Ban that ban

In an age when information about Pakistan is available at the touch of a keyboard, only a government that is yet to come to grips with the information technology ministry would hesitate to lift the ban on Pakistan TV. When it was put in place at the height of the Kargil war, it was supposed to be in the national interest. At least that was the rationale of the very aggressive former Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan. Now, when we have a minister whose fealty to civil liberties is unquestioned 8212; given that he spent 19 months in jail during the Emergency 8212; surely we deserve to know what is happening in Pakistan in the words of its own media. The Minister, Arun Jaitley, has said he has not made up his mind as yet. Perhaps he needs a pointer: the importance that the new Pakistani establishment attaches to PTV was evident in the fact that the first thing the Army did on assuming power was take over the state TV station.

The other pointer is how blocking the website of The Dawn didn8217;twork when Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited tried it during the Kargil war. If that has now been done away with, it is because it is absurd to try to regulate the most unregulated media arena. It is equally absurd to ban Pakistan TV. In Kashmir, where it is most watched, militants have responded by banning cable television altogether, clearly not achieving the purpose for which it was put in place. Instead, the ban has deprived Pakistan-watchers of a valuable source of information, forcing them to rely on secondary sources such as BBC and CNN, which often recycle PTV World broadcasts. If those do not affect the integrity of the nation, as defined by the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act, there is no reason why PTV World will.

In a lighter vein, there is nothing that will warm the cockles of democratic India8217;s heart more than reports of Pakistan8217;s Westernised elite celebrating the end of democracy. Or of General Pervez Musharraf and his extended family preening for the international press. It8217;sinstructive to know that while Pakistan thinks martial law is a means to good governance, India just insists on elections. Also, India8217;s crude attempts to replicate the propaganda of PTV on Doordarshan have not been too successful. Every Thursday, the National Network broadcasts a programme called Pakistan Reporter which provides details of Pakistan-sponsored militancy. It has yet to make an impact. People in Pakistan watch Zee TV though private satellite television is not officially allowed. People in China watch Channel V even though cable is officially banned in that country. People in Eastern Europe now are one of the largest consumers of the imperialist8217; American entertainment industry 8212; so much so that in countries such as the former Czechoslovakia, 90 per cent of the movie theatres run Hollywood movies. Anyone who has followed the reports of foreign correspondents on the Kargil war will find that the ban on independent travel to the areas of operation did not prevent them from writing thetruth as they saw it. Our soldiers won the war in Kargil, propaganda did not. And internal emergency has been promulgated in Pakistan, not in India.