India, Feb. 23 -- Everyone from Varun Grover to the Screenwriters Association of India has spoken about it. Writers have demanded not just credit but a prominent position on posters and promotional material for films. An outsider watching all this would assume that film writers have always had it bad, always struggling for the spotlight. But the Salim-Javed era was half a century ago. Sahir Ludhianvi commanded respect and money even before then. To say that writers' rights have deteriorated in Bollywood would be no exaggeration. And Sumit Arora, known for films like Jawan and Stree, agrees in part.

In a chat with Hindustan Times, Sumit argues that the importance of writers in cinema is finding its place back again after a period where wr...