Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi does not smile much. In fact he does not smile at all. He speaks in a monotonous yet forceful voice. He is a curious choice for a party whose major leaders cry themselves to sleep every night over the plight of people. Singhvi does not appear to have an ounce of compassion in him.Actually Singhvi does his job as the hatchetman quite well. There are not too many people who can claim with a straight face that the proposed Broadcasting Services Regulatory Bill and Draft Content Code is very similar to existing regulations in countries like the US and appear to be fully convinced about it at the same time.
Singhvi comes from the same ideological stable which has provided us with our latest President. There is something chilling about the absolute loyalty they feel for their party and the Gandhi family.
To get a feel for the Draconian nature of the bill, consider this:
1. TV channels and newspapers will have a Government appointed super editor (think of a zealous class monitor in middle school) who will ratify every piece of programming and news.
2. You need prior permission before launching sting operations and need to inform the target.
3. It is strongly suggested that media should not report matters related to political or industrial controversy.
There will be steep fines for violations and even license cancellations.
The implications of this bill is very serious. The likelihood of this bill making it into the law is quite high as well. This is a particularly vulnerable time for the left. They are likely to support the bill. Perhaps a moot point since the lefties are control freaks anyway.
As journalist Nalini Singh pointed out, the channels may have to swallow the bill this time. The reason is simple, there is intense competition between the channels and all of them have made heavy capital investments. Even a temporary license cancellation may wreck their cashflows.
This bill proves the desperation of Congress to win the 2009 elections. They are not leaving anything to chance. Since assuming power all they have done is try and reinforce their vote banks. Many of these moves have backfired. The party has also suffered a series of ill-timed politically inconvenient incidents.
This bill is a harbinger of politically tumultuous times ahead.
2 comments:
Guess what, most top media moguls when they head home have dinner & cocktails with the ruling elite.
They are family, bro.
I guess that leaves bloggers as the only true independent media. Now, that would be truly inconvenient for the MSM. We could then have an unchallenged free run of the internet.
I am willing to bet that any curb on the MSM will be accompanied by crubs on the blogosphere as well.
They cant have it any other way.
There is no doubt about it, check out the Verve magazine, you will see some people partying together that will make your hair stand.
There are too few people in India who read blogs at all. There are clusters of folks who read each others' blogs, mostly on day to day progress of their babies etc.
The blog ban will come back in a big way once they figure out how to block individual pages. This requires an upgrade of technology.
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