EditorsEdit: How Karunanidhi will gift Sun T.V more viewers by pricing movie tickets @ Rs. 50
From the long list of crazy decisions taken by the septuagenarian (and senile?) C.M of Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi, here is one more- Movie tickets will cost only Rs.50 and not a penny more. This after the state govt. issued a directive to this effect to cinema hall owners, per NDTV. Earlier, Karunanidhi has come up with several 'enlightened ' economic decisions like distributing television sets free to ALL poor and assuring rice @ Rs.2 per kg., so as to fulfill his poll promises.It doesn't take too much to imagine the economic immpact of this decision. No multiplex owner in his right mind would make any investment in Tamil Nadu, going ahead, for starters. Besides robbing the Tamil Nadu cinema fan (and god knows there are too many in this tribe) of a quality movie experience, this will result in a loss of employment . Don't underestimate the amount of employment a multiplex generates. The ones I know employ anywhere from 100-500 (direct and indirect employment) per multiplex, dependinng on the size. And which section of the society are getting employed as shop hands, cleaners, security and parking attendants, cooks and waiters? If we estimate that a further 25 multiplexes would not be opened in all of Tamil Nadu's cities, about 12,500 would loose permanent employment and considering a family size of 4 per employed, close to 50,000 people could be affected, by conservative estimates . Don't even start counting the loss of temporary employment (like the number of people employed to build these multiplexes for instance).
Who will benefit? The poor and lower middle class were watching their movies in small theatre halls, where tickets are priced cheap anyway, much below the Rs. 100 odd per coupon in swanky multiplexes. So even if they benefit their savings would be marginal. And what do you think they would have chosen, had Karunanidhi given them a choice as to whether they desired to watch movies for cheap, or get a job paying them Rs. 5000 and above, per month. But why would the Tamil Nadu C.M ask the poor of their choice? He knows what they want.
The people who would laugh all the way to the movie hall are the middle class and the rich movie goers. I saw a couple of well to do kids,expressing their happiness in their fake American accents on NDTV.
The poor on the other hand, won't know what hit them. But Karunanidhi has taken care of that too, father figure that he is to Tamil Nadu's poor. After all they can always watch Karunanidhi's family channel Sun T.V, using the free T.V sets the C.M will distribute, if they have to stay at home, for lack of a job.
