'Indian entertainment industry reeling under talent dearth'

Mumbai, March 26 (IANS) The Indian entertainment and media (E&M) industry, though zooming at a cumulative growth rate of 18 percent, is increasingly facing up to the harsh reality of talent and competent manpower scarcity, experts here have said.

'There is a huge opportunity in this industry. There is demand and there is supply, but that supply is not employable,' K. Pandyan, director of Graphiti Multimedia, said at Ficci-Frames, a media and entertainment meet, said here Wednesday.

'The entire employability system needs to be set up in this industry. A career option in this industry is not looked up as a viable option, there are no proper training and institutes,' Pandyan added.

He also expressed concerns at the fact that India is probably the only country in the world that has no master-level programmes on entertainment and media at the universities but are mostly privately run.

'With the evolution of entertainment industry, Indian audience is now demanding more sophisticated content, which desperately calls for talent,' said Meghna Ghai Puri, president, Whistling Woods International.

'Also, education in India is extremely regulated. We, as an industry, should urge for complete deregulation of the education system,' Puri said, adding that more and more media institutes need to come up in the country to address the growing concern of talent crunch.

Stressed Lachlan MacKinnon, professor at University of Abertay Dundee, Britain: 'India already produces high quality, technically skilled graduates, but the next step in expecting creativity from these graduates is difficult, not impossible.'

Citing reasons for lack of talent in the entertainment industry MacKinnon said that there is a lack of parental support, properly designed courses, engagement between industry and academia and government support.

However, according to Raj Shekhar, vice-president of Crest Animation: 'The Indian E&M industry has sufficient manpower available. But what is required is identifying one's core competence and putting them into a particular activity.'

Agreed Amit Sharma, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU): 'There is no crunch whatsoever in the industry. With the sudden rush of channels in the entertainment space one is seeing an apparent crunch which will ultimately give a boost to the industry.'

The Indian E&M industry has attained a market size of Rs.513 billion last year from Rs.438 billion in 2006, according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Ficci) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). The industry is projected to reach Rs.1.157 trillion by 2012.

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