Broke Balchitravani gets a new break

Set up by the Union Government in 1985, Balchitravani had been producing high-quality audio-visual content for many decades but had to stop it after the state government discontinued funds.

Now, with the institute’s existence coming under a question mark owing to severe financial crunch, various steps are being considered to make it self-reliant, including asking it to offer certificate courses in animation, film making and so on.

“These clips are meant for training school monitoring committees in each school on various subjects like management of the school, ensuring a zero drop-out rate and 100 per cent participation of each student, quality of teaching, ensuring that parameters for educationally advanced Maharashtra as envisioned by the state education department are met and so on. Since we wanted to prepare the clips and the institute has the expertise and infrastructure to get the job done, we decided to give it to them. They will be paid between Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 for each of these clips. We are expecting to get at least 20 clips prepared by them,” said MSCERT director Govind Nandede, who holds additional charge of Balchitravani.

Nandede, however, clarified that a “spoon-feeding” approach was not advisable for the institute. “We have told them to look at their existing facilities such as high-speed computers, cameras, film-making equipment and come up with plans on how they can sustain themselves. They could think of starting certificate courses, but since that could take some time, they could definitely approach corporates and accept similar work of preparing audio-visual content. In fact, we are encouraging them to do so,” he said.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Pune industrial court, which had been approached by 16 employees of Balchitravani on the issue of their pending salaries, ordered the state education department to ensure salaries are paid within one month. “We have notified the department about this order but I think it won’t be practically possible for us. So we have asked for a period of three months for the same,” said Nandede.