Commentary/Vir Sanghvi
In effect this means that STAR TV, MTV, Home TV, Sony and the rest
are now dead
According to the Bill, television in India will have to be completely
reinvented. If a channel wishes to be viewed in India then it
must unlink from here. But no foreign company can get a license
to uplink from India.
In effect this means that STAR TV, MTV, Home TV, Sony and the rest
are now dead. To survive, they will have to now set up new operations
in India and terminate their existing uplinking arrangements abroad.
If they want licenses, they will also have to find Indian partners
-- or benamis or frontmen, as will inevitably happen -- who will
own 51 per cent of the new companies incorporated in India.
These companies will be answerable -- on a day-to-day basis -- to
this government-appointed Broadcasting Authority which would
have the right to interfere in the channel's programming because
it has to ensure that the channel offers 'services of a high
quality....a wide range or programmes to appeal to a variety of
tastes and interests.'.
You tell me: Does this sound to you like the kind of Bill that
frees the airwaves and reduces government authority in broadcasting?
Three weeks ago when I interviewed C M
Ibrahim he defined the
issue -- as he tends to all too often -- in patriotic terms. Whey,
he asked, should foreigners be allowed to beam to India when we
have to control over their programming?
Ibrahim's problem is not his patriotism. It is that he confuses
control with regulation. Of course, we should have some means
of regulating television. It is a powerful medium that reaches every corner
of our country and there should be some mechanism for complaints to be
redressed. But that applies to all channels, whether Indian or
foreign.
However, we don't need this version of the Bill for regulation.
First of all, we already have the Cable TV Act which allows
the government to force cable operators not to carry programming
that is anti-India.
Unfortunately, nobody at Shastri Bhavan seems to have read this
Act. If they're so keen on patriotism, then why haven't they asked
cable operators to throw out PTV which broadcasts anti-Indian propaganda
every day?
Secondly, you don't require uplinking from India and a system
of licensing for a regulatory mechanism. A Broadcasting Authority
can easily do so within the existing system.
Assume for the purposes of argument that Rupert Murdoch beams
seditious propaganda to India. You already have the power to throw
him off the cable networks. And a Broadcasting Authority could
finish off his Indian ambitions. All it needs to do is stop him from
raising advertising and subscription revenues from this country
once he was found to be acting against our interests.
Why then do you need to reinvent everything? Why do you need to
force people to uplink from India? Why do you need them to set
up new companies and find benamis and partners? Why do they have
to come to you for licenses? Why does the Broadcasting Authority
have to keep checking the quality of their programmers?
All this goes far beyond the concept of review or regulations.
It even goes beyond protecting our national interests. Obviously
the motivation is different.
You don't have to be a genius to work out what this motivation
is. Deprived of control over the airwaves by technology, the government
is trying to reassert that control through legislation. What is
particularly shameful is that it has subverted the spirit of a
Supreme Court judgement to give itself an excuse to do so.
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