Ethical Cleansing Or Chunnel Vision?

SUSHMA Swaraj is determined to leave a lasting imprint on India's entertainment scene. Barely two months into her second stint as information and broadcasting minister—the first one lasted merely 13 days—the lady has declared war on many crucial fronts. On Prasar Bharati CEO S.S. Gill's 'arbitrary' ways. On the 'foreign' news channels (Star News, Zee India) that have stolen a march over their swadeshi competitors. On 'obscene' ads aired by 'irresponsible' satellite channels. On vulgarity in films. And, last but not least, on the dubious sources of film financing that have had the industry in a vice-like grip for years.

 No I&B minister has been as active as Sushma Swaraj. Certainly not since Vidya Charan Shukla of the dark days of the Emergency. To be fair, we are not exactly hurtling headlong towards another Emergency-type clampdown on the media. But Sushma Swaraj clearly has a hardline agenda to push. It centres on the need to uphold 'Indian culture', that intangible yet surefire formula every self-styled moral guardian hits upon with unfailing accuracy.

PRASAR BHARATI: WHERE THERE'S A GILL...

So you thought Gill was her prime target? No way, insists the firebrand minister. "The Prasar Bharati Act was implemented in an amended form, rendering the board completely unaccountable to Parliament," she says. Hence the need to revive the original Act, which provides for a 22-member parliamentary committee to keep a vigil on the board's activities, besides a Broadcast Council to respond to complaints against DD and AIR from viewers and other parties that may have reason to be aggrieved.

But won't that dilute the board's autonomy? Not at all, asserts Swaraj, Prasar Bharati will be accountable to Parliament, not to the government. Not everybody is convinced, though. Least of all S. Jaipal Reddy, former I&B minister. Says the man responsible for retrieving the Prasar Bharati Act from cold storage on July 22, 1997: "The government is clearly reluctant to let go of Prasar Bharati. My greatest worry is that an RSS man may be installed as CEO." Instead of augmenting media autonomy, the BJP-led government is out to tighten its grip on Prasar Bharati, Reddy alleges.

Though Swaraj is confident her Bill to revive the old Prasar Bharati Act will be passed with little opposition, observers warn that the BJP does not have the requisite numbers in the Rajya Sabha. That is perhaps what Gill is banking on. "I will go only if Parliament wants me to. Not otherwise," says the 71-year-old ex-bureaucrat who has been a cat among the Mandi House pigeons from the day he slipped into the hot seat in late November. The air of uncertainty created by the government vs Gill face-off has taken its toll on Prasar Bharati. "It's a continuing state of lame duckism. No meaningful work can be done in such an atmosphere," says a senior DD official.

UPLINKING: BE INDIAN, BY INDIANS

Sushma Swaraj has made no formal public pronouncement on the matter yet, but she is no admirer of Star News and Zee India, both owned by Rupert Murdoch, one fully, the other partly. Therefore, making the most of the fact that she is also the Union minister for communications, she has 'in principle' decided to grant optional uplinking facilities to all Indian private broadcasters who are in the business of live news, although the Broadcast Bill is still several months away from fruition. In keeping with her swadeshi line of thinking, she wants to give the Indian players a headstart. Says an I&B ministry official: "The idea is to strengthen indigenous news channels before foreign ones are allowed to uplink. " Channels like BITV, Sun, Asianet, Eenadu and Udaya will benefit from the move.

"For some time now, it's been no holds barred for 'delayed' uplinking by some channels," says Sasi Kumar of Asianet. "So, uplink rights for the other broadcasters had to happen." The thinking in the ministry is that uplink permission can be granted through a government order without having to wait for a legislation. So, Indian broadcasters are expected to begin live telecast on a regular basis by the end of June. A few months later, provided the first phase is a success, even the foreign-owned news channels might be granted similar permission. But the government's decision to discriminate against Zee India isn't fair at all, says P.C. Lahiri, vice president, Zee Telefilms. "The offer of optional uplink-ing should have been extended to us as well," he says. "We could have given an affidavit promising to pack up and leave if any future law debars us from operating in India."

Although Lahiri asserts that Zee India is doing well enough to be able to withstand the pressure the latest government move on uplinking will create, he accepts that "the Indian channels will certainly benefit". As will the government itself. Uplinking from Indian soil will save the country foreign exchange.

But some worries still persist among the Indian broadcasters, as well as legal experts. Says Asianet's Sasi Kumar: "The cost of uplinking through VSNL shouldn't be more than what it is in Singapore. VSNL is quoting a very high price, this has to be sorted out before we can opt for uplinking from India." The other worry pertains to the role of the I&B ministry which, in the absence of a regulatory authority, may be tempted to flex its muscles. Says Sasi Kumar: "I hope there won't be any interference."

ADVERTISING CODE: LIQUOR ISN'T ALWAYS QUICKER

If Sushma Swaraj is to be believed, the Great Indian Cultural Ethos has no room for television advertising for alcohol brands, contraceptives, sanitary napkins and underwear. Welcome to a world seen through blinkered Hindutva glasses. Indian families are a hopelessly vulnerable lot and they need the protection of a matronly I&B minister. Hence she is firm on cracking down on what she perceives to be obscene advertising on satellite channels. Her line: "TV is a medium for the family. It should allow nothing that could corrupt impressionable minds." "We are perfectly aware of our responsibility," says a senior executive of a satellite channel. "At our meeting with ministry officials last month, we did point out that we all have a self-regulatory mechanism." In any case, as the minister herself admits, there isn't much the government can do at present because the satellite channels uplink from foreign soil and are, therefore, not governed by the Indian law.

Be that as it may, the satellite broadcasters insist that they do exercise a great deal of restraint. Says Zee's Lahiri: "The volume of our liquor ads is negligible. The ones that we do air are always scheduled well after prime time." Hence he is a trifle baffled that the government is trying to equate the foreign satellite channels with Doordarshan. "When it suits them, the government treats us at par with DD and wants to ban liquor ads. When it doesn't, they discriminate against us and don't offer us the uplink option."

TINSEL TOWN: FREEDOM AT LAST?

The question mark is deliberate. Despite Sushma Swaraj's dramatic announcement on May 10 at a 'national conference on cinema' in Mumbai that filmmaking will henceforth be recognised as a full-fledged industry, filmdom's response has been somewhat mixed: a great deal of elation tempered with a degree of scepticism. The spirit behind the move is right: the industry can now tap conventional sources of finance. Says Sushma Swaraj: "Clean films need clean money." If the industry can make the most of its new status, its dalliance with dubious sources of finance could soon be a thing of the past.

Says filmmaker Shyam Benegal: "The decision to accord industry status will lead to the creation of quality films." But there are many ifs on the road to freedom. Will the banks play ball? Can a chaotic industry get its act together to capitalise on the opportunity? "Changes are bound to occur in the months ahead," says G.S. Mayawala, general secretary of the Film Distributors' Council. "But discipline must return to the production sector."

The implementation of the decision, the minister has promised, will take just three months. But K.D. Shorey, general secretary, Film Federation of India (FFI), feels "it will happen earlier". The Indian Banks Association has already set up a committee under the chairmanship of K. Kannan, chairman, Bank of Baroda, to study the question of film financing. The government has constituted a special task force—the FICCI additional general secretary K. Topa, joint secretary (films) Raghu Menon and Shorey are its members—to fin-alise the modalities for the creation of a Film Development Council.

CENSORSHIP: CHANNEL TO NOWHERE

The film industry has often demanded the complete abolition of censorship. But Sushma Swaraj, not surprisingly, will have none of it. "Entertainment is an important need of the people, and some form of external regulation is a must," she says. She has proposed, instead, a new mechanism that will give a filmmaker the right to opt for the "green channel" if he is sure that his film does not need to go before the Central Board of Film Certification. The specific parameters will be laid down by the government.

"The green channel-red channel system is perfect for the customs, but films can't be equated with contraband," argues K.D. Shorey. In the case of a film, he points out, subjective perceptions come into play. "I, as a film-maker, may feel that my film is fit for the green channel. A censor board member may not."

Therefore, at its meeting on May 26, the FFI discussed the minister's proposal and formulated its response. The industry has demanded the formation of a special panel—at least 80 per cent of it to be manned by filmdom's representatives—to decide whether a film merits green channel treatment or whether it should be censored in the normal course. "This committee could serve as a filter between the filmmakers and the censorship machinery," explains Sho-rey. The FFI, which is the industry's apex body, has sought a meeting with Sushma Swaraj to discuss the issue.

The minister, on her part, has decided that the next chairman of the CBFC should be a woman. The incumbent, veteran film producer-director Shakti Sama-nta, is on the way out, and the I&B ministry has already drawn up a list of film personalities—Asha Parekh, Hema Malini, among others—who could take over and rid popular Indian cinema of its crudity. "The men have failed," she has been quoted as saying. That begs the question: will the Prasar Bharati CEO, too, be a woman? Stay tuned in to Sushma Swaraj.