Writers are the people who create ‘valuable content’ on a piece of paper. However, the able lot have at times not got their due when it comes to getting all the rights that they deserve for their relentless hardwork.
The FWA (Film Writers’ Association), now renamed as SWA (Screen Writers’ Association) held an election recently to elect a bunch of talented individuals to carry forward the work to get the writers’ community the needed space, freedom and respect.
The SWA Elections happened on 16 October, and it was a great success. The elections were made user-friendly with an online voting facility made available for those who could not come in person to cast their votes.
The result of the SWA Elections is that the SWA has got its first ever Lady President, in eminent writer Preeti Mamgain. And the Progressive Writers’ Group (PWG) claimed a clean sweep with their candidates winning all the 31 seats.
Here is the list of winners from the Progressive Writers’ Group:
President: Preeti Mamgain
General Secretary: Zama Habib
Vice President: Vinod Ranganath
Vice President: Danish Javed
Treasurer: Dhananjay Kumar
Jt Secretary: Manisha Korde
Jt Secretary: Abhijeet Deshpande
Executive Committee: Jalees Sherwani, Anjum Rajabali, Rajesh Dubey, Robin Bhatt, Meghna Gulzar, Swanand Kirkire, Shridhar Raghavan, Saumya Joshi, Satyam Kumud Tripathy, Sanjay Chouhan, Sachin Darekar, Sanjay Chhel, Sunil Salgia, Radhika Borkar, Mitali Mahajan, Sanjay Sharma, Shahab Allahabadi, Jyoti Kapoor, Atika Chohan, Debashish Irengbam, Manoj Hansraj.
Associate Members:
Aashish Pawaskar (IP Lawyer, trained screenwriter)
Kalyani Pandit (Trained screenwriter)
Parakh Chauhan (Screenwriter and consultant)
Kudos to all the winners!!
We at Tellychakkar.com talked to Preeti Mamgain, who has been elected as the President of SWA. The lady who held the position of the Treasurer after the last SWA Election has been part of the SWA since the year 2012.
Talking about the clean sweep procured by PWG, Preeti told us, “It’s an achievement and we are happy with the clean sweep. I have learnt to believe that writers are the least respected people and get to be exploited too in most of the cases. And SWA gives a lot of credibility within the writers’ community. The SWA has been doing valuable work in the last few years, and have made enough ground. We have been working on the Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA) for the last two and half years for the TV writers.”
On the main goals set before the SWA now, Preeti averred, “Our group consists of writers who look forward and have a vision. We will now work towards getting the Minimum Basic Agreement signed by the producers and broadcasters. Over the time, all agreements have been one-sided, and have not been in favour of writers. So the need now is to bring the producers, broadcasters on the same page and make them sign on the MBA. Also, we aim to serve as educators too, who can speak about the rights that writers need to have. We also aim to hold workshops and seminars. We also think of having an award for our writers. As you see, writers are always delegated to the technical category rather than the popular category in any award event. In fact, everything that happens in TV is based on papers given by writers. So an award by writers to the writers will be a fitting reward to this set of intellectuals.”
Here’s wishing the Progressive Writers’ Group all the very best in their term ahead!!
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