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Magazine
Hijacking radio
SEVANTI NINAN
RITU RAJ KONWAR
Is the FM radio revolution a non-starter?
SAHARA is trying to do a Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) with its "Karishma — the Miracle of Destiny". The Government has just rolled back the implementation of conditional access for cable TV in Delhi, and under pressure to do so for Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata as well. A Delhi newspaper, amazingly, is using the bomb blast to be clever: "Blast in Mumbai, Bombshell in U.P." says its headline, equating Mayawati's politics with a devastating terrorist strike. And even as our attention is focussed on all of this, the Government is going ahead with its second round of Frequency Modulation (FM) radio privatisation. Frequencies in 70 cities ranging from Port Blair to Nellore, to Dhanbad, Davangere, Tiruppur, Asansol, Aizawl and Bareilly are being opened up. And if nobody pays attention, this exercise could be as misconceived as the last one.
At the turn of this century, after 53 years of control, the Government loosened its clutches on a medium that is the essence of communication in democracies elsewhere. It is India's tragedy that when it did so, it decided to treat radio as a milch cow rather than a public resource. I still remember how pleasantly surprised the then minister for information and broadcasting Arun Jaitley was at how many crores of rupees the ministry had managed to pull in when the auction of FM radio frequencies ended — the money seemed to be essentially what mattered. Looking back, this is what was achieved: 108 frequencies were auctioned for a total of some Rs. 425 crores. In other parts of the world, when you have a radio frequency you get a radio station. In India you get extortion (by the government of the day) and court cases. But no radio station. Only 22 have finally come up, and a number of States have been left untouched by the first round: Goa, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab and the North East. Many of those who bid dropped out. The license fee was too high. As for content, how afraid the existing commercial stations are of risking diversity in programming is shown up in a recent survey: 74 per cent of listeners were unable to correctly associate FM programmes with the channels they were on.
So what is likely to happen this time around? A committee has been set up to determine the norms for the second round of privatisation. Five of its 10 members represent the Government, which is always assumed to know what is best for the public. There is one broadcaster, a man known for his golden voice. There is a lawyer from a Delhi firm and there are three representatives of industry associations including Kiran Karnik, whose background has largely been in public service broadcasting.
The terms of reference include determining a transparent and effective bidding/auction process, coming up with a viable licence fee structure for the various cities, deciding on whether there should be foreign equity participation in private FM, and looking at the legal implications of having a different licensing regime for phase-II. In other words, if you heed the failures of phase one and recommend revenue sharing as a model instead of a hefty licence fee, the first round licensees who have been denied revenue sharing may have to be mollified.
Bringing up the rear in the terms of reference are various matters related to content. "Suggestions for improvement in content being broadcast and considering the inclusion of news". The committee is also expected to examine the possibility of having non-commercial, non-advertisement driven channels, "to be operated/licenced by the same commercial broadcasters; terms & conditions thereof." That is officialese for saying that they are making the mandatory bow to non-commercial programming, but note that it is only open to the same commercial broadcasters. The terms of reference of the task force do not include looking at incentives to be offered to non-commercial agencies wanting to run public service channels on the available frequencies.
The problem with this approach is that bidding and auctioning continues to remain central to the allocation of frequencies, ignoring thereby the range of possibilities that radio offers a country like India. Essentially, radio frequencies will once again be hawked, when the medium could, with a little imagination and not much money, be many things to many people.
Making money and a fear of broadcasting freedom are the two imperatives which govern radio policy. Last year, the Government decided it would be brave and open up community radio, a local medium widely utilised the world over, both in democracies and in repressive government regimes. The scheme was notified a year ago, and educational institutions were made solely eligible. That is like saying, here is a programme meant for rural folk but only those with city addresses can apply. Result? A year has passed, 25 applications have come in, the number of licences given is zero. Commercial aspirants for radio licences require clearances from the Ministry of Home Affairs, those applying for community radio require clearances from five ministries, including home, defence and one department. So Mr. Murdoch acquires FM radio licences in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai through a shell company. A panchayat would not even be eligible to apply.
A country besotted with television is not particularly concerned about this state of affairs, and those who represent the people are both ignorant of possibilities and paranoid. Parliament questions are only asked about loss of revenue and security implications. Here's a gem from the first round of privatisation: "(a) Whether some new companies are entering FM radio services; (b) Whether some apprehension has been expressed that some of these new companies have links with Pakistani intelligence outfit, ISI or Afghan and Islamic Fundamentalists ... (d) Whether there is any proposal to scrutinise the credentials of these companies through the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) etc?" Meanwhile Nepal, which lives with a Maoist insurgency, has gone right ahead with dozens of community radio stations.
The Government is paranoid, and greedy for revenues, plus it hogs existing public resources. Today All India Radio's local stations take up 80 FM frequencies for which they only able to generate two to three hours of programming every day. Second, by restricting the debate to FM policy makers have begun to act as if Medium Wave (MW) is obsolete, though it offers wider coverage than FM and there is considerable MW spectrum unutilised in the country. Most of the 125 million radio sets in India are MW/Short Wave (SW).
Finally, regional media is thriving on TV, satellite language channels are catering to polyglot populations in various parts of the country. But can you live in Delhi, Mumbai or Kanpur and listen to Kannada, Tamil, Punjabi or Marathi programmes on radio? You cannot. Says something for how much of a non-starter India's radio revolution is.
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