NEW GOVERNMENT SHOWS KEENNESS FOR MARCHING AHEAD

THE National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government got into action last week getting Cabinet approval for three pieces of legislation, the Foreign Exchange Management Bill, the Prevention of Money Laundering Bill, and a derivatives bill. The Cabinet also green-signalled the new telecom policy, which has been hanging fire forthe past six months.

The bills will now be presented to Parliament for voting and passage into law. The government is also believed to have started the process of penning a draft broadcasting bill. A lot of lobbying is going on amongst the various ministries. The department of space says that it should be the one responsible for uplinking or downlinking of any channels and it has been trying to take this authority away from the information and broadcasting and communications ministries.

A US business delegation is scheduled to visit India in order to lobby for a better deal for American companies and broadcasters in mid-November. Hectic behind the scenes groundwork is currently on to ensure that things pass smoothly.

Meanwhile, the NDA government revoked the ban on Pakistan Television, which had been imposed during the peak of the Indo-Pak conflict earlier this year. With the belligerent Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Shariff under house arrest and a new ruler in place in the shape of army chief General Pervez Masharraf, the Indian government says that the PTV ban does not make any sense now.

However, what makes sense to the government is the ban that it has imposed on Russian television channel TB6 because of its pornographic content, as predicted in this newsletter about six months ago. A move is on to ban even FTV, the fashion channel.