Cine Gini
Whenever I feel low, I see some Swami Nithyanandha’s video. No no, I am not talking about the ones that were taken without his knowledge. I am talking about the ones where he addresses huge gatherings about some concepts in physics like relativity, subjectivity mixed with cosmic energy and psychology which has a message about life sandwiched between them. Watching five minutes of it is so relaxing and gives me the strength to deal with shit in life for the next few hours. This has nothing to do with the message that was conveyed but the way science was abused will be entertaining to watch. I am convinced when Yogis and Babas try to convey a message because that is their bread and butter. People follow them and listen to their speeches with a belief that they will throw some meaning into their lives. But that doesn’t apply to movies. People don’t go to movies thinking that the movie will change their lives forever so that they can quit their jobs and write off their properties to the trust that the protagonist runs and attain mukthi.
People go to the movie hall with the sole reason of entertainment. But I don’t understand why most of the movie makers are obsessed about conveying a message in their movie. That too not even in a subtle way. The movie will have an opening song about how to treat a father like a friend, friends like brothers, cow as a mother, teacher as a father etc. The relationships come a complete circle in that 4.5 minutes song. In between, it will have 3 songs about how all not to romance and objectify women. In the end, it will have a song about the working class fighting for their rights. By the end of the movie, you will have 15 messages from your girlfriend whom you ditched to watch the FDFS of your favourite hero’s movie and 30 messages from the hero himself. Now you have 45 more things to worry about in life and the sole reason of watching the movie to relax is lost. But still, why do they do this? This doesn’t stop with the movie. This kind of message stuffing, corporate bashing, etc happens in audio release functions, poster release function, teaser release functions, 3rd-day cake cut, 5th-day success celebration etc. Do they really care about our society and its welfare so much? Let’s see.
The Gini index is based on the Gini coefficient, a statistical dispersion measurement that ranks income distribution on a scale between 0 and 1. The measure has been in use since its development by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1921. It can be used to measure the inequality of any distribution but is commonly associated with wealth. The Gini coefficient is an important tool for analyzing income or wealth distribution within a country or region. A country in which every resident is having the same income would have an income Gini coefficient of 0. A country in which one resident is earning all the income, while everybody else is earning nothing, would have an income Gini coefficient of 1. So a higher Gini index means higher inequality in income distribution. The number is usually multiplied by 100 and presented.
Some of the world’s poorest countries (Central African Republic) have some of the world’s highest Gini coefficients (61.3), while many of the wealthiest (Denmark) have some of the lowest (28.8). For the USA the number is 47. Nations such as Sweden, Luxembourg, France and Iceland all cluster in the 20s which implies greater equality. Usually, a number greater than 50 is an alarming level of inequality. For India, the last reported numbers by the World Bank was 35.7. Currently, it is estimated to be around 50. Moviemakers got it bang-on. There is huge inequality in our country. Hats off to your efforts to fight against that.
But wait, the same Gini index can be used to measure inequality in any distribution. Let’s do a guesstimate income of various people in various levels in a film crew and calculate the Gini index of the same. As there is not even a single transparent data source available for this information all the numbers you see below are a guesstimate based on reports in sites and talking to some people who had work in the movie industry. Let’s pick the infamous Sarkar movie to do this.
From various sources, Vijay charges around 30–40 crores for a movie which constitutes a major share of the whole film’s budget. Let’s take the lower value of the range i.e 30 crores so that we don’t show him in a bad light. The lead female of the movie earns a max of 2 crores. Around 6% of what the hero earns.
If you are making a big-budget movie you will be associated with a lot of big names in each department. Let’s take that the big names from each department earn 1 crore each. ARR alone makes around 5 crores. In each department, there will be some top brass earning some good money. Let’s say each department has 5 of them. Singers / Assistant Art Directors / Asst Choreographers etc. Let’s assume they make 10 lakhs each. In reality, I am guessing it will be far lesser.
Assistant Directors are the ones who do a lot of work but they end up getting paid very less is what the movie circle says. Consider 10 assistant directors worked on the movie including the one who is the actual writer of the script. Let’s say each makes a lakh.
Then there are 200 other people involved in making the movie like foremen, lightmen, makeup artists, helper boys, the people who walk in the background when a scene is being shot, the old man whose fruit stall the hero demolishes during a fight, the dancers who shake their legs in a synchronous manner behind the lead pair in a duet song and hundreds of people who roar from behind the hero during a protest etc. Most of these people get paid on a daily basis. Per day their salary amounts from 2500 to 5000. If a movie is shot for 100 days, their involvement is only around 10-20 days. Just to compare their earnings with the lead’s income , let’s standardise their income. Let’s say they are involved in 80% of the movie and make around 3000 per day, which amounts to Rs 2,40,000 each.
So there are around 280 people involved in the movie. The total wage bill comes around 62 crores. Apart from this, the producer of the movie spends the money he is left with to actually make the movie. This involves food bill for the crew, flight ticket for the protagonists and the crew who goes to shoot a song in a foreign country and permit fees to the foreign government to shoot the song on a busy road, movie marketing, paying youtube reviewers, functions to promote movie and hiring bouncers to beat the shit out of hero’s diehard fans who come to attend those functions. But let’s forget about all that and let’s focus on the number that we care about. The Gini index.
The Gini Index comes around 85. Worse than the country with the most inequality, South Africa. Even after keeping the hero’s salary the same and tripling the salary of all the others involved in the movie, the Gini index still comes around 78. Much worse than India’s Gini Index. If Director and the hero really want to fight inequality in the society they should first start from their own industry. Or else, if this is just a gig to make money from people by spraying social messages around the script and giving them false hope they are no different from my guru Sri Shri Shree Nithyananda Swamigal.
