FTII Row

FTII (Film and television institute of India) students protest over Gajendra Chauhan's (Yudhister fame in B.R. Chopra Mahabharata) appointment as FTII chairman has been in news for quite some time now.

Students are questioning Gajendra Chauhan’s body of work and want him to be removed from the chairman post as soon as possible.  Now, many senior actors from the Bollywood fraternity are also voicing their opinion in favor of the students and want Mr. Chauhan to resigned from the post with immediate effect.

But the main question is, what is the role of The Chairman of FTII and is the removal of Mr. Chauhan solve the problem of FTII? Let’s analyze:

Role of Chairman:

FTII structure: Governing Council heads Academic council and Standing finance committee.

The Chairman of governing council is involved in formulation of policy for students but the execution of these policies stay with the director of the company. In other words, The Director is the one who remains in touch with the students on daily basis.  He is the one who is the voice of students in front of the management and vice versa. So why is there is "gung ho" about a person who hardly gets involved in institute matters?

There were big names who were the chairman of this prestigious institute but still, no convocation has happened in the past 17 years. This is the 39th strike in the institutes 55^th year of existence.  Student who came for 3 years remain in FTII, sometimes for more than 5 years.  Reports that the government spends Rs. 13 lakhs a year subsidizing the education of an FTII student - in comparison the subsidy as per Indian Institute of Technology student is about a quarter of that figure - are astonishing. So this is the tax payers money which is going into the drain and these kind of strikes are not helping at all! Also, the strike as well as the appointment of the Chairman, look politically motivated.

So in a nutshell, we can see the problems are quite deep in FTII and of course, Mr. Chauhan's stature is not helping in this case either. But the main question is - Are those big names from the film fraternity ready to take this responsibility? Do Actors like Amitabh Bachan and Rajnikanth, who were in contention for this post, have time for FTII?

Our suggestion is the ideal candidate for this post is the one who has a stature and a name on which a student can look up to but should dwell further into the problems of FTII and seek the solutions. This is a full time job and requires utmost dedication and will power.

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