Letter to Editor (TOI) 29.05.03: Free to air but taxed to death!!

Dear Sir, your edit Radio SOS highlights the completely lopsided and blinkered vision of the government. While one aspect is the killing burden of the licence fee which ensures the medium stays crippled, the other facet is the ban on broadcasts of News and current affairs on private radio channels. It is difficult to comprehend the government's wisdom in restricting News to the govt owned All India Radio when one can tune into any foreign radio station on SW radio and obtain the latest news. Not just that, cable TV brings in the absolutely latest from across the world in gory, technicolor detail which can impact the audience's minds much more than radio! So, where is the logic in banning News on private FM radio stations, all of who are based in India with local production and broadcasting facilities? If the idea is to just breathe some life into All India Radio, which is anyway on its deathbed, then the ban needs to be challenged in the courts, since it infringes on the citizen's fundamental right to information. Also, as you rightly put it, when the government is so reform oriented when it comes to telecom, television and information technology, one wonders why it is hell bent on killing the FM radio sector which has great potential for education and entertainment. Its high time Prasar Bharathi is remodelled on lines of the US FCC to serve as an independent regulator for all services using the airwaves. Radio stations should be allowed to be set up as freely as internet web sites subject to availability of spectrum and suitable guidelines monitored by the regulator. Why should the government impose prohibitive licence fees on something which is freely available and further why should the government curtail my right to information irrespective of the source? Isn't the govt infringing on the citizen's fundamental right to liberty of thought, expression and belief, enshrined in the Constitution?