Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Smriti Irani on Sunday said that the film industry must introspect the issue of manufactured controversies. This statement from Smriti Irani came after she recently dissed those in the film making business. She said many people create an outrage only to grab eyeballs because they haven’t made a good film.

This is a reply for the question from the ace director Karan Johar which questions the otherwise considered as a soft power, becomes “a soft target” at times. Both of them had engaged into to a Q & A conversation session at the inaugural ceremony of FICCI Frames 2018.

“My issue is this. Now that you recognize me as an insider, honestly put your hand to your heart and tell me, how many of us manufacture that outrage because we don’t have a film which is that good but we know we will get the eyeballs,” said Irani as the audience erupted into a huge laughter.

The I&B Minster continued, “We are all in the business of it, it’s the best-kept secret which is just out there. Nobody wants to talk about it.” Johar replied to this by saying, “Okay, we won’t get into that!” To that, Irani replied, “Of course you won’t!”

The other people from the film industry who attended the session are the producer Siddharth Roy Kapur and Huma Qureshi. During the session, Irani also said that the Indian film fraternity should stop comparing itself with others and instead, set new benchmarks and new standards, which others can follow us.

The above comment is a response to the comment from Karan Johar, who said that the Indian film industry hasn’t been able to fina a way to defeat its Chinese counterpart in terms of box office results.

“I think we always position ourselves in comparison to others. We never really look at our strengths and then position ourselves completely different from what is happening in the world. We are always catching up. So, will we be happy playing catch up for the rest of our lives or do we as an industry decide that we define ourselves on our own terms?” said Irani.

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