December 28, 2006

Movie Ticket Prices Slashed

Regarding the recent announcement from Govt of Tamilnadu that movie ticket prices slashed in Tamilnadu. I do not have any objection (as if my objection matters) to slashing the movie ticket prices…many movies aren’t worth the money anyway.

 

However, few points:

  1. Recently, Govt of Tamilnadu gave entertainment tax concessions to Tamil Movie titles that were in pure Tamil. As far as my knowledge goes, whenever they used to announce entertainment tax cuts, the price of the movie ticket would fall. However, I didn’t see any movie halls actually slashing the price. So, what did the Govt aim to achieve with the tax cut?
  2. When such a tax cut already exists, what is the necessity to slash the ticket prices?
  3. All those extra collections during the tax cut, whose benefit was not passed on to the normal “visiladichan front bencher”, are going to be accounted for or what?
  4. Where does the consumer figure in all this?
  5. From a socio-economic point of view, where is the Govt trying to take the common man by providing free gas cylinder, free TV, less costlier movie tickets, rice at 2Rs/Kg, loan-waivers from co-operative banks, and such populist schemes? Doesn’t Karunanidhi want “below poverty liners” to come up at all?