Apurva Chandra, Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, underlined that while the M&E sector is growing at 10 percent, the sector needs to up the game to ‘catch up with the world’.
“The world is out there for us to capture,” noted Chandra, setting the tone for the 23rd edition of media and entertainment conclave FICCI Frames that got underway in Mumbai on 3rd May 2023.
The speaker pointed to two things that needed to be in place for the Indian M&E sector to actually ride the wave: manpower and infrastructure. He committed to working alongside industry to set up institutes, including to address the huge opportunity in animation and visual effects.
“By the time we meet for FICCI Frames next year, the National Centre for Excellence in Mumbai should be operational,” said Chandra.
On digitising films, he revealed that there is a plan in the works to allow people to choose and pay for a film they would like digitised, using the government’s infrastructure.
“We need to start financing projects via NFDC again. We will also come up with an OTT for NFDC, so that young talent (and those who do not get a release in theaters) can showcase their work,” he said.
On the subject of self-regulation of OTT, Chandra, noted, “We created the self-regulation mechanism for OTT in 2021. There are some murmurs on aspects like language used, but I still feel self-regulation should be exercised. So far there is only one complaint that the government has received. The system seems to be functioning well. We want the system to grow and not get bogged down by regulation.”
“We need to create proper infrastructure if we want to capture the world. The industry and government need to collaborate to create that infrastructure,” surmised the government official.
