[cr-india] Road Ahead - column by Sevanti Ninan

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For those who missed it, here's Sevanti Ninan's column in The Hindu, dated Sunday, 6 June 2004.
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ROAD AHEAD
Sevanti Ninan

IF ministries were scrutinised for productivity and performance as much as public sector units are, the one that goes by the name of Information and Broadcasting might have some explaining to do. Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, particularly during Sushma Swaraj's tenure, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's custodians staunchly resisted being downsized in accordance with the Geetakrishnan Committee's recommendations. But their record was not particularly illustrious. They bungled implementation of the conditional access system, brought in a stop-gap regulator without having regulation in place for it to implement, deferred a decision on how to take FM radio's licensing regime forward, introduced a hamstrung community radio initiative which turned out to be a non-starter, and failed, despite the Press Information Bureau and DD News's best efforts, to even get themselves re-elected. 

On the flip side, they did change policy with regard to Foreign Direct Investment in the print media, and gave Murli Manohar Joshi competition in saffronising units under their charge. The BJP's men and women in the media were elevated to chairmanships of the institutions the ministry runs, put on selection committees, and given Rajya Sabha berths, but Mr. Jaipal Reddy cannot complain. He started the trend of elevating buddies and fellow travellers when he operationalised Prasar Bharati in 1997, even amending the Act by ordinance to enable an overage person of his government's choice to become the CEO. 

What do mature democracies with a burgeoning private sector media need an information and broadcasting ministry for? You could argue that a largely rural, poor society could have media needs which the private sector will not find profitable to meet. But how well is Prasar Bharati, which costs Rs. 5 crore a day, meeting these needs? We have a satellite kisan channel, a terrestrial kisan channel, and Krishi Darshan. Have they revolutionised Indian agriculture? There is an educational channel. An audit of their performance and budgets might be a good idea if we want these initiatives to get somewhere. May be Mr. Chidambaram should ask for one before he allocates another Rs. 2,000 crores for Prasar Bharati this year. 

A ministry might be needed to formulate media policy, but if it is doing this persuasively, it should not take eight years to get broadcasting regulation in place, and then still not have it. A committee was also appointed to make recommendations on FM radio licensing but after its labours ended there is deep silence on the subject. The Ministry maintains a Press Council to keep the print media on the straight and narrow, but the leading English language media house in the country is making media history by selling its news space for hefty sums. In any other society there would be outrage. Here there is none. Tax payers are not asking why they fund the Press Council if it cannot make newspapers stick to basic ethical norms. 

When Mr. Reddy was last in Shastri Bhavan, the media universe was a little different and Prasar Bharati loomed large on his list of priorities. Decision making will be rather more complex this time around. There is now a regulator in the picture, since the last government asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to take up broadcasting issues as well. FM Radio was totally in government hands during his earlier tenure, it has been opened up now. Community radio was not a component of the Indian broadcasting scenario then, it is today. Pricing of cable TV channels and addressability of cable TV were not pressing issues before an Information and Broadcasting Minister then, they are now. The only constant is that broadcasting regulation was in the making then, and today it still is. 

The current regulator, TRAI, decided to have hearings on broadcasting last month, shortly before the elections took place. The cable TV industry today is worth Rs. 750 crores from subscriptions alone, assuming 50 million connected homes. Enough lobbies came to the meetings to demonstrate that reconciling the conflicting interests is not going to be easy. But if you put the consumer at the centre of the picture, some kind of well-defined and regulated regime has to established, which also stipulates how much advertising there can be on pay channels. 

On FM radio, the minister has to decide whether to accept the Amit Mitra committee's recommendation that news should be allowed. It has also to decide whether there should be a shift in the licensing regime from license fees to revenue sharing. Both regulator and ministry need to be bear in mind that the licensing policy they come up with should encourage diversity. Currently FM radio channels are clones of each other. 

The I and B ministry's great paranoia over community radio has gradually been worn down by sustained lobbying. There is plenty of broadcasting spectrum available at the community level which has remained unutilised. The ministry has been evolving policy in this respect incrementally. Last month when its bureaucrats sat around a table with community radio advocates from around the country, the joint secretary, broadcasting, who presided actually used language that has not been heard before from the bureaucracy. New models need to be evolved, he said, which rely on the innate sense of decency in communities rather than on overt regulation. 

Given the populist constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the outside support it receives from the Left, Mr. Reddy should be emboldened to implement the radio equivalent of Education for All — jettisoning fears that an insurgent lurks in the neighbourhood of every prospective community radio station. But will he be able to do away with the current requirement that the Home Ministry in Delhi has to clear every single community radio application for a licence? 

Finally, we do need a little more accountability from the private TV channels. Because broadcasting regulation has not come for eight years, the Complaints Council which would have been part of it, has also been held up. Will this Government consider de-linking this council from the Convergence Bill and setting it up? Or will it consider broadening the ambit of consumer laws to cover media? 

Mature democracies with free media do not need ministries of information and broadcasting. They need regulators to set broad rules and see that people play by them. Mr. Reddy's current challenge is to shrink the role of government, facilitate regulation and accountability, and make the regulator a light-handed custodian of broadcasting spectrum. And improve Prasar Bharati. 

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