Click to play videoMumbai: Have you ever received or signed a cheque of Re 1? Well, most of us haven't but it seems in Bollywood even a rupee matters.
Yesteryear producer Ram Dayal got the shock of his life when he received a cheque for the amount of just Re 1 from one of the best-known music companies of the industry, Saregama.
And he received this amount as royalty for the music of nine of his films.
What's still stranger is that the royalty amount is only 69 paise and he was given 31 paise as a gesture of goodwill!
"It's legal piracy, you can say. All these companies are making it big in foreign countries. They are giving lakhs to everyone but not to small producers. For Subhash Ghai and Yash Chopra there is no problem," Dayal said.
Dayal has produced about 25 films that include, Shrimanji, Haseenon Ka Devta, Baazigar, Do Raha, Prabhat and Veeru Ustad.
Though the films were not big on budgets but many featured big stars like Rekha, Mithun Chakraborty, Kishore Kumar, Sanjay Khan, Mumtaz and Naveen Nischol.
He also worked with several well-known music directors and singers of his era.
Saregama claims that they are simply accounting for every penny each month.
"It is not that the value of his content is Re 1. It is not about that. It is that if we have received a rupee from a partner, say from radio or a download then we share the royalties with him. It is about that and not the value of content," Chief Executive, Music Business, Saregama, Kulmeet Makkar said.
It may not be about the value of the content but to spend money on a cheque worth Re 1 and then send it by courier only seems like a joke.
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