There is ample evidence by now that Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi means business. And that he considers his business is to guard “public morality” and protect “good taste” by showing no tolerance at all for the “indecent” and the “obscene”. In January this year, this meant decapitating AXN for showing 'The World’s Sexiest Advertisements'. The channel was allowed to come back on air, but only after the minister had satisfied himself with a grovelling apology. Now, it means axing Fashion TV for telecasting programmes such as 'Midnight Hot', in which “skimpily dressed and semi-naked models. denigrate women and were likely to adversely affect public morality”. FTV, of course, has been here before. In 2002, it was up against Sushma Swaraj’s prudishness. Now it must contend with Dasmunshi’s notion of morality.So is that how it is going to be in the world’s largest democracy, one that prides itself on a mature and lively public debate? Is the individual I&B minister’s whim the sole and final determiner of what can and cannot be seen by its adult population in the privacy of their living rooms? Are we going to let Swaraj then and Dasmunshi now decide what is fit to watch? Someone could argue that it is not quite so arbitrary. After all, there is the 1995 Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995. But that would be missing the point entirely. For one, the Act is outdated. The media scene has undergone a dramatic transformation since 1995. Then, it doesn’t define obscenity. There is no transparency about the mechanism that is used to reach the decision to restrict and to ban. Who is the complainant, and who decides are questions that are left swathed in vagueness. What India desperately needs is an independent and transparent complaint and redressal mechanism. We need a rating system and a system of watershed timing. We need to combine an independent regulatory authority with self-regulation. What we do not need is a system of censorship presided over by narrow-minded ministers. Perhaps this is a good moment to ask: what is happening on the promised and long-overdue Broadcast Bill anyway?
