Hindi
Reduce GST on film industry, IMPPA pleads to FM Jaitley
NEW DELHI: The Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association (IMPPA) has urged the government to fix 5 per cent as the maximum GST rate that should be charged on all goods and services connected with the entertainment industry including entertainment tax.
In a letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley, IMPPA President T P Aggarwal said, “This will provide life to an industry which is being crushed under the heavy burden of tax and which needs immediate help and support of the government to survive”.
Pointing out that IMPPA was the oldest body of filmmakers having been set up in 1937, Aggarwal said the film industry has been burdened with the extreme end of high GST.
“In all other products, tax is levied after recovery of cost of production as well as input credit where all taxes and GST paid are adjusted in the GST payable,” he added. But in the film industry, GST has to be paid on goods and services as well as on sale of tickets irrespective of the fact whether the expenses incurred on making the film along with taxes paid thereon have been recovered or not.
GST in the form of entertainment tax has to be paid on the sale of tickets from the first ticket onwards where it has been fixed at the highly unreasonable level of 18 per cent for tickets up to Rs 100 and 28 per cent for tickets more than Rs 100.
The letter said that the imposition of uniform 18 per cent GST on majority of goods and services is also largely responsible for the miserable state of the film industry because very few films are profitable propositions and majority of films are disasters leading to the annihilation of the producers.
Aggarwal wrote that the government should be “providing free entertainment to the people who pay so many taxes.” Instead, it levies heavy entertainment tax which has to be paid by the poor citizen on films. Producers deserve to get the full money since the films are self-financed without any government aid.
He said that very few hit films make money while the rest are reeling in losses. Meanwhile, both the central and state governments cash in by imposing GST at every level. He demands that the practice of state governments choosing their own amount of entertainment tax must be abolished.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
