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GUEST COLUMN
"BROADCASTING LEGISLATION"
SCHIZOPHRENIA TO THE FORE AMONGST INDIAN POLICY MAKERS
There's something
especially intriguing about the process of media law
reform as it is now proceeding in India. In a way,
the process of law-making seems frozen, first by a
split as to whether it should be adopted at all and
in what form, second by the rise and fall of sequential
governments. On the other hand, the industry is so
dynamic that the process of institutional or legal
change seems partly irrelevant. Finally, pieces of
the law seem to be in the process of implementation
without benefit of the Lok Sabha.
Fairly interesting, as an example of
this schizophrenia between stasis and change, is the
recent announcement of the possible partial privatisation
of FM radio. This was a subject of the Broadcast Bill
and now is being implemented administratively. What's
particularly startling, here is the administrative
innovation - not contained in the proposed law - that
would protect state-owned broadcaster All India Radio's
monopoly and provision of radio news services.
Similarly, the idea of giving Doordarshan
five year initial responsibility for DTH means avoiding
one of the bigger controversial aspects of the Broadcast
Bill. It sidesteps the legislative dilemmas that existed
within the draft broadcast bill-concerning auctions,
licensing and competition in the DTH platform.
The working out of uplinking, in terms
of which entities are prohibited, which compelled
and which permitted to gain access to satellites from
within India is now being worked out aside from legislation.
A final area of interest has to do
with actual on-the-ground growth, as opposed to legislative
or regulatory initiative. The extraordinary example
of this involves cable television. Here, the India
experience mirrors what has occurred in many societies.
The industry grows without the benefit (or burden)
of regulation and legislation. At some point, there
are so many users of cable television, and they are
so influential, that the government or the legislature's
alternatives are highly restricted. Law, then, can
only ride the roller-coaster of actual industry practice
rather than guide, restrict and shape it.
It is, therefore, hard to believe that
legislation would be enacted that would require basic
restructuring within the industry, unless the industry
saw such change in its interest (as, for example,
guaranteeing stability or restricting entry by competitors).
Issues that might be addressed (but probably won't)
include whether the existing structure of retailers
and wholesalers of cable service should be maintained.
An alternative is letting vertical integration proceed.
Another area involves what restrictions there should
be to prevent cable operators from discriminating
against programming services in which they have no
economic interest.
When the Broadcast Bill is taken up
after the elections, the landscape against which it
will be considered may be far different, then, from
what it was in 1997. Facts have changed, in terms
of the profile of the industry. Competition to gain
certain leverage for certain provisions, such as DTH,
may have abated. Patterns of practice, as in the proposed
licensing of FM Radio, may then be adopted into law.
Indeed, a Broadcast Bill may be most
easily passed when the areas of greatest controversy
have been removed either through the development of
industry practices or the implementation of administrative
measures.
Monroe Price
The writer is co-director of the Oxford University
Programme on Comparative Media Law and Policy.
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