Stills from micro drama Firsts

On July 20, Women Film Circuit (WFC), a collective founded in 2021 to support and empower women in the film industry, submitted a formal complaint to the Screenwriters Association (SWA) regarding the growing exploitation of writers involved in the production of micro dramas. Running between one and three minutes, micro dramas are a new content format developed primarily for platforms like Instagram. 

According to WFC founder Sulagna Chatterjee, writers working on these short-form digital series are being paid as little as Rs 1000-Rs 2000 per episode. Chatterjee points out that after creating an entire micro drama, say comprising 90 episodes, a writer is paid anywhere between Rs 90,000 and Rs 1.8 lakh. This is in contrast to SWA’s Minimum Basic Contract rate, which mandates that a writer should be paid Rs 12 lakh minimum for a full project that has a budget of less than Rs 5 crore.

Chatterjee, who has penned Code M (2020) and Feels Like Ishq (2021), says there is a boom in demand for writers for vertical format content. Unfortunately, the demand hasn’t translated to fair pay. “A major production house that was getting into micro dramas offered me Rs 3500 per episode. They said, ‘We’re offering you this because you have experience’. But that’s incredibly low for the amount of work involved. You’re [condensing] a 90-minute feature film into a micro drama, where every single minute has to have structure, tone, and a cliffhanger. There is no clarity about the number of rewrites expected,” she states.

The lack of transparency, coupled with poor remuneration, has made it a difficult situation to navigate. Chatterjee shares, “I’ve heard of newer writers getting paid as low as Rs 1000 to Rs 2000 per episode, for 90 episodes. That’s Rs 1.8 lakh for a 90-minute project! As per SWA’s 2019 Minimum Basic Contract rates, a writer is supposed to get around Rs 11–Rs 12 lakh minimum for a full project. So, paying Rs 1.8 lakh isn’t just underpaying; it’s outright exploitation.”

The WFC has called on the SWA to take urgent action, and ensure fair compensation for writers. But there is a loophole — the current SWA mandate applies only to film projects. Chatterjee says, “There is no updated, enforceable standard for web series or micro series. This gap is being exploited, leaving writers without protection or fair compensation. The SWA [must] establish clear rate cards for all digital formats, enforce accountability from production houses and digital platforms, and initiate open dialogue with writers.”

An insider from SWA says that besides the collective’s complaint,  it is awaiting “official complaint from individual screenwriters.”

mid-day reached out to the SWA, which did not respond to the queries till press time.