Guest Column

The govt needs to use its soft power
Jawahar Goel, President, IBF


The year 2008 has been one of the busiest years of the Indian broadcasting industry. The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) has been busy between solving inter-industry issues such as the differences that had come up with the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and external issues that led it to a number of meetings with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Essel Group's Jawahar Goel, who is the current President of the IBF, speaks on some of the observations that he has made in the year, some of the achievements of the industry and the road ahead for the IBF in 2009.

Media has reach. Is the government making any use of it?

The year was a busy one for the IBF - there was something or the other happening more often than not. One of the key observations that I made in the year was that the govt of India and Indian bureaucracy are not equipped to use their 'soft power' in helping to govern the country, and tackle all the various issues that we face. Diplomacy is a kind of soft power, when you are influencing a country to put pressure on someone. The Indian cinema exerts significant amount of soft power in various households. Life has changed much from the controversies that a movie like an 'An evening in Paris' created in the 70's to now, when wearing a swimming suit in a movie equates to nothing. The society has been opening up, and much credit goes to music, television, cinema and even other things like literature.

Unlike hard power, which allows you to drag someone in the court or imprison someone, soft power has an important role to play in influencing. The Indian media has that power. There are so many channels today, and they are going across the world. There is a Dish TV mounted on a chowki just 600 meters inside from the POK border. This is the power of reach that the broadcasting industry has. Look at any of the recent events, and you ask yourself if the government has made use of that power in any way. Yes, there also are instances like the Kargil War when there was a daily briefing by the Defence but was it seen anywhere else after that? I don't think so. The Press Information Bureau doesn't even know who is running the channels; they only know a handful of print journalists and that is where it ends.

The government forgets that the role of television, unlike print, exists with the uneducated as well.

Jammu & Kashmir democracy is an interest example here. The media has built up the J&K democracy through the various means that it has. Compare this to what we had 12 years back when allegedly, the security forces said things from 'if you do not have the election mark on your finger, we would cut the fingers'.

As the IBF President, this is the biggest frustration that I have. The issues can be anything from neighbour relations to factors like poverty and the government is making no use of this power available to them.

Another thing that I notice is that because of the economy slowdown, it is a good time for television per se, and for the news channels in particular. There are world studies that show that during recession, the consumption of television goes up. People don't travel or go out much, since they are keen on conserving cash, and television is the only mode of entertainment at the time.

2009: To take off from where 2008 had left

There is a lot happening at the IBF right now -- there are issues of the industry itself that we have to tackle but I would not like to discuss it here. Some problems will follow us in 2009 as well.

It has been unfortunate for us that the MIB has seen so many changes that it has been difficult to continue a conversation with any of the officials, and see productive developments there. During the Mumbai terror attack, the allegation was that why did media show all the things that it did. My question is why was it allowed? This only meant that no one knew the magnitude of the problem they were handling. When the officials are not communicating what is happening, then there obviously is a gap. The conversation with the MIB on closing this gap has been initiated and we have to see how we move forward on this in 2009.

As an industry, there are a couple of issues that we would bring on the radar this year. The pay broadcaster issue tops the list. The pay broadcasters are not paid even for the digital subscribers and there is no declaration for that as yet. MSOs are not paying for the digital households. And the commercial industry too is not paying for their leases.

Following this is the carriage fees issue and the ratings issue. There is a lot of development happening on all of these, and we expect to see progress this year.

We have worked a lot in making the equation a beneficial one when it came to working with the AAAI and now we are working on getting the south broadcasters in the picture too. We are in the process of negotiating a structure with the ad agencies association in the south. We have exchanged some drafts with them already, and we would close something on this in the beginning of 2009 itself.

Another problem that I see emerging is the interference of political parties in broadcasting. In some of the states, political parties are trying to dominate cable networks. This was seen in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka once, and we have seen this in Chattisgarh; now we are seeing this in Punjab. There is also word that this would soon happen in UP as well. This is another major issue, and we are working on explaining this situation to the members, since it has the potential of becoming a very big problem going forward.

The year ahead has all the promises of being a busy year again, and I am looking forward to it.