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Agashe ready to quit FTII
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
PUNE, Jan 20: I would be willing to step down as director of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) if Jaya Bachchan, Mani Kaul or Kumar Sahni agree to take my place,'' says Dr Mohan Agashe. He is apparently upset with the pressure from influential ex-students of the institute which possibly swung the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in favour of striking students regarding implementation of the revised syllabus.The psychiatrist-actor-director, recently back from the International Film Festival of India, which for him could not have matched the drama of striking students squatting right outside the Siri Fort Auditorium, is planning to meet ex-students who signed a letter drafted by students against his ``conceptual proposals'' and their approval of the revised syllabus. ``I want to ask them why they did not feel the need to inform me and get my version, or send me a copy, before writing to the ministry,'' he says. ``I was called a dalal, and accused with plans of privatisation and
commercialisation of the institute, words I have never used,'' he says, calling the last few weeks the most traumatic time of his life. No written instructions have been conveyed to him by the ministry following the assurance given to students in Delhi by the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Jaipal Reddy, he says. All assurances were verbal, he says, and he is awaiting government representation at the approaching Governing Council (GC) meet scheduled for February 8 to get concrete instructions. The concessions made by the minister which include no zero session, reversion to the pre-1996 syllabus of the first year of the three-year course till implementation of the revised syllabus, no further cut in subsidy and no more strikes, the last an assurance from students, are to be taken up at the GC meeting. ``I am only the executive head,'' he says resignedly. ``The past one month has been a waste of government money, I have not been able to attend to any consistent work at the Film and
Television Institute of India,'' he says, currently engaged in preparing an agenda for the GC meet. The strike is withdrawn and the faculty is to be given eight months for whetting the revised syllabus in order not to have a zero semester in the proposal.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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