My piece in today’s Wall Street Journal Asia on the Broadcasting Bill here (subscription required).

I have reproduced the piece below.

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When Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty, the star of Britain’s “Big Brother” program last year, India’s moral police professed shock, and many called for media censorship. What they didn’t say was that New Delhi’s policy makers were already well on their way to doing just that.

This November, India’s parliament will consider the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, the country’s most sweeping attempt yet to infringe on free speech. The proposed law is the result of a Supreme Court decision that came down in 1995, when the court mediated a dispute over telecasting rights of a live cricket match. The justices deemed India’s airwaves a scarce resource and “public property” which should not be monopolized by the government or private broadcasters but regulated for national interest. It recommended that New Delhi create an independent statutory body — an oxymoron in itself — to act as the custodian of airwaves.

That bill ignores decades of evidence that government control over the airwaves just doesn’t work in a democracy. Britain may have created the British Broadcasting Service in 1922, ostensibly an independent body to regulate media, but it was later stripped of that role and the British media market opened to competition. The United States created the Federal Communications Act of 1934 to monitor against private monopolies and also regulate content and coverage in public interest. This relic has also undergone dilution over the years and given way to the somewhat less restrictive Telecommunications Act of 1996.

No matter; the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting intends to replicate their peers’ mistakes decades later. The Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill 2007 sets out a comprehensive policy on broadcasting that is concerned with both carriage and content. It proposes to set up the Broadcasting Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) which will ostensibly be an independent authority; establish an independent content code; and develop the system for censorship and certification.

If the bill passes — which is likely under a left-leaning Congress Party coalition — the government’s powers will be greatly extended. The legislation prohibits any person from broadcasting any channel or program without a license from an authority designated by the government. The proposed agency isn’t really an independent authority and would be run by bureaucrats handpicked by the government. Thus the government would be able to arm-twist the media through the BRAI medium of licensing and registration, which allows it to mandate content as well as impose severe penalties on unlicensed broadcasters. The bill requires all shows to be broadcast only if they are in the greatest interest of the general public — a judgment that will be made in New Delhi.

Policy makers also propose to free ride off of the profitable parts of the private sector. The bill makes it mandatory for every cable or satellite service to provide two government-owned channels: “Doordarshan,” the long-running national government broadcaster, and one regional channel for the respective state government. The government also proposes to force private broadcasters to share live telecasting rights of any sporting event of national importance with the state-owned channels.

Just in case anyone objects to these repressive rules, the bill requires every channel to register with the BRAI — which may refuse registration if it is of the considered opinion that the content of the channel is likely to “threaten the security and integrity of the State,” “threaten peace and harmony or public order,” or “threaten relations with foreign countries.” The central government has also reserved the power to prevent a broadcast or revoke the license of a broadcaster in case of external threat or in “exceptional circumstances.” In a pluralistic democracy like India, which has every conceivable kind of moral and religious police, whose ideas of what’s proper would prevail?

The man best positioned to answer these questions is the minister for information and broadcasting, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, who is responsible for this legislation. After the Gere-Shetty kiss was aired, Mr. Dasmunshi declared that he felt the media had been “irresponsible” for showing the image many times over, offending sensitivities with “frivolous news”; thus making a case for stringent regulation of news channels. So would Mr. Gere’s affectionate embrace of Ms. Shetty be deemed an “exceptional circumstance”?

While the minister’s views are cause for alarm, they pale in comparison to the “content code” drafted by the ministry. The code stipulates, for example, that broadcasters shall not present the figure of a woman as mere “sexual objects.” Noble as the idea may be, it’s scarcely a good reason for censoring the press, especially when pornographic material is already banned in its entirety. Similarly, the code prevents broadcasters from distorting religious symbols or practices in a derogatory manner.

The government has called the code a “roadmap for self regulation” whereby the broadcasters will follow the guidelines and manage their content accordingly. But the government’s track record in regulating content doesn’t inspire confidence.

This July the government banned an underwear advertisement for being vulgar and suggestive; oddly enough, no one was wearing underwear or appearing nude and it only showed a woman doing her husband’s laundry. In January, the Ministry banned AXN, a cable network, for two months for airing a show called World’s Sexiest Commercials. In May, the same policy makers banned Fashion TV, another cable channel, for a show called Midnight Hot, on grounds that it violated public decency.

Both shows were aired after 11 p.m. and the channels are considered mainstream everywhere else in the free world. But Mr. Dasmunshi responded to criticism of the bans by saying, “If out of 75 complaints we banned only two channels, why the hue and cry?”

The larger design of this government is to control political free speech. This legislation, if passed, will come down heavily on channels conducting “sting operations” to expose corrupt government officials or scams. This seems ominous given the ban last week on Live India for conducting a “fake” sting operation exposing an alleged prostitution racket. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting banned the channel for a month as it aired material which “incited violence and contained content against maintenance of law and order.”

Media censorship was seen last during the 1970s, when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency rule. The suspension of all civil and political rights soon followed, as well as political censorship. It was the only dictatorship that modern India has ever witnessed. While this legislation cannot be compared with the Emergency, the agenda to control free speech is alarmingly similar.

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Ms. Rajagopalan is a lawyer based in New Delhi.

Canadian published turns fantasies into fiction.

“Canada-based Book By You says it sells thousands of personalised romance novels each year with titles such as ER Fever and Pirates of Desire, where the reader is the star. It is not Bronte, but customers are going crazy for novels that make them the main characters.

Customers answer 20 to 30 questions about themselves and their beloved, ranging from body type to pet names. Then the details are woven into one of the company’s eight pre-formatted novels. Clients can even have their photos added to the book jacket.

One customer had a marriage proposal included at the end - for $44.79, plus shipping and handling.”

The whole story here. Link via MR.

It is interesting that 3196 children were reportedly in 2004 and the number increased to 3500 in 2005. In the newspapers I have noticed pictures from time to time and in newspapers of missing persons and also news of kidnappings across states in India.

Rarely have I seen such a focussed attempt on part of the media to find a child. And I think Anant’s chances of being kept alive are greater just because he is the son of the Adobe CEO. Currently there are six teams of UP police conducting raids across the state.

We all know this doesn’t happen often. Only high profile cases like Jessica Lal have hope of getting serious media attention and now Anant.

I honestly don’t blame them. Journalists are after all human beings who carry the baggage of their backgrounds; and problems of South Delhi and Noida where they reside must worry them more than certain others.

Nor do I have a problem with only Anant getting the media coverage; they are running the story because their viewers (middle class and affluent Delhites) are outraged by it.

However, I wonder if they are probably unknowingly endangering the lives of middle class children and children of parents in important positions as the kidnappers can get a larger ranson along with their 15 minutes of fame.