First, answer this: What is common between the chief executives of India and Italy except that both of them have to fight an opposition led by an Italian-born? Well, in which other countries besides these does the chief executive have to spend his time figuring out the nuances of cable television channel distribution or ownership structure of media companies? Except, you can understand why it happens in Italy. Silvio Berlusconi happens to own much of the television business there anyway. But why should poor Atal Bihari Vajpayee be made to do this when chances are his holdings in the business may not be more than a colour television set or two? Now, check out these three propositions: One, that the prime minister of India must have a lot of time to spare. Two, that he is a busy man but has decided, in his enormous wisdom, to add cable television to the earlier trinity of essentials for the poor citizen: roti, kapda aur makaan. And, three, that the first two are obviously wrong and that it is just that he is paying for having such a confused and pusillanimous set of people manning his ministry of information and broadcasting. Why else would he be subjected to this humiliation? Given the obvious mixing up of media and business interests it is not simple to unravel this mess even for the sake of this discussion for whatever you say or do, you will have your motives questioned. But let us say we are talking about two different things. One is the entirely ham-handed manner in which this government, and its I&B ministry, have approached the very process of dealing with private sector media, besides slow-poisoning its own Prasar Bharati. The primary reason it has got itself into such an embarrassing jam is that it has attempted to allow a calibrated opening up in the media without having either a reformist conviction or an elementary understanding of how businesses are run. It is just the kind of confusion a Rupert Murdoch would exploit fully and why should he not? He has done this here with a most audacious corporate structure that proves, among other things, that his lawyers are far smarter than Ravi Shankar Prasad (who is a lawyer himself) or his IAS officers, and that when push comes to shove, nobody in this government has the spine to stand up honestly, place his hand on his heart and say, hell, we are making such a blunder that it’s better to say sorry and back-track. The result is, a government which stood up to the whole world after Pokharan-II is now beginning to look worse than that of any banana republic in the manner it is waffling in its current dealings with Murdoch’s Star News venture. Sirajuddaula’s rag-tag army may have done better in comparison against Clive at Plassey. The real argument is not swadeshi versus videshi. It is, instead, our own establishment’s lack of commitment or understanding of reform and free market compounded by a complete lack of spine when it comes to dealing with anybody who comes rattling a little clout and a bit of moolah. The original sin lies in the way this establishment tried to create crude distinctions between privately owned print and electronic media. When print was to be only fully Indian-owned, fully foreign-owned private channels were merrily broadcasting news and nobody raised a question. Then the government decided to allow foreign investment in print but limited it to 26 per cent with a rider that at least one Indian owner had to hold 51 per cent of the stake. Then there were a dozen conditions, some as ludicrous as saying that any FDI had to come from an identifiable individual or strategic partner and not even from a Foreign Institutional Investor (FII). There were other similarly — and ultimately non-enforceable — conditions like a minimum percentage on the board of directors and top executive positions to be Indians. It is no surprise, then, that in the 13 months since this so-called liberalisation not a single Indian print media company has brought in a paisa in FDI. When FDI supporters in print media raised these questions they were told it was just a foot in the door, that the political system was not yet ready for a greater opening up. But it was because of that original sin that now a similarly complicated structure had to be prescribed for television news as well. Except that the 51 per cent Indian shareholder qualification—a must for print—got either forgotten or someone left it out. So the television people, unlike those of us from print, were not burdened by boring, fuddy-duddy ideas like following the law in letter and spirit. Hence you have this curiosity called Media Communication and Content Services Limited (MCCSL) and hence also the plight of this government of self-styled swadeshi tigers who are now reduced to cowering in fear, confusion and indecision and thereby reducing the authority of the Great Indian State to this humiliating phenomenon you could describe as WSWT (Wednesday se Wednesday tak), as it bends over backwards each Tuesday to give Star News another week’s extensio. So spectacular has Murdoch’s march been, and so "smart" his new corporate structuring that much of his competition has already jumped into the swadeshi trenches in sheer panic. The argument that somehow one television news channel owned by Murdoch would subvert us so thoroughly with "foreign cultural influences" may look self-serving but it is actually self-defeating. Because the issue here is not foreign influences. Most of the so-called swadeshi television bouquets too are liberally loaded with foreign content, including 24-hour Hollywood movie channels. The issue here is not even the personalities involved. It is, instead, how brazenly and cynically somebody has taken advantage of so many loopholes our own government has left in the law and how spineless it has been subsequently, unable to plug them or to admit defeat, show generosity, imagination, whatever, and let go of all notions of control and regulation. Make a close study of the structure Star News has created, with an Indian-owned front company to which the brands have been leased while the infrastructure and content are controlled by Murdoch. If this is accepted as precedent, you can kiss the government goodbye. This newspaper group, for example, has been a supporter of FDI in print media. Extending the Star logic, we could get away by thumbing our noses: set up a shell company fully owned by Indians with, maybe, a few lakh rupees in capital, lease our publication titles to it, leave the rest of the infrastructure and content with the parent company and hawk it entirely on Nasdaq. Or wherever. You could also set up an internet company, put all your content resources in it, sell all its shareholding overseas and merely lease out off-line publishing rights to a shell company with majority Indian holding. As unabashed liberalisers and supporters of globalisation and FDI in all sectors, we are not impressed by the swadeshi argument against Murdoch. But what we have consistently argued for is the government as an unbiased regulator since that’s the only way you can ensure a level playing field, for both swadeshi and videshi. In this case, however, the only image that’s being broadcast is of Murdoch rudely kicking the door open because the doorman—the government—either fell asleep at the job. Or got rattled by his persistent knocking. E-mail the Author
