Anurag Mishra's 15-year-long association with the entertainment industry did not guarantee any security to his family upon his death. Mishra, who worked as a sound producer with a Mumbai-based production house, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and died in September last year. He was only 43 and had worked on countless films.

His work contract with the company did not provide him basic employee benefits like gratuity, insurance or provident fund. His family says it is certain that 18-hour-long work shifts each day, without a break for months on end, killed him. But his employer refused to own up and only on insistence paid Rs 3 lakh as a "final settlement".

"My son was the only earning member. He had nearly 20 years of service left. But on his death, his employers disowned us. We had to literally beg for compensation," his 65-year-old mother Savitri Mishra recalls.

Mishra is one among several thousand employees in the entertainment industry working in highly vulnerable working conditions, risking their lives to earn a living. It's as if deaths, accidents, permanent infirmities are incentives that come along with this profession.

Just last month, while installing a multi-storey wooden structure for an upcoming Marathi film, a carpenter fell 12-feet down, injuring his ankle and back. "Both his ankles were fractured and he needed immediate medical care," said his co-worker Ishwar. While the carpenter was taken to a local primary health centre in Jalgaon where the film was being shot, the producers of the film refused to pay beyond the initial fees for consultation. "It has been over a month now, he is still not back to work. He has lost his wages for the days he is out of work, and along with that he has to also bear the medical expenses," says Ishwar.

Behind the glamour and gloss of the industry, where stars reign and are much sought after, lies a vast army of technical people who sweat it out for each film. From the several thousand recordists, cameramen, assistants, to, at the bottom of the pyramid, spot boys and light handlers, they move from film to film, assignment to assignment, with no job security, no benefits, no insurance and nothing waiting for them when they are retired or are disabled or worse, die on the job.

Documentary filmmaker Opender Chanana has now made a film, Living on the Edge: Deglamourising Bollywood , which seeks to expose the conditions in which television shows and films are made. With extensive interviews with lead actors of popular TV shows to those engaged in menial jobs, Chanana brings out several layers of violations and denial of basic rights in the industry. His film is broadly a commentary on what is seriously wrong in the glitzy entertainment business. "Each person I spoke to had a story of loss and violation to tell. They feel wronged, are aware of what they have been deprived of, but still, are made to continue with their work since there is no other way out," says Chanana.

One of the most poignant interviews in the 50-minute documentary is of Raju Yadav, an art director with long years of association with the industry, who narrates the story of his friend Vidya, who worked as a stuntman in films until a few years ago. "Vidya had a bad fall and his spinal cord snapped. He has been bed-ridden ever since," Yadav says. Even the informal compensation system that usually gets followed while paying in case of accident was not paid to him. "They (the studio owners) claimed that Vidya suffered the injury while rehearsing and not at the time of the actual shoot. And hence his appeal for compensation was rejected."

Chanana has been showing the film to producers and actors in the hope that it will at least start a dialogue around these basic issues.

The Wire spoke to many of the daily wage workers and even employees on temporary contracts and all of them had similar stories to tell - persistent fatigue, illness, hypertension and the looming fear of losing their job. "One might have the job one day, even earn decent money; but the next day, he might be scrounging for subsistence," says Rangarao Chougule, an art director working with the film industry for over two decades.

Chougule, like several others, entered the industry at a very young age and learned the ropes, hopping from one job to another. From a worker doing odd jobs on the film sets to becoming an art director overlooking work of several dozen artists, Chougule says the journey was filled with uncertainty, humiliation, and on some days even hunger. "I was an orphan and lived with my relatives in Kolhapur. I travelled to Mumbai with the hope of making it big in the industry. But life here was nothing like I had imagined," he says.

Chougule recalls, "Someday I was a mason, on another day a carpenter. On some days, I would just return home without any work." Twenty years later, nothing has changed. Most of these studios are inaccessible to outsiders. When this reporter visited the Film City last week, she was denied entry. Things have become worse and more competitive - outside any functioning studio, scores of people - daily wage labourers to small-time artists - queue up for work.

A comprehensive report published by FICCI (or the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) in association with audit firm Ernst and Young claims the Indian media and entertainment industries is worth Rs 1.5 lakh crore in 2017, 13% over 2016. For a sector so flourishing, it is surprising that it is not recognised as an "industry" under the labour and service laws. This non-recognition means over three lakh artists and workers connected with this profession are denied their basic labour rights.

Legal experts say unless this sector is notified by law as an "industry", the guaranteed protection and an individual's right to compensation, retirement perks, insurances, will never be provided. Interestingly, it is an 'industry' for the purpose of getting formal bank loans and is getting increasingly corporatised at the top levels. But there has been no change in the bottom rungs.

What is stopping the film business from allowing it to be notified under the law and provide its workers the due protection? According to advocate Jamshed Mistry, "This sector thrives on its workers' insecurities. They know people are in need of work and will not possibly rebel." He points out that no production house, big or small, has ever come ahead in support of its workers and fought for their rights.

Mistry has been fighting a public interest litigation filed by an NGO 'Association for Aiding Justice' in the Bombay high court seeking protective and conducive conditions for workers in the industry. Many associations of artists and workers have unsuccessfully lobbied with influential actors and legislators on several occasions. "The talks have not gone ahead beyond a few assurances," Mistry adds.

Mistry's petition filed in 2015 seeking the creation of a General Code of Safe Practices along the lines of the practices followed in the Australian and American film industry yielded a favourable order from the Bombay HC. While the court was still hearing the case, another massive fire accident occurred at a cultural event organised by the Maharashtra government at Girgaum Chowpatty in Mumbai destroying equipment and decorations worth Rs 5 crore. The court observed that in order to ensure no such untoward incident happened again, the state government should come up with a comprehensive policy detailing safety measures that could minimise accidents on the film sets. Two years since the order, there has been no word on this, Mistry points out.

Over the last decade, film budgets have grown exponentially and the demand for highly extravagant sets have also increased with time. These installations have been possible only because of cheap labour which is made to work in highly insecure and unhygienic conditions. The production cost of these sets doesn't take into account the several hundred workers who work in pitiable conditions, devoid of basic human dignity and rights, observes Chanana.

In only a handful of cases, compensation has been paid upfront without hassling grieving families. Most commonly, this happens because of the scale of the accident and the subsequent media attention, says Ulhas Nandre, member of the Akhil Bhartiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal and also an art director in the Marathi film industry.

He cites the example of a recent fire accident at the Cinevista studio in eastern central Mumbai in which a young technician named Gopi Verma was charred to death. This accident occurred just days after a massive fire broke out at one of the commercial malls in Mumbai, killing 14 people. The incident got extensive media coverage. "Cinevista had to cough up Rs 35 lakh as compensation," Nandre claims. "This, if properly calculated as per the Workmen Compensation Act which factors in a person's earning capacity and his remaining years of service, might just be a miniscule amount," Mistry points out.

"The disparity between the profits of the producers, the lead actors and that of junior artists, and other workers on the sets is mind-boggling," Chanana tells The Wire . Kirti Raj, who has worked as a junior artist in the industry for over six decades makes only Rs 600 each day. "Films earlier would be shot over several months. So whatever money would get paid, it would at least come for longer duration and consistently. Now, with sophisticated techniques, films are wrapped up in just 25-30 days," says 75-year old Raj. "I would have retired years ago. But I have no support system to fall back on," he adds.

What is most perturbing, Chanana says, is when international studios, which otherwise have to follow strict security guidelines on entering the Indian market, indulge in similar malpractices. If they were to do what they do with our artists and spot boys in their own country, they would be dragged to the court every day," he feels.

Year after year, workers and artists have been giving strike calls for better wages and regulated working hours. But that has not made any difference. "Human resource is available in abundance. When one set of people go on strike, there are others available, so they are vulnerable. No one is indispensable here," says Utsav Anand, member of the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) which went on strike in August last year only to call it off in a few days.

Trupti Kandhare, a make-up artist and the Mahila Kalakar Sangh said production houses and studios are built keeping only its male members in mind. "Toilets, restrooms, everything is made to suit men. We have to largely adjust to what is available." Which explains why most women who featured in Chanana's film complained of urinary tract infection and other illnesses related to poor sanitation.

While the state and legislators have turned their backs on demands for safe and dignified workspace, cine workers feel most let down by their own fraternity. "When I entered the industry, I only dreamt of working with big stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan. I have a count of the times I have worked them. I recall each moment in fact. But will these stars ever know that someone called Raju Yadav worked for them day in and day out on those fancy sets? Until that happens and the industry itself wakes up to our issues, we can't expect the outside world to notice our pain," he says.

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