Licence raja

He may be a Jaipal-come-lately to Congress ranks, but the Union minister of information and broadcasting is raring to take us all back to the good old Congress days of the licence raj. He now wants consumers to cough up an annual fee, or a licence fee every time we buy a radio or TV set, in order to fund that gargantuan and bloated empire called Prasar Bharati with a staff strength running into several thousands 8212; more than that of all the private cable networks put together, possibly.

The suggestion is outrageous. Let us count the reasons why this is the case. One, Prasar Bharati is an eminently flawed institution. In his last avatar as I038;B minister in the I.K. Gujral government, Jaipal Reddy had hurriedly tried to pack its board with his cronies. But all the minister8217;s horses and all the minister8217;s men could not get Prasar Bharati going, unfortunately. Two, the broadcasting scenario has been transformed since that era, with innumerable national, state and local cable networks vying for eyeballs. Doordarshan is looking more and more like a dead duck amidst this frenetic competition. Three, instead of squeezing the consumer for funds to keep it alive, Reddy should be looking for ways to divest in Prasar Bharati. Four, as for the argument that the minister wishes to make the organisation another BBC, well, it certainly strains credulity. There is no way the average Indian politician will allow either Doordarshan or Akashvani the kind of freedom and professional autonomy that has marked the functioning of the Beeb. Five, the UPA government is already getting a bad reputation for its tax-and-waste ways and the I038;B minister8217;s proposal will only end up confirming it.

Given all this, the minister of information and broadcasting would be better occupied in attending to such weighty matters as sorting out the DTH versus CAS versus Cable Operators mess. If he cannot achieve even this, we would suggest that he seriously consider improving the scenario by switching himself and his ministry off.