The selfie that clicked: How Budget 2019 makes Bollywood happy
All’s well that ends well.
All those who were trolling the younger brigade of Bollywood for smilingly posing with Narendra Modi in a selfie, well, where are you all?
Think SRK, Aamir, Nandita Das, Javed Akhtar, Naseeruddin Shah... Who's going to listen to them when you have the more easily digestible happy image of a Varun Dhawan, Rajkumar Rao, Karan Johar and the likes in a selfie with the PM? Very well played indeed.
— Cowbai (@cowbai) January 20, 2019
Come out. It’s payback time now.
Interim finance minister Piyush Goyal on Friday announced that a single-window clearance for filmmaking will be made available for Indian filmmakers. Till now, this was only available to foreign filmmakers.
This will, of course, add to ease-of-doing business as far as shooting in India is concerned. Production teams won’t have to run from pillar to post to get clearances, which, we are sure, will encourage filmmakers to opt for Indian locations.
Goyal also announced the introduction of an anti-camcording provision in the Cinematography Act, which will combat piracy.
'Camcording' is the act of recording a movie while it is open for public viewing and then either making a CD of it or leaking it online. Though recording in a cinema hall is prohibited, there was no strong legal provision to stop it.
So, it was not that our Bollywood club was hanging out with Narendra Modi (thrice a month) and taking a selfie (or 'backfie') with him for no reason. There’s no free lunch in this world. The time to reap rewards for time given is here.
Single-window clearance, however, is not a new idea. In 2013, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting was reportedly planning to “mainstream synchronised standard operating procedures for obtaining permissions for films in India for both Indian and foreign film producers".
We don’t know why it did not materialise. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government last year reportedly introduced this measure by integrating various government departments.
On December 18, Modi met with a delegation of Bollywood producers and actors in Mumbai — this made news as there was no woman from the film industry present. However, GST on ticket prices was reduced after the meeting. On January 10, Karan Johar and a team, including all you can see in the photo above, visited Delhi to discuss the ‘contribution of the film industry towards nation building’. On January 19, PM Modi inaugurated the National Museum of Indian Cinema in Mumbai and again met a host of Mumbai stars.
Thus, all’s well that ends well. All this lobbying at least paid results. Plus don’t forget to calculate the free promotion Aditya Dhar’s Uri: The Surgical Strike got by the ministers (mentioned thrice during the interim budget itself).
No wonder the film has already entered the 100-crore club. And it has lower GST too.