In a recent interview with Sucharita Tyagi, Ali Fazal was asked what he would do if he had all the money in the world. He says that he would create a self-sufficient machinery so that the writers of a story simply get paid. “Ye ek dukhti rag hai”, Ali says while talking about the writers of a project, who are actually the minds behind it, often not having the money to even pay their rent. How has this discussion of writers not getting paid become a perpetually unresolved altercation while talking about any form of art or business? How has the word ‘writer’ become synonymous with ‘underpaid’?
Well, this discussion is not limited to the film industry and is constant across any writing job, be it the copywriters in advertising or the content writers in digital or physical publications. The situation is even dire for the ones just stepping into the industry. The peanuts one generally gets while starting their career barely cover their rent and groceries. The fallacy of the system is most of these dream places to work for an aspiring creative writer find their offices in the big metro cities. Every organization wants to tell stories that penetrate deep into the roots of the Indian consumers, but nobody is willing to pay the appropriate compensation to the people who have lived those stories and are willing to tell them. In this scenario, the storytelling is bound to be saturated if the salary just allows people already staying in those cities to be the only voices.
The one thing you will always hear while getting into writing is, “We are paying the industry standard”. Who exactly is deciding these industry standards? And are they not aware of the basic economic concepts like inflations? What else can explain these ‘industry standard’ remunerations to be the same for the past 15 years? In advertising copywriting, you are in absolute luck if you find anything that pays beyond 30k a month, and those are majorly new organizations that have the entitlement to feel that they own you for nearly a thousand rupees a day. But hey, at least they pay, the legacy agencies expect you to intern there for at least 3 months, and I am not talking about some random graduates with no experience, the condition remains the same even for the post-graduates of some of the best advertising courses in the country.
The scenario in screenwriting for films and shows remains even more grim. First, there is little to no way you can get work without shifting to the epicentres of content like Delhi or Mumbai, which is not cheap at all, even for people ready to sell their souls for high-paying jobs. So one comes here looking for cheap accommodations, and cheaper food just to sustain their dreams of telling a story. Even the writers of big-budget shows in the foreign lands are no exceptions. The numerous strikes by the screenwriters tell you that geography doesn’t rate your words any higher.
One of the other sayings that echo in the corporate space is – “You have to work up the ranks”. Certainly, nobody is expecting a manager or editor’s paycheck or responsibilities from day one. However, the compensation has to be respectable, to say the least. The disparity within a certain team in a creative organization is alarming. If content makes the organization money at the end of the day, why is the share too little for the people who have a large role and active participation in actually producing the content?
The sad truth about the industry is that loyalty is not rewarded, more often than not. The corporate structure of the organizations looks at appraisal just from a percentage basis, not in terms of absolute numbers. Of course, there’s a difference between a 10 percent hike for someone making 3 lakhs a month and a 15 percent hike for someone making 20k a month. To add to this, the glorification and normalization of ‘struggling’ with money by the people at the top with their extravagant salaries guarantees that the financial disparities are not going to get away anytime soon.
However, the system is a product of the feedback loop. The aspiring writers while struggling for opportunities are left with minimum negotiating powers, and a lack of opportunities, and the perception around the profession makes sure of that. The problem often is, that most people don’t value ideas and the curators of it enough, not many think that it is a skill that is exclusive to the one who’s actually working on the craft every day. We all know where “Laao, hum hi likh lete hain, writer ko kyun paise dene” attitude landed in Bollywood some years ago. Moreover, there’s no measurement index of creative writing, there can hardly ever be any parameter to judge good writing. In a world that functions on numbers, it’s easy to dismiss a great piece of words that don’t sell enough copies.
Gone are the days of Salim-Javed when the writers could demand a paycheck at par with the leading stars of a movie. We know we have drifted lightyears away from that utopia. However, one fact always seems to baffle me – everyone believes that great ideas eventually turn into great products and in turn provide better revenues, but nobody is ready to pay daily to the ones actually making them happen at the ground level. True, “Jo dikhta hai wahi bikta hai”, and the people whose faces are shown on the screen are taking the lion’s share of the chunk of the profit. But in the process of cutting the costs at the newcomers level, all the industry is losing are the talents who have to settle for other decent paying jobs, who could have otherwise crafted wonders.
Telling stories is the superpower that made us humans become the pinnacle species on Earth. The world runs on words – on stories and verbal promises and agreements, and if the worth attached to them is no longer valued, well, we are just counting the days to another dark Age. People like Ali serve as a hope, but until the conversation reaches the HR cabins and the board rooms, there is little chance the whole system will give it a thought.