Tidbits from Southasian region

Will levying annual license fees on TV sets really pull Prasar Bharati out of its financial crisis? And is it proper? The Indian government's proposal rests on the debatable argument that Prasar Bharati, a statutory autonomous body set up to run the state's Doordarshan and All India Radio, is a public-service broadcaster. The BBC, on which Prasar Bharati was modelled, raises a significant part of its revenue from license fees, and is indeed a non-profit venture, steering clear of commercial advertising. Chhetria Patrakar is plagued by questions: Can DD or AIR, which continue to function as an arm of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, really be categorised as 'public service'? Are the bureaucrats that have been handpicked by the government to head the Prasar Bharati since its birth in 1997 sufficiently professional? Should consumers be asked to cough up all of that moolah, just to be fed official propaganda and downright shoddy fare?
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While on the subject of AIR and DD, CP was amused to find that, in some parts of India, they are not accessible at all! For the past few months, residents in areas of Arunachal Pradesh have been unable to tune in to these state airwaves, which seem to have been jammed by more-powerful Chinese transmitters. The transmitter in the Arunachali capital, Itanagar, is nowhere near capable of covering the state's more remote districts – to which, incidentally, China has been increasingly staking its own claim of late. If the situation continues, all those hooked on government broadcasting will be well advised to carry their "Teach Yourself Chinese" booklets on their next trip to Arunachal – which, incidentally, is the Northeastern state that speaks the best Hindi.
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An internal Indian Express email currently doing the rounds might, obliquely, bring some cheer to tiny publications struggling to make ends meet. The email, sent by Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta to his staff, demands that they pull up their socks in these times of hardship. If the mighty IE is facing a crunch, perhaps smaller players need not feel down about having to scramble to make ends meet. Gupta notes that, over the past fiscal year, while the media industry grew by nearly 25 percent, Express revenue declined by three percent, even as expenditure peaked due to the acquisition of new machinery and the escalating cost of newsprint. It is time for wage freezes at the senior level, evidently, as well as switching off the lights, reusing photocopy paper, and re-thinking whether lives really depend on that costly out-station call. So what is wrong here? IE is known to have a strong investigative streak, but that obviously does not get you the revenue to survive.
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On 18 July, the Burmese junta, acting totally in character, restrained media coverage of the National Convention on the drafting of the country's new constitution – which would have seemed to be a fairly important event, at least on the surface. Invitations to the opening ceremony specified a limit of one journalist per organisation. Burma has been without a constitution since the military took over in a coup in 1988. Now, because the press will not be allowed to the last convention on the new constitution's framing – which will see the participation of about 1000 delegates, hand-picked by the junta – deliberations on the controversial drafting procedure will remain a mystery. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) has termed the convention a "sham … part of the problem and not the solution to Burma's malady." No wonder the generals did not want any prying eyes.
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Full of bluster after an apparent 'victory' over Tamil rebels in the east, President Mahinda Rajapakse seems intent on cracking the whip on the Sri Lankan media. After his move to reintroduce a criminal defamation law at a cabinet meeting in late June met with unexpected opposition, President Rajapakse had another go by having it slated again for discussion on 11 July. Sri Lanka's previous, draconian defamation law, which carried severe penalties ranging from imprisonment to confiscation of property, was repealed in 2004 by a unanimous vote of Parliament. (That charges of defamation had been used primarily for the purposes of witch-hunts and political vendettas was apparent from the fact that hardly any such case had been initiated by private individuals.) The law currently being proposed, however, contains provisions similar to the old legislation. When ministers protested the re-listing, Cabinet Secretary D Wijesinghe sent out a circular informing them that the discussion had found its way onto the cabinet's agenda only by mistake. Chhetria Patrakar wonders whether to view this as a genuine backtracking, or as a retreat after having found the waters currently unsuitable for swimming.

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Access to the portal bhutantimes.com, run from within Bhutan, has been blocked byThimphu's Information, Communication and Media Authority (BICMA), on order of the government. The Bhutan Times, launched in May of last year, is one of the country's only two privately owned newspapers; the website is the paper's online news aggregator. On the site's About Us page, the newspaper is described as one that seeks "to provide balanced, independent and real-time news on Bhutan". It proposes that the truth about the country must be somewhere in between the stereotypes of it as a "xenophobic, autocratic nation that subscribes to ethnic cleansing" on the one hand, and a "small, peaceful country of 0.7 million people" on the other. "The wise person," say the editors, "always digs a little deeper." After a quick look through the portal's archives, however, Chhetria Patrakar finds it hard to see how bhutantimes.com could have dug too deep for the comfort of the royal regime. Alas, it seems only too easy to get oneself gagged in democratising Bhutan.
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And what about the troubles of Afghan journalists? July saw the arrest of two of these by Afghan intelligence officers. Asif Nang, editor of the government magazine Peace Jirga, and Kamran Mir Hazar (see pic), editor of the Kabul Press website had, it seems, been critical of the government, and President Hamid Karzai in particular. Upon his release on 15 July, Nang, who is also the spokesman for the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, apologised to President Karzai for an editorial "mistake" that led to the publication of the article in question. He also said that, as a public servant, he believed the government had the right to conduct the investigation that led to his arrest. Kamran Mir Hazar's release was significantly less ingratiating. Indeed, the pressures under which Afghan journalists operate, which possibly prompted Nang's apology, quickly became apparent when Hazar got out of prison on 4 July, and quickly went public with accusations of being tortured while in detention.
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Over in Pakistan, journalists covering clashes between government troops and the students of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad during the first week of July were caught in the crossfire. Photojournalist Javed Khan, of the daily Markaz, has died, and CNBC cameraman Israr Ahmed is still battling for his life. Several other mediapersons also sustained injuries from bullets, stones and teargas. Most of them risked their lives in an attempt to capture footage of students setting ablaze vehicles parked inside a government building. Amidst all of this, Chhetria Patrakar was pleased to find that at least one Pakistani journalist, Mazhar Abbas, Secretary-General of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (see pic), recently received recognition for his contribution to press freedom, in the form of the 17th International Press Freedom Award from the watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists.
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On 18 July, Nepal's interim parliament passed a bill on Right to Information, which guarantees the public easy access to all state documents. However, information in five specified areas, deemed to be "sensitive", will remain exempt. A committee headed by the government's chief secretary will determine what exactly constitutes 'sensitive' information, and will then proceed to keep it secret for up to 30 years. Nepalis can only hope that too many official secrets will not detract from this important step towards democratisation of the state machinery. Three decades is a long time to have to wait, that too at the flick of a bureaucrat's pen.
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Newspaper reading is alive and well, and now news fiends can read newspapers on the run. Nokia rec-ently announced that it would be launching a Malayalam-language 'mobile newspaper' in partnership with Malayalam Manorama, one of the most widely circulated papers in Kerala. The electronic newspaper will be accessible on Nokia GPRS-enabled handsets, although only in India's 'most literate' state. The service, which includes an update every half-hour, is specifically targeted at rural areas, where Internet access is lowest. Tourists will have no more excuses for missing the news while on picturesque backwater cruises and hikes in the Silent Valley! – Chhetria Patrakar