States should be ranked on media and entertainment index: Amitabh Kant

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant today favoured the idea of states being ranked in terms of media and entertainment index as is done for ease of doing business.

This, Kant said, will ensure growth of the sector as respective state governments would compete to offer a conducive environment to the media and entertainment industry.

"My view is that India is a very large country, bigger than the 24 countries of Europe, and we need to ensure states become very easy and simple for media and entertainment," said Kant at the CII Big Picture Summit.

He added: "We need to do an indexing and ranking of states in India on following parameters... gaming, digitisation every aspect and brand states and put in public domain and name and shame the state government".

Kant is of the view that people must notice if the state government is supporting the media and entertainment industry or not.

India has the second-largest Internet user base fuelled by various ecosystems as 4G services and digital transformation will play a key role in the growth of the sector.

"The second wave of growth would come when all smartphones would start in Indian native languages and media and entertainment (contents) would be viewed by all of them on phone in regional languages," Kant said, terming it as "a big quantum jump".

He promised support from the government for the media and entertainment industry.

Film director and producer Ramesh Sippy stressed the need to create a skilled workforce, given the changing nature of the sector.

The rapidly-changing technology is like a double-edged sword, he pointed out, that will add new categories of jobs while making some obsolete.

The government and the private sector need to work together to create appropriate education and skilling opportunities for the sector, Sippy suggested.