An educational institution has very defined roles. The Board provides a stabalizing governence, the management runs the institution, teachers teach, and students learn.
However, things have got a bit topsy turvy in FTII Pune, India’s ‘premier’ film training institution.
The place, instead of being a training ground for film and television and the associated disiplines has now become a training ground for politics.
The future careers of it’s students appears to be in doldrums, as they are spending time politicking, rather than focusing on their studies, in which, according to reports they are running behind by a few years, and not the 4 odd months they have been on strike.
Matters are also not being helped by other political parties, all making a beeline to offer their ‘support’ to the ‘beleagured’ students, who it seems are more bothered about who is the titular head of the institute, rather than their education and careers.
In the latest round of talks between the students and India’s Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, things pretty much stand the way they were, with niether side willing to blink.
One thing is for sure, the biggest casualties of this war are FTII itself, and the Indian taxpayer, whose pockets are inadvertantly funding this war of egos.
