Long-term headaches

Whether or not, Mr Jaitley will be as good to the media as the media has been kind to him, he deserves a longer tenure than his immediate predecessors. Theirs were brief; sensing time was short and they had work to do, each of them hastily initiated a process none could complete. Result? A bewildering array of chess moves which have ended in a stalemate.

Mr.Reddy belonged to the old school of the Emergency era which believed in autonomy8217;. He resurrected the Prasar Bharati Act, granting autonomy to AIR/Doordarshan and departed with a smug smile of satisfaction.Mrs.Sushma Swaraj had her own ideas: she declared cinema an industry, she appointed a woman chairperson of the Film Censor Board Asha Parekh. She also took a strong dislike to liquor advertising and the CEO of Prasar B, S.S.Gill. She liked the idea of strong parliamentary supervision of the Prasar Board and swore to amend its Bill.

Thus, she allowed Reddy8217;s ordinance promulgating Prasar Bharati to lapse, which automatically disqualified Gill. And while she persuaded the liquor industry and TV channels to reduce the alcoholic content of their ads not drinks!, she was transferred back to Delhi state politics before she could amend the Prasar Bharati Act 8212; or fill vacancies on its Board, including a CEO.

Mr.Mahajan8217;s agenda was different: he wished to banish Prasar Bharati altogether; he wanted AIR/DD under direct government control. His simple logic was almost Mrs.Gandhian: GOI paid DD8217;s bills, so it ought to decide how it spent the money; competition from private TV channels had made DD/AIR autonomous8217;, credible in its news coverage, so why have Prasar B at all?Simultaneously, Mahajan launched a sports and a news channel. Well-meaning. However, these have increased DD8217;s financial losses 8212; the very rot he wished to stem. Mahajan departed with the future of these channels and Prasar Bharati in limbo, DTH TV neither here nor there and a Broadcast Bill which has existed on paper longer than the three ministers put together. Widely divergent aims and actions, a hotch-potch which looks so much like other people8217;s mess. No where in Mr.Jaitley8217;s job profile did it say anything about cleaning up other people8217;s you-know-what. But that is what he has to do. His experience in media litigation, should help him.

Does he believe in AIR/DD autonomy, Prasar Bharati? Or in a Broadcast Bill which seeks to regulate the broadcast industry? Jaitley needs to take a long view. A vision thing8217; for broadcasting in the next century. He must invent the government8217;s approach to autonomy for AIR/DD; the broadcasting industry and how we want them to grow, what we expect of them. Do we want expect them to first entertain us, inform us and then educate us or the other way round? And how, if at all, can we make them do what we want? By regulation? By incentives?

Information and broadcasting technology is creating a convergence within the media: print and electronic are meeting on the web and each is becoming the other and a new beast too. It requires vision to balance the consequences of this convergence with regulation in the public interest. Especially, where the content of the media is concerned.

Is regulation possible, even desirable? Or is it being rendered obsolete by the very technology it seeks to regulate? Media proliferates, grows, changes hands; new channels come, old ones go, digital technology offers more. All, without the Government. Technical matters such as bandwidths, spectrum allocation simply require a technical committee across ministries of Iamp;B, information technology, electronics, the department of space. So what, if anything, will a Broadcast Policy do? Can it guideline the content of media? How? Can it advance the growth of the industry? How? Or is the Broadcast Bill and the Prasar Bharati Act, policies whose time has come 8212; and gone?

Maybe, Mr.Jaitley should concentrate on revitalising AIR and DD.