Good riddance

Good riddance

Despotic Pahlaj Nihalani is sacked, now Prasoon Joshi must reform the Censor Board.
Better late than never. Government has finally heeded repeated calls for sacking CBFC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani. These calls rose across the film industry , audiences and actually all Indians who want to see the country's soft power flourish. Because under the direction of Nihalani CBFC grew particularly prone to arbitrary “sanskari“ decrees, frustrating varied creative visions.Many a filmmaker experienced this CBFC avatar as unenlightened, tyrannical and scissor-happy . Newly appointed chairperson Prasoon Joshi therefore has on his hands the task of significant course-correction. Optimism on this front is justified because as adman, lyricist and poet Joshi has a reputation for being thoughtful, having a modern point of view and a good understanding of the medium.
In the long run CBFC needs structural reforms, decreasing its dependency on the personal views of the person heading it.
It's been more than a year since the government appointed committee headed by Shyam Benegal submitted its report on the necessary reforms. The committee recommended that CBFC should only be a film certification body categorising the suitability of films for different audience groups, on the basis of age. This would mean it would no longer be a censor board, its business of demanding beeps and cuts would come to an end.
These reforms must be implemented. But in the meantime, Benegal himself has underlined that the censorship guidelines are not carved in stone, the censors bring their own sensibility and understanding of society to the interpretation of these guidelines. At the least the newly constituted board under Joshi's chairpersonship should stop cutting content just because the “length of the kisses were ... unnecessarily excessive“ or because it was a “lady oriented film“ or because it focussed on “fantasy above life“.