Pune : After a 139-day-long non-violent democratic strike of Film Institute of India students against appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the institute’s President, the students are facing new difficulties regarding the completion of the syllabus of their current academic year.
During the period of strike, the students have lost time to cover close to four months’ portion. And now, with almost half the year gone, it is a challenge for the students to finish their two annual projects to complete the academic year, said an FTII student who had actively participated in the strike.
Speaking to FPJ, the student said that although the strike had been called off on Wednesday, the lectures are expected to start next week. “We severely condemn appointment of people like Gajendra Chauhan who hold no qualifications to handle an institute like FTII. And now, we have our own difficulties as we also need to take care of our academic year,” he said.
He added that as they do not have written examinations, the students need to submit two projects annually. “I expect from the management to revise our syllabus of this academic year to lessen our burden. Our first semester project’s shootings are pending, we will resume soon, but we have a lot of burden as many students and teaching staff are out of campus. Completion of two projects in so less time is a challenging task but we re ready to work harder and expect our teachers to fully co-ordinate with us who obviously did not support our strike for their own reasons,” he said.
FTII’s Students Association President Harishankar Nachimutthu spoke with FPJ about the strike stating that all FTII students come from middle-class backgrounds and they have our own limitations and inadequacy of recourses. “We need to also complete our academic year. Although we have called off the strike, our demands have not been fulfilled. But we have taken our demands to the government and now expect citizens to support our struggle,” he said.
Nachimutthu , who is also a second year student , said that while revision of syllabus would be difficult for the management, the students would surely request for extension of deadline for annual project submissions.
Even after repeated tries, the FTII director was unavailable for comment.
