The Ash-Bhandarkar fight: Time for Abhishek to pay up

Madhur Bhandarkar is pissed . Amitabh Bachchan is upset. Card-carrying feminists have raised a banner of revolt. Film directors are rushing to their lawyers. The only one who hasn’t said a word is the one who caused it all: We are talking about Abhishek Bachchan, not Aishwarya Rai, who broke the news of her pregnancy two weeks ago and had to sign off playing heroine in Bhandarkar’s Heroine. In all the verbiage generated over Aishwarya’s pregnancy and her supposed lack of professionalism, we forget one thing: while women bear the real burden of lugging a kid around before birth, and hence are the obvious targets of jilted film producers and script writers, the responsibility for a pregnancy should rest in two places – the two partners who decide to go forth and multiply. [caption id=“attachment_37651” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The lifetime costs of pregnancy and child-rearing have to be amortised between two persons — not the woman alone. Ben Stansall/AFP Photo”]  [/caption] If Aishwarya was unprofessional, so was Abhishek. If pregnancy clauses need to be stuck onto new contracts involving heroines, maybe we need counter-guarantees from the spouse, too. If it takes two to make a baby, how come only one shoulders the blame for scrapped or delayed films? Before we get into the meat of the arguments and counter-arguments, let’s first agree what this debate is not about. Some feminists would like to believe Bhandarkar’s fevered comments on being let-down by Aishwarya are male-chauvinist and anti-motherhood. It is not. Nobody, not even Bhandarkar, questioned Aishwarya’s right to have a child of her own. He was only pissed about the fact that he was left holding the baby – an aborted film. And that she told him about it so late in the day. Movie directors would like us to believe it is all about costs. Not quite. Sure, if a key actor gets pregnant or injured, costs soar. When Amitabh Bachchan was injured seriously while shooting for Coolie, the producers saw their costs skyrocket. But surely producers and directors have heard of insurance? Pregnancy or injuries to key actors can be insured against. It’s also not about professionalism. While there is no shortage of unprofessional conduct in the Indian workplace, Aishwarya wasn’t exactly shirking work or trying to mislead people about her availability for work. She may have delayed the announcement, but who knows what the reasons were? Only she can tell us why she delayed telling Bhandarkar about it. Maybe she had good reasons for doing so. For example, what if there was a danger of an early, spontaneous abortion? [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“255” caption=“Exclusive pictures of Aishwarya in character on the sets of Heroine, now stalled. Raju Shelar/Firstpost.”][/caption] Of course, many film producers and women — including Herione’s scriptwriter Anuraadha Tiwari — are upset because Aishwarya’s no-show has thrown them all out of work. But that’s collateral damage that could happen to anyone. When Kamal Amrohi canned the making of Pakeezah, hundreds of film industry people would have suffered loss of wages of business. Reason: a relationship accident, when Amrohi and Meena Kumari split up. The film was finished 14 years later when the two made up. It’s also not about gender discrimination. Women get pregnant, men don’t. So it makes eminent sense to have contracts asking women to not get pregnant in case their roles are critical to a project, or company or function. To make it fairer, maybe their spouses ought to sign up too. If one romantic romp is all it takes to get your partner into contractual trouble, you should be signing on the dotted line, too. Two issues remain. One is minor. What if accidents happen in spite of contracts? The answer is simple: get insurance and just get over it. But for women, the choices are no laughing matter: when accidents happen, they have to choose between contractual or professional obligations and abortion. The second choice comes with a huge emotional cost. This is a choice only women can make, and it is a tough call. All contracts have force majeure clauses: things the contracting parties have no control over. A decision by the woman not to abort should be treated as force majeure — with low or no penalties. The other issue is fundamental: Pregnancy is an issue only with women. All employers know this and factor it into their costs. It’s not about Aishwarya and actors. It’s about any woman in any workplace. This is the single most important reason — apart from gender discrimination – why women’s wages are almost always below that of men. It’s not fair, and it’s up to us to pass legislation to ensure equality. There is only one possible solution. The lifetime costs of pregnancy and child-rearing have to be amortised between two persons — not the woman alone. If that sounds unlikely or absurd, then perhaps we have to accept that sometimes two wrongs do make a right. If a woman has to bear the greater burden of childbirth, then maybe she deserves an unfair pass when it comes to pregnancy. In the meanwhile, Abhishek, it won’t hurt to send Bhandarkar a small consolation cheque.