Karnataka movie ban injurious to India's plurality

Karnataka’s move is about protectionism
Financial Express Editorial

Karnataka is trying its best to destroy its image as a progressive state. More than a decade after the anti-Tamil riots in the wake of the Cauvery dispute blotted its copybook, the state is once again exhibiting parochial tendencies.

In a craven attempt to placate the Kannada film industry, incensed at the government’s decision to reduce the entertainment tax on non-Kannada films, it has ruled that non-Kannada films will be screened in local theatres only seven weeks after their release in other states.

Incidently, Kannada films are exempt from such tax. This is nothing but blatant discrimination between local and foreign — with foreign, in the state government’s lexicon, presumably including everything outside of its boundaries.

The state government must immediately revoke its decision and put an end to this madness in its own interest. Already theatres in Bangalore which screen non-Kannada films have downed shutters in protest.

Consumers will resort to alternative sources of supply of films, namely DVDs and VCDs. The grand loser in all this will be the state exchequer, deprived of entertainment tax collections.

Worse, the cosmopolitan image of India’s Silicon City will take a battering. Of course, Karnataka is not exactly setting a precedent. Remember the Shiv Sena’s Mee Mumbaikar campaign?

Remember the recent violence against ‘outsiders’ in Assam and Maharashtra? The tragedy is that all this is happening in what is supposedly a progressive, ‘hi-tech’ state. To be at the centre of a petty ‘local versus foreign’ controversy when, in fact, it has used outsourcing to cock a snook at international borders is a sad, shameful irony.

Moreover, it’s a dangerous game that the state is playing. Karnataka is simply flexing its protectionist muscles. But disputes of such a nature quite often spiral out of control.

What’s to stop Bollywood from retaliating with ‘trade sanctions’ against the Kannada film industry? Or other states from keeping out Kannada migrant labour?

The state, therefore, must remember that its move is injurious to the plurality that is India and in the end will do far more harm than good to Karnataka’s own interests.