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Exclusive | Inside the High-Stakes Push to Make Indian Screenwriters’ Royalties a Reality
Negotiations, data access and industry alignment will decide how quickly the royalty system for Indian writers becomes real.
In an industry where every revenue stream is fought for, why would anyone turn down money that is theirs by law? Indian films and series play every day on television, streaming platforms and on airline and hotel screens, earning each time they move beyond the cinema hall. For decades, screenwriters were paid once and shut out of that long tail. The law has changed and the collection system is in place, but adoption is still catching up.
At the centre of this transition is the Screenwriters Rights Association of India (SRAI), a government-registered copyright society that collects and distributes royalties for writers and producer-owners.
Conversations with its leadership and members, along with access to its operational framework, reveal the scale of a system that is legally in place but still in the middle of industry-wide negotiations.
The Law
The shift began with the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012. The law made one thing clear: a writer cannot sign away the right to royalties when a film or show is exploited outside theatres. Any contract that tries to do this—including a “full and final buyout”—has no legal standing.
Put simply, a writer can still be paid a fee for the script, but when the film or series plays on television, OTT, cable, digital platforms or anywhere beyond the cinema, the writer must get a share.
Copyright lasts for 60 years from the beginning of the year after the author’s death, which means the royalty flows to the next generation as long as the heirship is legally established. For years, the problem was not the legal right but the absence of a working structure — a copyright society, a tariff, reliable data and a distribution pipeline.
Enter, SRAI
SRAI currently has around 600 members — about 580 writers and 20 producer-owners. Legal heirs can join as associate members once heirship is proven. Membership is lifetime ₹5,000 plus GST for writers and ₹10,000 plus GST for producer-owners.
“The mandate is much larger than the present membership,” says CEO Vinod Ranganath, pointing to a long-term target of 10,000 to 12,000 members across languages, formats and generations of creators. “We are required to represent all audiovisual writing — from feature films and television to OTT, documentaries, animation and shorts.”
The society has published a proposed tariff of 2 per cent of gross revenue (globally, royalties are calculated on gross receipts because profits can be diluted through accounting). Under Indian law, the collected royalty is split equally between the author and the copyright owner.
In practical terms, that means half of the collection flows back to the producer or broadcaster that owns the copyright. “It is not a loss to producers. It creates a lifetime revenue stream for them and for their heirs,” Ranganath says.
Distribution will be usage-based. For television, programme logs and BARC data will determine how the pool is allocated. For OTT, viewership data — or third-party measurement where necessary — will perform the same function. Platforms and broadcasters are required to provide audited gross-revenue figures to calculate the percentage, a practice already followed by the same companies in Europe.
SRAI has also begun signing reciprocal agreements with foreign copyright societies, enabling royalties from overseas exploitation of Indian works to flow back to Indian authors. A Chilean society has already identified 98 Indian titles generating revenue abroad, from Satyajit Ray and Mani Kaul to popular titles like Dil Chahta Hai, Don, Main Hoon Na, and Kabali.
The Money
“If you are a writer or producer and have not become a member of SRAI, you may be saying no to money that is actually yours by law,” says filmmaker R. Balki. "Writers have to recalibrate their thinking. Just like music composers and lyricists, they too can keep earning from the work they have done. They can have a constant revenue stream beyond the fee they have charged.”
For Balki, the first challenge is awareness. "Making sure a lot of people understand such an obvious thing and become members. Every member of the SWA should become a member.”
Filmmaker Abhishek Jain calls it a structural correction. Most screenwriters, he points out, are paid only once, even though their work keeps generating revenue for years across television, OTT, international markets and dubbed versions.
“The association is designed to make sure their scripts keep helping them earn while the producer is also earning,” he says, adding that this is only possible through collective management, because an individual writer has no practical way of tracking exploitation across platforms and territories or negotiating with each stakeholder.
The Challenges
For all the legal clarity, the implementation will take time
“The challenge comes from the factor that makes this country so beautiful — diversity and size,” says screenwriter and senior activist Anjum Rajabali, an instrumental figure along with Ranganath, fighting for the rights.
“India has a humungous number of broadcasters, studios and platforms across more than 20 languages and 29 states. Unlike most filmmaking countries, we do not have producers’ associations that can represent all their members in negotiating a uniform royalty formula,” Rajabali says.
Negotiations, therefore, have to happen across multiple stakeholders with different business models. Balki puts it in economic terms: “When there is money to be paid, people are always reluctant to share. The challenge is the battles and the conversations we are going to have with platforms and channels to come to an agreed amount.”
THR India has also learnt that broadcasters have asked SRAI to route discussions through their apex body so that terms can be negotiated collectively. Formal negotiations with OTT platforms are yet to begin.
Jain says the hurdle is as much perceptual as it is legal, since collective rights management for writers is still a new idea in India and there is natural hesitation about how it will function, what it means for existing contracts and how it could reshape current business models.
The system also rests on access to transparent usage data, which means building an infrastructure that is technological, legal and compliance-driven, a process that will take time. “There is no guarantee this will happen tomorrow,” Balki says. “Everything cannot go to court. We will have to find a way of conversing with platforms and making them understand why this is right.”
The Reluctance (and the Road Ahead)
One of the persistent misconceptions is that the royalty regime is anti-producer. In television and streaming, broadcasters often own the copyright because producers are commissioned. In those cases, half the royalty pool flows back to the broadcaster as the copyright owner. Where producers retain IP, they receive that share.
“It formalises the ecosystem. A stable royalty structure builds trust and encourages professionalism. When writers feel protected, they invest more deeply in their work and it benefits everyone," Jain says.
The music industry offers the closest Indian precedent. After the restructuring of IPRS, labels that initially stayed away eventually joined. Declared revenues recently touched about ₹800 crore, split equally between authors and labels.
For the first time, overseas exploitation will translate into payments for Indian writers and producers. Through reciprocal agreements, foreign societies collect royalties for Indian works exploited in their territories, deduct administrative costs and remit the balance to India. Indian writers are paid at the same rate as local writers in those countries.
The same system will apply in reverse. Foreign writers whose content is widely consumed in India will begin receiving their share once collections start.
“The exhibition of Indian films is not limited to the diaspora,” Ranganath notes. In markets like Australia, local audiences watch mainstream Hindi cinema, expanding the royalty value beyond the diaspora market. "SRAI will get its first royalties from ATN, the copyright society of Chile, in March. Which is a great start for us."
Rajabali sees the transformation as cultural. “Five years later, the attitude of the industry towards writers will have changed. The royalty regime establishes writers as active stakeholders and accords them a more respectable position.”
For Jain, the success metric is when the debate ends. “The conversation will no longer be about whether writers should be paid royalties but about how efficiently and fairly it can be done.”