Bengali theatre practitioners who’ve been dropped from the Centre’s repertory grant shared their grievances with native media on Monday, August 5, 2024.
| Photograph Credit score: DEBASISH BHADURI
Over 20 famend Bengali theatre troupes being dropped from the checklist of eligible recipients of the Union authorities’s repertory grant scheme, Guru-Shishya Parampara, has brought on fairly a stir amongst Kolkata’s theatre veterans.
“Some persons are asking us why we must always obtain financial grants from the federal government if we criticise them in theatre,” Sima Mukherjee, who runs the troupe Rangroop, mentioned on Monday. “I wish to ask them, is the federal government paying us from their pocket or is it our, the taxpayers’ cash, on the finish of the day?”
The Union Ministry of Tradition scheme, Monetary Help for Promotion of Guru-Shishya Parampara (Repertory Grant), supplies financial grants to drama teams, theatre teams, music ensembles, kids’s theatre and all genres of performing arts actions. Beneath this scheme, the guru or the director of the group receives ₹15,000 per 30 days, whereas shishyas or members of the group obtain between ₹2,000 and ₹10,000, relying on age.
Round 24 theatre troupes from West Bengal have reportedly been refused the grant for 2023-2024, together with Debesh Chattopadhyay’s Laketown Sreebhumi Sanskriti, Abhi Chakraborty’s Ashokenagar Nattyamukh, Prakash Bhattacharya’s Nandipat, and different troupes, in keeping with a round issued on Thursday.
Sujan Mukhopadhyay, who helms the 52-year-old Bengali theatre troupe known as Chetana, highlighted that theatre in West Bengal has all the time been a medium of public dissent and isn’t meant to favour any particular political regime. “What has occurred with the grants this yr is deplorable. It has traces of conspiracy and private bias. So many veterans, well-known theatre practitioners and their troupes are being disadvantaged,” he mentioned. “Even when the intention is to raise younger practitioners, fully depriving the veterans is just not honest,” he added.
Bengali theatre practitioners who’ve been dropped from the Centre’s repertory grant shared their grievances with native media on Monday, August 5, 2024.
| Photograph Credit score:
DEBASISH BHADURI
Mr. Chattopadhyay claimed that an environment of worry has been created in West Bengal’s theatre group by the Central authorities. “Dropping us from the grant will scare theatre practitioners into believing that until they help the federal government, they are going to be lower off from its monetary help schemes,” he alleged.
He added that the aggrieved theatre practitioners of the State will take up the problem with the State’s Tradition Minister and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, requesting native media to “not color their determination politically”.
Saurav Palodhi, who has helmed Icchemoto for the previous decade, alleged that favouritism politics is rampant within the theatre scene in West Bengal, whereby troupes that echo the sentiment of the saffron occasion are sometimes granted extra energy and assets.
“I really feel unhealthy for the poor solid and crew members who relied on this grant to pursue theatre as their day job,” he mentioned. “I demand scrutiny into how grant recipients spend the cash, and an examination of the sincere work ethic of the uncared for troupes.”
Mr. Chakraborty underlined the financial pressure it might put not simply on the members of the troupe but in addition on subsidiary service suppliers. “For troupes like us, that don’t function out of Kolkata, there’s a community of help service suppliers like tiffin suppliers, drivers and many others. who will all be affected by the dearth of grants,” he mentioned.
In the meantime, BJP chief Shamik Bhattacharyya informed native mediapersons that he has taken up the problem with the Ministry of Tradition and is trying ahead to resolving the misunderstanding.
