When we open our newspaper and read that our elected representatives are battling unknown demons to grant us the ‘Right-to-’ education, food etc, it suddenly strikes us that once upon a time we already had all that. We could once drink tap water safely – today each household requires a water purifier. Why? What are we paying taxes for if we can’t be given essentials? Right to information is a poor substitute for Right-to-clean-drinking-water. Why is it that we operate own power plants at home in form of inverter and generator? Why do we have to get stuck with our own satellite dish or cable when a simple Yagi antenna can do the trick as it did over two decades back? Be it security guards or primary education, the list is only increasing. We are living in middle of civilized world and not in a remote outpost.
The answer may lie partly with us. Seemingly the Government policies are deeply influenced by commercial interests of lobbies. Otherwise why has satellite television replaced terrestrial broadcast in India where there was enough dark fibre to economically connect every TV tower required to cover 99% of population. For the remaining 1%, satellite television was required. How come our ‘unbiased’ media did not question something which was right in it’s yard? Since media is a ‘business’ charged with a ‘social responsibility’, no guesses on what takes precedence.
Now that we have the required critical mass of educated and well informed people across the length and breadth of the country, it is time we put the prospective people’s representatives through the paces before casting our vote. The right to represent people has to be earned, not bought by inducements and unkept promises. Ultimately elected representatives represent our collective character and will – and we should have no reason to complain if we did not exercise due diligence when we could.
2 comments:
So far as terrestrial broadcasting is concerned, it has nothing to do with vested commercial interests. Its the government, and its vested interests, or blinkered vision, or whatever to give a pre-eminent position to DD has refused to allow terrestrial broadcasting to other channels. In fact private channels operate today in India, not as some policy blueprint of the govt, but because technology first enabled them to broadcast from Hong Kong and Singapore, via privately bought (illegal) dish antennas, and it was only then that the govt allowed, since technology had already bypassed regulation, and those people who make big money through regulation.
Not really.an Indian in the Govt is as intelligent as an Indian out of the Govt.DTB was considered but the satcom lobby was bringing business on the table and convinced the Govt not to go ahead with a potentially disruptive business model.Govt could have retained monoply over broadcast and permitted approved and security cleared channels to use its broadcast infrastructure.This discourse dates to 2000-2001 and came up for discussion in Convergence India 2001.
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