Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The Tata8217;s ability to convince the heaviest hitter on their board, Nusli Wadia, to arbitrate in office ensured the intervening of a man who usually worries only about terrorism, Home Minister L.K. Advani, with a rather heavy hand, in the proxy battle around VSNL. Nusli has always maintained a close proximity to Advani over the years, but he has rarely used it to sort out his corporate matters. But this was clearly a different kind of an issue. The Tatas felt that the VSNL controversy had billowed out of control simply on account of two high-profile ministers having slammed it out in public and dragging what was essentially a corporate controversy into public arena. They were particularly piqued, that behind the attack on their ethics, morals and processes, was the hand of a corporate rival. The Home Minister may be a bit miffed that the Tatas feel that he has done only part of their work. Tarun Das from CII has now been called in to reinforce the salvage team. For the moment Tatas may be allowed to get away with a mere rap on their knuckles. Bombay House is figuring out how to cope with the longer-term damage to the fair game of the house of Tatas. For those of you who are wondering when the blame game will start, the news is that it has already started. Some big boys at Bombay House are hinting that a rather impetuous Johnny-come-lately to the Tata fold is responsible for this mess. A special prize for anyone who can guess what happens to him next.
Spurred by the spurious
Freedom
to choose
Subroto Roy, the chief of Sahara who has free-to-air channels, is the most active supporter of the Conditional Access System for TV viewer. The original act has already received the Lok Sabha8217;s nod much to the relief of Roy and his ilk. Roy perceive the CAS regime as a win-win situation for all8212;the subscriber pays for what he wants to watch, the cable operator gets an assured income and the broadcasters would not crib about under-declaration by cable operators. But in the process, Sumit Roy conveniently ignores the contention of some of the fellow pay channel broadcasters, including Star India who might lose out on selling their bouquet of channels to the subscriber. The Indian Broadcasters8217; Foundation has however not favoured CAS and has voiced its negative opinions. Sahara though a part of this broadcasting community does not endorse the views embraced by IBF. The Sahara tycoon insists that his team was not even unaware of the IBF meet on CAS and so, his opinions could not be voiced. But IBF insists that Sahara was represented in this meeting. But Sahara is not waiting for this dust to settle. Instead he is getting aggressive with his plans to launch more channels. May be he knows something other players don8217;t.
Dilip Cherian, runs a public affairs firm Perfect Relations. He is an economy watcher and tycoon tracker . None of the people he writes about are his clients. Your insider tales are welcome at dilipcheriannow-india.net.in
