On the sidelines of the Onam festival and the tourism department’s weeklong celebrations, HT caught up with PC Vishnunadh, the state tourism and culture minister, to talk about the challenges and positives in both sectors. Excerpts:
We have announced that both tourism and cinema fields will be given ‘industry’ status. The challenges are basic. For example, several of our high-profile destinations lack proper toilet facilities like Kovalam beach, Munnar, Alappuzha houseboat terminal and Fort Kochi. It can have a negative effect on travellers and harm all our marketing efforts. The second challenge is the absence of proper lighting at these destinations. Travellers should be able to come out and walk safely. Then there are specific issues. For example at Munnar, there are no proper parking facilities. This leads to a five-hour-long traffic jam in peak season. There is a paucity of land there. To address these challenges, we will be appointing ‘green marshals’ — a volunteer force to take care of destinations. They will be given proper training and clean uniforms to stand out. In the culture department, the situation is dire. We don’t even have a proper permanent office. They are working out of an old ramshackle building. We don’t have district or regional offices of the culture department. The goal is to lend a sense of form to the system and strengthen our institutions. It will help both sectors grow. The other big-ticket projects are a film city named after JC Daniel in Kochi, a cultural park in the name of MT Vasudevan Nair and a permanent venue for the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). There is financial distress, our budgetary support is low. But we will have to find CSR funding.
There are only 27 staff at the culture directorate to manage all the culture-related initiatives across the state.
It’s the first annual Onam celebrations under the new UDF government. What’s new this time compared to previous years? Some friends of mine suggested creating a special song and video for Onam. They suggested that I sing it. I politely declined. When I heard that, I thought I could give it a try. Both are world-class artists. The visualisation was by Dijo Jose Antony. I sang and I’m happy I could be a part of it. The previous LDF government drafted a cinema policy with several recommendations on labour practices, film archiving, minimum wages etc. Will your government revise the policy? Some changes will have to be made. The policy is recommendatory in nature and does not sound out firm decisions. It was a good exercise, but the recommendations need to translate into actual decisions. The remuneration of junior artists and technicians is very low. Lyricists in Malayalam cinema are among the less paid artists. But in other industries like Tamil cinema, they get decent pay. We will have to hold talks with organisations and find some solutions. The Justice Hema panel report had made several recommendations for women safety, but were hardly implemented by the previous government. Will you do it? The appointment will happen soon, but it will not affect the preparatory works for IFFK. As minister, I am doing regular follow-ups. The entries for films have already started coming in. Only after the deadline ends can the jury view the films and decide on them.
The deadline is September 10. The IFFK will happen from Dec 11 – 18. From Sept 25-30, we will hold the international documentary film festival. There were 1700 entries and four categories of juries. We have 42 institutions for which new administration panels will soon take charge.
But they insisted me and said that the lyrics were by BK Harinarayanan and music by Jakes Bejoy.
