Manmohan Singh is credited for terminating the license raj, when he was finance minister. Ironically, the government is seeking to tighten the licensing norms on news channels, when he is the prime minister.
When de-licensing industries is hailed as a great step towards liberalization that is supposed to have turned around economy, how licensing the media is justified?
Champions of liberalization including Manmohan Singh say, “The government has no business to be in business.” Then, how the government that saw no business in the business sector found a business in media? Not so easy to comprehend. It is as riddled as a live chat happens between an anchor and a reporter about breaking news aired even before its confirmation.
It’s easy to understand that the freedom of press is ensured, if the government stays away from media because it is a simple proposition of democracy. It’s not easy to understand the double-talk of the politicians because it is a complex proposition of demonocracy.
Dayanidhi Maran, now darling of CBI, has a dubious distinction of not issuing a single TV channel license during his tenure as the minister for information and broadcast. He didn’t feel any necessity of new channels, when his brother was running a group of channels sitting on mountains of profit.
He thought market would be cluttered with the entry of all and sundry. He saw a need to check the mushrooms and stonewall the market place. And he did it with dead ease as he had a powerful weapon; authority to issue license. He simply denied license to new entrants. As a result the market remained clean and uncluttered; while his brother, who was already a media mughal, held the fort and went on to expand his empire from media to aviation.
The argument of the present policymakers is nothing different. They are concerned about non-serious players entering to spoil the business. A simple way they found to keep them at bay is to raise their required net worth from Rs.3 crore Rs. 20 crore. Sad, there is no Nobel for such a great invention: net worth is the index of seriousness. The leaders have understood it very well and that is why their net worth is going skywards.
Finding three violations or five violations to cancel the license is another great idea; otherwise how can you control these inglorious bustards? How dare these unbridled TV channels barking and biting and stinging, while the demagogues are planning to step up their net worth to be serious to rule the country? They need to be chained and kicked out, if they found to be mischievous. This is a serious issue and that is why the government is taken it seriously and seriously said it wouldn’t concede to demands of non-serious media.
Indira Gandhi was the first visionary to see this. She did not put up with the nuisance, when her party colleagues were toiling day in and day out to increase their net worth with an honest intention of being serious to be worthy to rule the country. She brought in censorship for the media and the newspapers looked decent under the emergency rule. Now, we can only laud the Congress for having paid tribute to its great leader by bringing in control over vulgar visual media.
In fact, it is better the government expands its horizon to clean and uncluttered the other sectors also. It would be great if an industrialist is made the industry ministry, as in the case of Karnataka. Let a miner handle the ministry of mines and geology. Hand over education portfolio to a medical college owner. A cargo businessman should be the transport minister. They know how to de-clutter the respective markets and how to take out weeds in their respective fields.
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