Decoding the open letter to Anupam Kher

It was perhaps the first correspondence between the students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and Anupam Kher, who was recently appointed as its chairman. A few days after Kher’s appointment was made known, the Students’ Association, FTII penned an open letter to Kher, highlighting their concern with how the institute is being run.
Now that the new chairman has voiced out loud and clear that he’s on the students’ side (when he paid FTII a surprise visit on Monday), What’s Up, Campus? decided to meet up with Robin Joy and Rohit Kumar, president and general secretary of the Students’ Association, who addressed the letter.Why did they decide to make it an open one? What are the issues at large? Are they confident that they’ll be ironed out by Kher? Excerpts from our chat with them...

When it comes to Anupam Kher, we are aware of his body of work and where he comes from. But, at this juncture, we neither support him, nor do we welcome him. The idea of the letter was to engage with him before he took charge and point out issues we have. We decided to make it an open one so that anyone reading it could be informed about the problems we are facing on campus.

Again, as students, we don’t doubt Mr Kher’s credentials. However, the chairman has been appointed by the same government that appointed Gajendra Chauhan (the former chairman). After Chauhan took over and the introduction of the new syllabus, there’s been a change in the nature of the space, from being an art school where we learn and figure out our own practices to a place that’s now attempting to manufacture technicians really fast. Our apprehensions about the current appointment come from past experiences.

It would be fair enough if Mr Kher resolves the ongoing issues, but it’s too early to say much. We heard similar (positive assurances) things when Gajendra Chauhan took over. It wasn’t a good experience, and that’s where our apprehensions come from.

(Extract from the letter)
FTII, the premier film institute of the country started ideally to impart learning on different aspects of filmmaking is now slowly being turned into an institute that runs short-term crash courses for the generation of funds. We sincerely believe that the short-term courses being run can’t impart knowledge on filmmaking in such a short duration. For instance the new course ‘Short Course in Fiction Writing for Television’ is being run for 20 days and a student is being charged Rs 20,000, which is very expensive for such a short term course and also for students from certain sections of the society. A government institute that exists to provide education to students from all sections shouldn’t be driven by the agenda of funds generation, which currently seems to be the aim of such-short term courses and which has also been the case with government institutes/universities across the nation.

If an institute for specialised learning like ours is conducting short-term courses, there’s no problem, but it mustn’t come at the cost of our learning. Such initiatives for education must be taken by the government and not by the institute. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting should set up an independent committee or body to exclusively conduct these courses.

Any institute will have a finite resource which must be utilised for the purpose it exists for (specialised learning, in the case of FTII). With so many short-term courses, the resource isn’t sufficient. A simple example is how the administration is not well updated when we go to discuss problems with them. It seems like they are only busy running these courses. Also, how does one justify the high cost of these short-term courses. Not everyone might be able to afford such fees, that too when the course is being conducted by a state-run institute.

Ours is the first batch to come under the new system. But to begin with, teachers haven’t been trained to calculate marks and divide them into grades. The current semester system (there was annual assessment before) has resulted in portions being covered in haste. As a result, there’s constant pressure on the teachers to finish the portion, and a lot of it also gets omitted, even if it has been passed by the Academic Council and approved by the General Council.

There is a transition committee (formed by the Academic Council). Their duty is to help transition from the old to the new syllabus. However, there is no student representation in the committee, just heads of all departments, the academic coordinators and the dean. We have been asking for student representation, because we are the first batch to come under the system, but to no avail.

We have not received anything known as a syllabus. We have being asking for a consolidated syllabus from the office for long, but they haven’t provided it to us. We don’t know why there’s this apprehension about the same. When we joined the institute, during the first semester, we were given the syllabus only for the first semester, not for the next three years. So, even now, we don’t have a clue about what we’re going to study in the next semester.

Our batch hasn’t signed this undertaking. It had to be signed by the 2012 batch with regards to their final year diploma exercise. It’s just a guarantee, that one will finish this exercise on time. It is a coordinated exercise. But how can students sign such an undertaking when there are infrastructural constraints coming in the way and affecting productivity? For example, our track and trolley is not functional. We need to hire it from outside. During one such instance, when we had to take a shot, the equipment arrived three hours late and that shot did not happen that day. This is just citing one of the many examples.

That could be a reason. But what we’re trying to say is that students can’t always be blamed. If a student blatantly does not meet a deadline, one can understand. But clashes are bound to happen with shifts at different studios on campus. Two to three projects take place simultaneously. In such cases, delays must be factored. Such delays are bound to affect the project outcome.
I would not disclose in its entirety what I discussed with the students. They did raise many important issues and I heard all of them carefully. All I can say is that we will work together to solve all these issues. The students have come here to learn and I will work towards that in a joint platform.
— Anupam Kher, during his visit to FTII on Monday