Govt. wants the media and entertainment industry to be Atmanirbhar

After the debacle of Chinese apps and promoting indigenously grown products and apps, now the Indian Government is looking to provide incentives to the producers across, movies, TV, and OTT platforms in the coming days. This step is aimed at helping the media industry sustain the COVID pandemic after effects.

As we know, due to the COVID pandemic resulting in lockdown, people are staying home and online viewership has increased a lot since the past few months. But looking at the bigger picture we can say that all the major new web series or movies have had their shooting packed up before the lockdown. And it’s a matter of weeks that OTT platforms may run out of new content.

Seeing this, the Govt. has planned a standard operating procedure for shooting in the restricted conditions, post the pandemic. The details regarding this will be published soon. “There is immense potential in original content creation as well as job creation in vernacular language production. We should focus on both volume and value," Anurag Thakur, minister of state for finance, said.

The Quarantine period has seen significant growth in almost all platform viewership, from Netflix to Prime Videos, YouTube, etc. Disney+Hotstar has collaborated with Bollywood biggies to telecast Bollywood movies straight to the consumers as there is no update regarding the reopening of movie theatres.

Sanjay Gupta, chairman, Ficci media and entertainment committee and the country manager pointed out that COVID is estimated to wipe out nearly 20% of India’s M&E workforce, impacting nearly a million people. However, a great opportunity lies in sectors like VFX and animation, where the country already has some of the best minds.

“We will be partners. We have to harness the soft power potential of India for the progress of the country," union minister of information and broadcasting Prakash Javadekar said. He also added that development like providing a single-window clearance for shooting in India has attracted a lot of producers and Investors in India.

The media and entertainment industry can never be aloof from the outside world, and thus Govt. wants to facilitate opportunities for indigenous producers as well as easing the facilities to foreign investors.