Filmi chakkar

Filmi chakkar

It has long been suspected that the conferring of awards is politics by other means and the manner in which the 48th National Film Awards appear to have been doled out proves the worst of such fears right. The resignation of two members of the jury, filmmaker Pradip Kishen and cinematographer Shashi Anand, and the conscientious objection of a third, actor Dhritiman Chatterjee, are pointers that merit and excellence have not ranked uppermost, if they have figured at all, in the selection process. It may well be that Messrs Kishen, Anand and Chatterjee are not the best qualified to judge or that they are letting their own political predilections run away with their judgement. But circumstantial evidence lends weight to their allegations of `saffronisation' of the selection process through the sway of a `political cartel'. Consider this: the jury stars, among others, a BJP MLA from Orissa, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj's campaign manager in Bellary when she contested against Congress chiefSonia Gandhi, editor of the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya and BJP's Rajya Sabha member Shatrughan Sinha's one-time personal assistant apart from an uncle of a contender for one of the top awards. It was headed by Vyjayanthimala Bali, a new recruit to the BJP. Of the two films that have landed the awards for Best Actor and Best Actress for Anil Kapoor and Raveena Tandon, Boney Kapoor's Pukar and Kalpana Lajmi's Daman respectively, the first was not fully screened and the latter was recalled after being rejected by the panel.

Though the furore has never been quite as loud, and members of jury have never actually quit in a huff, the national film awards have often been dogged by allegations of prejudice. It hasn't always been of the easy-to-spot and easier-to-protest-against party-political variety. Murmurs of discontent have been heard about the disproportionate representation of Bollywood in the awards as in 1997, for instance, when jury members Vijaya Mulay and Mike Pandey had protested on this count. Doubts have been voiced that the evaluation process in recent times may be giving undue weightage to the commercial success of the films in the fray.

Clearly, a clean-up is in order. In a multi-lingual and multi-cultural society, state patronage has served a useful, often noble, purpose. National awards have picked out touchstones of excellence in the arts from all across the country; they have helped nurture and encourage artistic endeavour that, left to itself, may not have survived the test of the market. But the only way in which such awards can retain their credibility and prestige is if they are not only fair, but are also seen to be so. The process of selection of the jury must be made more transparent, the criteria of evaluation must be spelt out, and more seriousness injected into the entire process. If the political and bureaucratic will to do so cannot be summoned, it would be better for state-sponsored awards to be scrapped altogether.