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Regulation, anyone?
SEVANTI NINAN
YESTERDAY it was the Bombay Club, led by Rahul Bajaj, today it is the Delhi club led by Subroto Roy of Sahara. That was blue chip Indian industry clamouring for protection in an economy opening up to the world, this is the cream of country's media raising bogeys about the evils of foreign competition and actually asking, hold your breath, that foreign companies not be allowed free and unfettered distribution of their content in India. So we should not be able to get channels like Discovery, National Geographic, or RAI or BBC freely on our TV sets but we can get totally foreign content repackaged into a Zee English.
Several worthies of the Indian Media Group, as the Delhi club is called, were campaigning less than a year ago for permission to get foreign direct investment in their own print media companies. Today, they are lecturing the Government on how to restrict foreign investment in all media, including non-news channels.
Parliament is in session, Rupert Murdoch's Star News is waiting for uplinking permission, conditional access for cable is in limbo, regulation has become a buzz word once more, and the air is thick with lobbying. At question hour, Suresh Kalmadi in the Rajya Sabha is charging that the conditional access system (CAS) is being forcibly introduced "at the behest of a very strong lobby". It smacks of ad hocism, he adds, and is like putting a toll gate before the highway has been constructed. A couple of questions later he is haranguing Information and Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad again, this time on why CAS cannot wait for Direct to Home Television to be introduced. At which point Prasad cannot resist saying that his question is also being raised by "certain other quarters", by "vested interests". Kalmadi bridles at that.
Blame the Government's infuriating adhocism in bringing in regulation piecemeal or Star India's stunning audacity in selling 30 per cent of its news channel to a willing India ally at the price of an air conditioner.
This in an effort to disinvest its holding in Star News when the I and B ministry suddenly came up with an foreign investment cap for news channels wanting to uplink from India. Policy and rule making in the media sector is once more on the front burner. Parliamentarians argue for and against regulation with more passion than accuracy. Nana Deshmukh asks how the Government can think of spending Rs. 20,000 crores on setting up a regulator with the collaboration of the United States and the United Kingdom. Laloo Prasad Yadav also chips in with a swipe about the deshi government going on a videshi road. Deshmukh is politely told that his figures are fanciful, and that nobody is involving the U.S. and the U.K. The turnover of the entire TV industry in India is currently an estimated Rs. 12,000 crores, it would be a little difficult to spend more than that on just setting up a regulatory body.
After the lukewarm interest shown in taking up the Communication Convergence Bill, since it was introduced in August 2001, the revival of interest in regulation is welcome. But just because various interests are suddenly clamouring for it, it does not mean it is imminent. This session of Parliament is too short for anything to be done about a bill to which the Standing Committee has proposed 77 amendments. Legislators sank the Broadcasting Bill in 1997 by sending it off to a select committee; they are unlikely to hasten the passage of its successor, the Communication Convergence Bill. Judging by the questions in Parliament, there is no consensus on the fact that ground rules for the broadcasting sector are sorely needed. Why do you need another regulator, sneers a Rashtriya Janata Dal MP. To create jobs for retired bureaucrats and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)activists? Others want to know why the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) cannot simply wear one more hat.
Regulation, when it comes, may not be the last word in fairness and transparency; witness the controversies generated by the TRAI's decisions. And in the absence of formal broadcasting regulation, the best safeguard we currently have against media excesses is competition. It ensures that on all tricky issues nobody gets their way because the counter lobbying gets activated. And at the highest possible level.
Yesterday the Prime Minister was personally intervening in the matter of implementing conditional access, today we hear that the Star chief in India gets a half hour meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister. The Indian Media Group is highly exercised over foreign companies and foreign investment, but it is completely silent on the issue of cross media regulation. (For those who do not know, this group comprises several leading Hindi newspapers, the New Indian Express, and some free-to-air channels.) The Living Media group (which is part of IMG) uses its print media to fight battles against rivals of its TV channels. The Times of India group uses its newspapers to lobby for a reduction in licence fees for radio, where it has a countrywide stake. And to attack Star which has a radio company which is a rival to the Times's Radio Mirchi.
Star is waiting to strike back on this one, it has already taken out huge newspaper advertisements to fight the lobbying against it, alleging that media with cross media advantages are not declaring their interest while attacking it.
So where does the public interest figure? In the pricing of cable TV (read conditional access) and in the regulation of content on which both Star and its opponents are deafeningly silent. The Convergence Bill would have established a communications commission authorised to specify programme codes and standards. Programmes such as the one Manoj Raghuvanshi hosts on Sab TV which thrives on being communal, would have then come under scrutiny. Zee MGM's recent telecast of the "Last Tango in Paris" in the afternoon, with hardly any cuts, would have earned a rap on the knuckles. Runaway sensationalism in the matters of breaking news might have attracted a beady regulatory eye.
And as for entertainment, the Centre for Advocacy and Research in Delhi, which regularly monitors and analyses television fiction, sums up its central malady in a single telling sentence. "Violence at home has become a commercial imperative". By 2002, it says, (with facts and figures) domestic violence became the dominant form of violence on television. Yet in the Rajya Sabha, Congress MP Bimba Raikar is urging Prasar Bharati to emulate these serials. "In every house, after 11 o'clock, all the women are not looking after their husbands, they are looking after the serials. From 10 p.m. to 11.30 p.m., nobody is speaking on the phone. They have become so popular. Why the Prasar Bharati is not like this?"
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