indian film technician!
(A version of this post first appeared on Resul Pookutty's Facebook)