our inner being is reflected in the choices we make in life hitler chose to conduct a barbaric mass genocide of innocent jewish people america dropped atom bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki brutally killing thousands in unimaginably painful ways alexander set out to conquer the world while buddha chose to look within to find himself gandhi adopted nonviolence while bose opted to form an army to attain freedom kabir tagore ghalib mother teresa saddam hussein bush gaddafi osama bin laden and innumerable others have all reflected their inner beings in the choices they made even a government in discharging its functions makes several choices and decisions often revealing its inner being and in the current situation at ftii the students chose to go on strike over the appointment of a chairman by the ministry of information and broadcasting i wonder why in our country films are part of the information and broadcasting ministry and not perhaps the ministry of culture films are a part of our culture and in no way lend themselves to the purview of ib it is one of the highest forms of fine art an amalgamation of drama acting music poetry painting cinematography and several others the film community has been silently accepting random measures from the ib ministry over the past several years the participation of the stakeholders filmmakers producers remains just a formality the ministry chooses to make decisions to suit itself irrespective of the political regime in power there are a few isolated examples of very kind gestures like the then minister of ib sushma swaraj of the bjp giving cinema the status of an industry and on another occasion both the opposition and the government coming together to pass a new copyright law drafted under the then hrd minister kapil sibal from the congress to protect the rights of lyricists and music composers barring these examples the film industry has been taking lashes from its whimsical master a strike should have happened when the health ministry forced the ib ministry to put a statutory warning ticker in scenes where a character is smoking this made us the only nation in the world to display our brainless attitude on screen it is the butt of jokes at international film festivals instead of mutilating the visuals of our film why not make cigarettes so expensive that a smoker thinks twice before buying as is the case in the us and singapore but no blame it on the films because we are nothing in comparison to the tobacco lobby the ministry gave a lot of assurances when regressive diktats of the newly formed censor board and its chief were forced on films but those assurances remained only words the new censor board continues to push its regressive agenda words like saala saali lucchay and even pagal are being deleted remember a film from the 90s titled dil to pagal hai why are we going backwards why are people with regressive