Having worked in the Hindi film industry for over five decades, Javed Akhtar has seen and heard it all. The screenwriter-lyricist, who co-wrote Luck By Chance in 2009 with his daughter, director Zoya Akhtar, and also wrote the screenplay for Ekk Deewana Tha (2012), is set to make a comeback to script writing.

“I have finished a couple of scripts. It might be too soon to talk about them and take the names of people, but I found producers for them,” says the 78-year-old. He adds, “I have done the narrations for the scripts and they liked them. I am writing another one and working on new songs.” Javed has also penned a song for the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Dunki.

Not one to pigeonhole himself, the Padma Bhushan awardee is happy that there has been a change in the way lyricists get their due now, but he hopes for more. “There is still some [pay] disparity that exists, but it’s not as bad as it used to be. Young songwriters like Amitabh Bhattacharya and Irshad Kamil are doing well. They are also being paid decently. But I feel lyricists deserve much more and hopefully, things will get better,” he says.

However, with regards to lyricists getting adequate credit for a song, the veteran feels “there is a lot left to be done”. “If you watch any song on YouTube, you will find credits for the music director and the singer, but the name of the lyricist, more often than not, is missing. All lyricists should be credited, not only when your daughter is the producer of the project,” says the lyricist, who recently penned two songs, Sunoh and Va Va Voom, for Zoya’s upcoming directorial The Archies.

To ensure that lyricists are getting their monetary due, Javed, who is the chairman of the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS), is working to get things back on track. The veteran explains, “With the kind of royalties that we now collect, the income of the writers and composers have increased manifold. There are many successful people, who don’t work anymore, but they can live off just the royalties.”

The IPRS was recently ranked as the fourth largest society in terms of revenue collected in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the CISAC Global Collections Report 2023. He adds, “Now there’s a total balance of power between the artistes and the music labels and producers. Neither can take any major decisions without the other.”