Planning: non-existent. Organisation: pathetic. End result: utter chaos. That is how any objective report card on the ongoing 37th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will read.

For veteran media persons who have attended film festivals around the globe, IFFI 2006 in Goa is a complete washout. Getting into an auditorium to catch a film of one's choice is next to impossible.

Trouble stems from the fact that the five screens available at the festival can cater to a total of only 2,100 viewers whereas the organisers have registered well over 5,000 delegates for the event. Add to that the 450 accredited journalists who are here to cover the festival. The situation cannot but go completely out of hand.

This is the third year that Goa is hosting India's official film festival, but neither the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG) nor the state administration seems to have learnt anything from the experience of the past two years. By now the breaking-in period should have ended for Goa.

Instead, things have gone from bad to worse. Even by IFFI's suspect standards, the 37th edition is by far the worst ever in terms of planning and organisation.

The job of the Directorate of Film Festivals, of the information and broadcasting ministry, which knows a trick or two about mounting events of this kind, is limited to just programming of films and looking after invited festival delegates.

ESG is in charge of the scheduling of films and the choice of theatres. Given the chaos that has gripped IFFI, it is clear that there is nobody in Panaji who has a clue about how a festival should be run.

In no other major festival of the world are critics and industry delegates clubbed together quite in the way that they have been in Goa.

The Cannes Film Festival, which Goa is desperately trying to ape without possessing even a fraction of its wherewithal, organises separate press screenings of all films in the official selection. But try telling that to people in positions of authority here. All you will elicit are unintelligible noises.