Bengal filmmakers see role for Buddhadeb

Plagued by militant trade unionism, Kolkata's film industry is looking to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, a film buff who is a regular at the capital's art hub Nandan (cultural complex), for intervention if he is elected to power again.

The industry is unanimous about the urgency of labour reforms, even as there are differences over its degree. While eminent filmmakers like Gautam Ghosh want reform with a human face, many others would have nothing short of a hire-and-fire policy. But all agree that the problems are plenty.

Rigid labour laws mean higher production cost for Bengali films, which are low-budget and face stiff competition from Bollywood and Hollywood.

Working shifts in Kolkata are eight-hour against the twelve-hour shift in South India. Working two hours above the stipulated eight hours amounts to half-day of work, while four hours means a day's work.

"This increases our cost by 30 to 40 per cent. Since they know you can't fire them, they do things at their whims. They may come drunk, but you still can't do anything. Many people now prefer going out of the state to shoot films," said producer Sunil Sharma. But, even that's not an easy option. If a filmmaker wants to shoot outside the state, he must take along at least one person from each union.

And there are so many of them - camera setting union, electricians' union, art setting union, make-up and hair dressers' union, sound recordists' union, junior artists' union.

Otherwise, the director has to pay the trade unions a sum equal to the cost he would have incurred had he taken them along outside the state. What's more, a filmmaker must hire at least one taxi from the cine drivers' union, "which has the most rickety vehicles in town."

Film distributor and exhibitor Arijit Dutta wants a 'hire-and-fire policy'. His Globe theatre in Kolkata re-opened this week after over seven months of closure forced by labour strike.

"During the film festival last year, an operator ran the print reverse in the presence of an Italian director. When I suspended the operator, they went on strike. They make a virtue out of incompetence," said Dutta.

Gautam Ghosh, whose documentary on CPI (M) patriarch Jyoti Basu was a great hit among the ruling Left, also sees the need for labour reforms, but sans the hire-and-fire policy.

"I don't believe in hire-and-fire. You must restrict trade unionism as in Japan where people go on partial strikes but don't shut down work," he said.