continued: "Localizing the Global in India: New Imperatives for International Communication Scholarship in the Satellite Era" by Aashish Kumar
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Who shall be the umpire?

In a landmark judgment (Union of India vs. Cricket Association of Bengal, 1995) echoing the 1934 Communication Act in the United States, Supreme Court judges ruled that “airwaves constitute public property and must be utilized for advancing public good” (Chatterjee 1997). A ringing endorsement of the “rights of the listeners and the viewers,” the judgment threw open the gates for a larger debate on the democratization of electronic media.

The Indian Supreme Court categorically stated that “diversity of opinions, views, ideas and ideologies...cannot be provided by a medium controlled by a monopoly...whether the monopoly is of the state or any other individual, group or organization” (FIFV 1996). Further, it stated that the “broadcasting media should be under the control of the public as distinct from the government” (emphasis mine). In one stroke, the judgment called for autonomy for India’s state-controlled media, and the setting up of an independent referee to regulate all broadcasters.

The Indian judiciary had set the stage for the legislative arm to put the country’s broadcasting industry within a broad philosophical framework pertaining to free speech and diversity of views. Instead, the Union cabinet chose to continue along its reactive vein, obsessed with regulating technology. Out of the laborious deliberations of the parliamentary subcommittee emerged a draft document dominated by issues such as “mandatory uplinking,” “foreign equity,” “prohibition of exclusive rights for live broadcasting,” “DTH licensing,” and “cross-media restrictions” (IPAN 1997a).

The Broadcast Bill, currently in the stage of its legislative passage, proposes sweeping restrictions on foreign players. One of its foremost aims is to set up a Broadcasting Authority of India and make it the apex regulatory body in the country. The BAI, it is proposed, would issue licenses only to companies in which foreign equity did not exceed 49%. Licenses would be given for terrestrial and satellite radio and TV, DTH (direct-to-home) TV, and cable.

The foreign equity cap meant that channels like STAR, Sony, MTV, Discovery and other channels with dominant foreign holdings had to find Indian partners and “hand over majority control (51%) to them” (Agarwal 1997). Foreign satellite broadcasting could continue unlicensed so long as it (a) remained free-to-air (b) carried limited-duration advertising or (c) carried sports or international news and current affairs programming only (IPAN 1997a).

Further, with the bill becoming an act in its proposed form, all licensed channels would have to uplink from India. Given the fact that the legislation came in the sixth year of satellite broadcasting, companies that had locked themselves into arrangements with nearby countries like Hong Kong and Singapore would now have to invest in brand-new uplinking facilities from India. Remarked Kiran Karnik (1997) of Discovery Communication: “this is an economic issue really, it’s not a matter of great policy or philosophy.” Siddharth Ray (1997) offering a dissenting view, opined that “in the long term, if you are going to make money out of this market, the market has a right to demand some investment....” An upside of the proposal is the possibility of live-event coverage and live news broadcasts for satellite channels.

Severe restrictions have been proposed in the granting of inter-category broadcasting licenses, rendering STAR’s DTH plans redundant, as it could no longer be a free-to-air satellite provider and a DTH player. There are cross-media curbs proposed, barring newspapers with more than 20% interest in a broadcasting concern from applying for a license.

While the attempt to arrive at some form of regulation has been lauded by most, widespread criticism has greeted the Broadcast Bill in its proposed form. Raging debate over key provisions relating to limits on foreign equity, uplinking requirements and inter-category limitations have clouded the larger issues set forth in the Supreme Court judgment. According to Raghav Behl (1997), managing director of the leading production house TV-18: “The Broadcast Bill is a document which has been much maligned. It is a document that has gotten lost in agendas that have very little to do with broadcasting.”

Others have questioned the locus standi of the Indian government in the regulatory process. “At the moment,” says Karnik of Discovery Communications, “the government or the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is both referee and player, which is quite crazy.” Ideally, he adds, the government should have legislated itself out of the refereeing process by issuing broad guidelines, setting up the Broadcast Authority of India, and letting it shape the regulatory framework independent of the government.

Along with prompting the formulation of the Broadcast Bill, the Supreme Court judgment had also forced the government to resurrect a 1990 act relating to autonomy for state-controlled electronic media (Doordarshan and All India Radio). Through the efforts of a liberal Information and Broadcasting minister the act was finally notified in the Gazette (all acts of the parliament must be notified in the Gazette before attaining full stature as acts) on June 22, 1997, seven years after it was passed by the Parliament (IPAN 1997). The act would place the erstwhile government-controlled TV and radio under a Broadcasting Corporation of India to be governed by an independent board.

Together, the Broadcast Bill and the Prasar Bharati Act constitute India’s response to the growing demands for regulation and autonomy. In order to understand the anomalies within this response, it is important to understand the fractured political alliances within the Indian government. Since the last mid-term elections held in 1995, in which no party emerged with a clear majority to form the government, a pragmatic coalition of left and centrist parties has governed India. Certain sections of the coalition have expressed grudging to unconditional support for private broadcasting (whether domestic or foreign). However, the Left has held that "public good...would be scarcely served by private broadcasting (which) would be bound to be motivated by profit” (Swami 1997). The “Murdochites,” charges Sashi Kumar, “cleverly confuse globalization with economic liberalization,” often disguising their support for the latter as “advocacy of a free information regime” (Kumar 1997).

The dream of the “global village”

India stands at the crossroads of choice-making in the new universe of technologies. Having erupted from a single-channel, government-controlled monopoly of the airwaves into a thirty-channel cornucopia over a two-year period, it must now become a savvy regulator of its spectrum. From among the hordes of opinion-wielders, lobbyists, and power-brokers it must discern the ones most appropriate for its unique and complex citizenry. The task is no easy one for a young democracy with an unstable political center. Objectives are defined, redefined, and finally rendered unrecognizable by successive changes of government, shifting coalitions, or confusing diktats from the powers-that-be. All this while, the expanding global powers lobby for loosening controls and opening the market, practicing advocacy-by-proxy for the choice-deprived Indian consumer.

What are the cultural imperatives unique to the understanding and shaping of India’s broadcasting future? For one, according to the author, a contextual assessment of the peculiar “information needs” and “information sensibilities” should moderate all pronouncements favoring a “consumer-take-all” approach. The critique of the proposed “global information society” can only benefit from a ground-up approach which favors the information “user” as opposed to the “provider.”

Media conglomerates are putting their versions of “audience research” in place, as is evidenced by the setting up of a joint-venture between Indian Market Research Bureau and A C Nielsen for a “people meter based rating system” (IPAN 1997). To what extent this unquestioned transposition of quantitative measurement systems will be able to assess the “information” vacuum in the Indian home remains to be seen.

In discussions of a burgeoning urban middle-class of 250 million, the profile of a nation with 48% illiteracy; three-quarters of the population living in rural areas; and agriculture providing the main mode of sustenance for 65% of the population is neglected (figures from Statistical Outline of India, 1996-97). The selective use of statistics to drive the agenda for an “information revolution” serves the purposes of the global merchant. The challenge before the international communication scholar is to enrich the understanding of the culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse information industry in countries like India.

The electronic media in countries like the United States have fulfilled market functions from their very inception. While progressive deregulation has now placed the broadcasting industry at the confluence of traditionally discrete spheres of telecommunication and computer-aided communication, there has been a concomitant deepening of concern for the user. Witness the creation of the V-chip, the new ratings system for networks and cable, and the plethora of filtering software to aid parents in shielding the young from pornography and other inappropriate content available on the World Wide Web. The enrichment of the individual user’s information resources enabling him/her to identify “usable,” “unusable,” or “useless” information has evolved alongside the industry responsible for providing that content.

Addressing the Pre-Conference Symposium on Southern Country Interests organized by the International Institute of Communication, David Nostbakken (1994), executive director of WETV, offered a skeptical prognosis: “So before we accept that technologies of information and communication will bring positive change, we need to consider the social, cultural, and political context into which the technologies are being introduced. Then, we must determine the kinds of actions that help to translate the improvements in communicative capacities and facilities into actual improvements in living conditions.”

“When the delivery systems of the future are constructed and bandwidth becomes a commodity,” wrote an analyst of European television, “power will shift to those who can create enticing things to fill it” (Jacoby 1994). In the preceding pages the author has described the creation of just such a delivery system in India. As legislators, global conglomerates, and domestic media entrepreneurs struggle with evolving a regulatory framework which will allow a new democracy of the airwaves, the communication scholar must address the challenge of localizing the search for the user of information. As the profile of this user is defined and refined, so shall the power of meaningful content in the new information age become decisive. After all, as Thoreau pointed out in Walden, the consequences of doing otherwise are appalling: “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.” TBS

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Information on a documentary titled “Serial for Breakfast,” produced in conjunction with this paper, by Aashish Kumar and Abha Adhiya