India: Unseemly rush to accommodate predatory media barons

New Delhi, Feb 4 (IPS/Dev Raj) -- A rush to allow direct-to-home (DTH) satellite-TV broadcasting has earned the right-wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government charges of bending over backwards to accommodate predatory media barons like Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch has been trying to get DTH broadcasting into the lucrative Indian market since 1996 but was thwarted by the left-leaning, United Front government which banned the new technology pending legislation for a regulatory authority.

But, last December, prospects mysteriously brightened up for Murdoch with the government's Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan holding high-level consultations to have the ban lifted through an ordinance.

Mahajan's first problem was that the coalition government has been sitting over a comprehensive Broadcasting Bill finding convenient the obsolete and ineffective rules it fought against till it came to power 11 months ago.

So he found a solution in 'technology convergence' and decided that DTH has more to do with the new liberalised policy on Information Technology rather than the thorny area of broadcasting legislation.

Besides, Parliament can be skirted through ordinances, a route the BJP-led coalition of 19 parties enjoying a razor-thin majority has taken frequent recourse to of late.

That left the meddlesome political parties, some of which blandly accused the government of having been 'greased' by media barons to not only lift the ban on DTH but also allow them hundred percent equity.

In a statement, the Left Front accused the BJP of making 'clandestine moves' to allow entry of DTH players with hundred percent foreign equity when existing law restricts the right to disseminate news and views in this country to Indian nationals.

"The decision (by the BJP) is being taken either under pressure from foreign media moghuls or because the palms of certain decision makers have been greased by them," the statement said.

The Left Front, which currently rules the states of West Bengal, southern Kerala and north-eastern Tripura was a partner in the United Front government which introduced the ill-fated, Broadcasting Bill envisaging a regulatory authority.

"A vital decision like entry of DTH into India can only be made by Parliament since national interests like security are involved," said Jaipal Reddy, information and broadcasting minister in the previous
United Front government.

Reddy said he was not against DTH technology because "India cannot resist the technology wave any more than King Canute could order sea waves to recede." But every country has a quasi-judicial mechanism to regulate broadcasting, he added.

The BJP now finds itself drawing flak not only from left-wing, parties in the Opposition but also from elements within the government which take pride in being ultra-nationalistic and concerned with 'Indian values and culture'.

According to Balachandra Pillai of the 'Save India Society', a pro-BJP think-tank, the danger from DTH services emanates from the fact that signals can be encrypted to carry seditious and or offensive material and threatens sovereignty and security.

"A DTH service operates outside national laws and this is the reason why even advanced countries like France follow prohibitive or restrictive policies with regard to encrypted television services," he
said.

But the biggest protests are coming from the 60,000-odd cable-TV operators in this country whose services, built up over the last decade, are now directly threatened by DTH satellite broadcasting.

Rakesh Datta, general secretary of the Delhi-based Cable Networks Association (CNA) accuses Information Minister Mahajan of acting to favour Murdoch's Star-TV and the rivaling Zee-TV owned by Subhas Chandra, an expatriate Indian reckoned as one of the richest men in the United Kingdom.

"If satellite broadcasters like Star and Zee are allowed to launch DTH services they would have an unfair advantage over cable operators and form gigantic media cartels which would control both content creation and distribution," Datta said.

According to Datta, such a situation is a violation of a 1995 Supreme Court ruling requiring that air waves be made free and not monopolised by any entity including the government.

Datta also pointed out that DTH stood in opposition to stated IT-policy that cable operators should provide 'last mile connectivity', for a range of services including telephone, Internet, data and other
value-added services.

According to Mahajan cable operators are already a doomed species across the world. "Besides cable operators have a different clientele from satellite broadcasters and I cannot punish one for the other," he told reporters.

For now, the final decision on DTH has been taken out of Mahajan's hands and given by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to a five-man group of ministers which will present its report by the middle of the month.

But with Parliament due to convene for the Budget session on Feb. 22, the BJP will have to be really brazen or driven to avoid honest legislation.