I believe the state has no business in deciding on what people should watch. I do admit that there is blatant wrong doing of the cable service especially in Chennai where there is this horrendous set-top box and no other metro in India had the guts and gumption to embrace this fine concept which could have brought a lot of transparency to the cable service industry.
As a customer we should be sure of one thing, there is no such thing as free lunch. Many of the so-called cable channels that are supposedly fleecing the customers are off the highest quality and the procure transmission rights to sports events and exclusive telecasts at exhorbitant prices and a small part of that is passed on to the subscriber. The programs that are telecast on those channels don't generally cater to the normal soap watching crowd. An example I'd like to cite is Formula One. Thanks to Narain Karthikeyan, Formula One is covered extensively in the media. There was a time in the past when the national newspapers would cover the event on a column on their sports page. After the advent of PRIME sports we got a chance to see them all live and this channel later became Star Sports.
News was not a commodity those days as it is today in India. It's sad to see the amount of interest an Amitabh Bachchan on a strecher can generate when he surely should be deserving a lot of privacy in times like that. The media can't feed people of enough junk, that's the plain fact. All news channels resort to some sort of political bickering or sensationalising news like a rape or a horrendous murder. But there are also one or just a couple of balanced new providers who when viewed discernly can be identified because they don't resort to who is bigger.
The state has hardly done an angelic job with the services it provided as a monopoly in the past nor is it today. Electricity theft is rampant and is dubbed as tranmission loss. Freebies are doled out in the name of welfare and that causes a big loss to the exchequer. When DOT was the sole service provider of phone connections, we have all faced the various difficulties involved in getting a telephone connection and problems with the quality of service. Bringing in competition has levelelled the field and is putting the consumer in a seat where he can choose the best that in there on the plate.
Let's imaging a scenario where the cable services is in the hands of the government and please pardon my humor. General elections are round the corner and the govt decides to give out free cable connections to poor farmers in thanjavur, and pass a bill wherein all the rural unemployed will get one cable connection free. How is that for a novel idea? I know I am kidding and trivialising this debate, but this is entirely possible. What if the government decides to play it dirty and blank out certain channels like SCV is doing? What if the government decides to put up a box in each box (free of cost) and regularly keep an eye on the channels a household watches? Why should the government be subject to this exclusive information? Isn't it an invasion of one's privacy?
Instead of talking about taking over another man's business, the government if it's concerns are genuine should work towards setting up it's own cable infrastructure, believe me, the profits it can make from this is huge. Our country's thirst for petrol and bandwidth is exponentially increasing and apart from cable services, the govt can sell bandwidth on it's infrastructure for voice and data services. Let the government take up the challenge of living up to it's name, provide budget cable services and believe me, there won't be a huge reduction in the cable TV charges. I have always believed that a normal Thamizh household's viewing needs can be fitted into a Rs.50 per month subscription assuming that we can have a couple of Tamil Channels (which require a decoder included) and a host of other free to air channels.
Viewers who need anything more than what is offered can be charged extra monthly/annually depending on what their viewing preference is. If this plan succeeds, people who are currently having service connections from other service providers will automatically be pulled towards this because they'd see no sense in them coughing out exhorbitant charges only because there was no competition. It will also prove to be a watershed for the current service providers who will have to eventually straight up their act and come up with competitive rates and better services. Monopoly at any time in any service industry will corrupt people, competition will straighten it all out. Maruti, BSNL, Computer manufacturers, mobile service providers are some examples where competition had made things difficult for them to survive in a scenario where once they had to competitors. These companies to our joy have found better ways to attract customers and provide top-notch services for almost the same price as their competitors.
Some links related to this post ....
News in chennaionline.com, a popular e-zine
News reported in business line
