SNEW POLICY DECISIONS ON

SHOWBIZ FICCI to send recommendations to government

By MSM Desai
An all out effort is being made by the entertainment committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce to see that the central government takes a policy decision soon with regard to the film, television, radio and music industries so that the entertainment industry achieves its target of doing Rs 655,000 crore business.

Hectic meetings are on to give final touches to the recommendations to be made to the government, based on the outcome of the two-day deliberations at the recent international conference on showbiz.
The FICCI sub-committee, consisting of Lalit Modi, Amit Khanna, Tariq Ansari, Ashok Mansukhani, Ansubhan Mishra, Tilak Raj Magan, Urmila Gupta, Supran Sen, Sidharth Das Gupta and Usha Amonkar met on April 28 to discuss the issue of convergence, so that its recommendations could be submitted to the group of ministers who are to take policy decisions under the proposed Convergence Bill.

The group of minsiters, headed by home minister LK Advani, consists of finance minister Yashwant Sinha, law minister Ram Jethmalani, information and broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley, communication minister Paswan and parliamentary affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan. After receiving the recommenations from FICCI’s entertainment committee, the group of ministers will announce its policies, which are expected to have a far-reaching impact on the entertainment industry.
Amit Khanna, co-chairman of the entertainment committee of FICCI, told SCREEN that since a lot of technical problems involved, framing the recommendations with regard to radio, television, films and music has taken longer than expected.

However, the recommendations to be made will be broadly based on the deliberations that took place at the FICCI conference. Laws pertaining to the global film industry have to be studied before recommendations are made, so that the government’s policy decisions will help the entertainment industry.

For instance, the music industry feels its problems will be better addressed if it comes under the purview of the ministry of information and broadcasting. It will also help if all of showbiz is handled by the same ministry. The major demand of the industry is that all matters relating to the entertainment industry come under the purview of one ministry alone, and not with several ministries as it exists today.

To successfully regulate the operation of information technology, broadcasting and telecom, a comprehensive policy covering all these areas is needed. Similarly there must be a broad and clear statement as to what the governemnt wishes to achieve in relation to cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasts, DTH and a range of telecom issues.

There are two salient demands pertaining to the convergence policy in the Indian context. The first is that there must be a single approach to policy at both the macro and micro levels. The other aspect is that when the group of ministers on convergence determine the broad thrust of what they wish to do, it should be determined who would formulate the details. The planning commission seems the most appropriate body to undertake the task without direct involvement. But when it undertakes the job, it must adopt the policy of active consultations with the interested parties.

There is a need to formulate an overall convergence policy. In all likelihood, it is too early for a radical regulatory change, though the need for such a change has to be kept under constant review. In the meantime, there is a need to tidy up the existing regulations and provisions.