Jaideep Sahni did not hold back as he spoke about screenwriters’ rights recently. The acclaimed screenwriter and lyricist was speaking at Vartalaap, an event organised by the Screenwriters Association (SWA), where he spoke on everything from AI and royalties to the ‘power to say no’.
Because it’s a story. Because I have always seen, when the page speaks, the big guys shut up,” he added. But the veteran screenwriter reserved his most passionate lines of the evening for the anxieties of writers and the perennial friction over remuneration and rights. A writer should be a producer’s best friend. He noted how writers’ bodies had made progress in advocating for their rights, but added that the real leverage lies in good work. “Convincing someone from the heart can only be done by the page. And its power is greater than anything else. Jaideep Sahni also addressed the crucial importance of royalty collections through SRAI (Screenwriters Rights Association of India), framing royalties not as a bonus but as an essential financial component. “This is not a Nigerian scam. This is real. Like Javed (Akhtar) fought a lot, Anjum (Rajabali) and SWA fought a long fight. And this is real… Please, if you have any episode, any film, even a partial credit, you don’t know—you, your kids, your family, even after your death—that money will keep coming. And those royalties are our power, our muscle. We get the courage to say no, which we don’t want to do,” he added.
Advocating a fundamental shift in how the industry worked, Jaideep said, “I think the best partnership should be between a writer and a producer.
