Dhaka, Delhi to boost cooperation in media, film

Bangladesh and India would further accelerate mutual cooperation in the areas of information, media, film and television and significantly promote the people-to-people relations between the two neighbouring countries.

State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Mohammad Ali Arafat and Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pranay Verma reached an agreement in this regard at a meeting at the state minister's office in the Bangladesh Secretariat on Thursday.

"We discussed different bilateral issues in the meeting. But we especially talked about the BTV's upcoming two-hour slot of international news analysis on current affairs and news presentation," Arafat told reporters after the meeting.

The state minister said they discussed the possibilities of building cooperation between the state-run BTV and Indian news agencies, especially ANI, over the BTV's upcoming two-hour chunk.

"As BTV is aired in India, we are thinking of increasing the length of the new chunk, which will have the analysis of global news, including reports from different countries of South Asia, up to three or four hours maintaining an international standard. So, we will try to attract the Indian audiences to this programme," he added.

Arafat said they also talked about building cooperation between the Film and Television Institute of India on different exchange and training programs.

"We also talked about exploring further scopes to produce more coproduction like our Mujib: The Making of a Nation film," he added.

Noting that they discussed exchanging experiences of Indian institutions working on tackling disinformation, the state minister said, "We will try to understand the process of combating disinformation and if needed, we will take initiatives to organise training on this issue".

Earlier, emerging from the meeting, Indian High Commissioner Pranay Verma said: "We discussed many areas of bilateral cooperation. We also expressed our views that cooperation in information, media, film and television is a very important part of our relationship and also very significant for our people-to-people relations."

He said at the meeting that they reviewed some of the very good successes the two countries achieved through cooperation.

About the biopic of Bangabandhu "Mujib: The Making of a Nation", the Indian envoy said: "It was a joint production between the governments of India and Bangladesh, which came out last year ... we did it together and its successes encouraged us to look at more such projects in future".

He said they talked about how they could build institutional linkages between film and television institutes in India and Bangladesh.

"And of course, we talked about more media exchanges and visits of media delegations ... so that they get more familiar with current developments and can convey the progress that we made not just in our country but also in our relationship more accurately to the people of Dhaka," Verma said.

Source: BSS