Sunday, February 3, 2002		Article

Information as power
Alok Verma

NO government can now rely on the ignorance.

We live in a world in which media and communications are all around us, they travel with us wherever we go and, increasingly, a single device will combine many different functions.

What is so potent about the communications revolution is the way that it combines the old and the new.

Some of the core technologies of our media, radio for example, are more than a century old. Most of the world’s population gathers its news by tuning into a radio. This traditional technology is being transformed by the advent of digital radio services that will improve quality and choice by making better use of the available radio spectrum. Newspapers and books, despite dire predictions of their imminent demise, continue to thrive, often coexisting with their online versions, while many of their purely electronic competitors have come and gone. These technologies are opening up new channels for us to be provided with news and entertainment, to shop and invest, as well as to communicate with one another.

Younger people take it for granted that they have communications and media on tap. But it is easy to forget just how recent this explosion of media has been and how far reaching its implications are.

The modern range of media has immeasurably expanded the range of our experience. Television documentaries can take us to places that only the intrepid explorer might have reached a century ago. The tragedies of earthquake in Bhuj or the triumph of democracy in Afghanistan are brought to our living rooms as they happen. We can all pump more entertainment into our houses at the flick of a button than would have been available to anybody a hundred years ago.

The explosion of information has fuelled a democratic revolution of knowledge and active citizenship. If information is power, power can now be within the grasp of everyone. No government can now rely on the ignorance of its population to sustain it. We are richer as citizens thanks to the expansion of modern media. Through the Right to Information bill, the Indian Government wants to encourage this and give everyone access to all these riches as quickly as possible.

Our society is getting increasingly woven together by electronic communication and our country is gradually getting integrated into the global economy through communications that have fostered international bilateral and multilateral political, economic, social, trade, investment and cultural relations. Financial news travels the world in an instant in seamless global capital markets. Ideas, in business, science and academia, can spread more rapidly than before. People in different countries and cultures can communicate, co-operate and trade more easily than ever before.

The consumers in India have begun to spend more on telecommunications, television and other communications services, certainly more than what they may be spending on beer. The media and communications industries are growing faster than the rest of the economy. Gradually, India is waking up and is realising the potential of major industrial strengths in many areas of the communications revolution, such as network infrastructure, opto-electronics, software, mobile technology and creative content production.

The new communications technologies bring huge choice and a great expansion of new services but also potential for confusion, uncertainty and upheaval.

Many people brought up in a world in which there were only few broadcasting channels feel bewildered by the explosion of choice. The boundaries of industries are blurring: telecommunications companies want to become broadcasters, while broadcasters increasingly are moving into e-commerce, and Internet Service Providers are offering television channels.

The pace of change is accelerating. It was 38 years before 50 million people were listening to the radio in the US, for example. Broadcast television took 13 years to reach 50 million users; personal computers took 16. But the Internet reached that level of usage in just four years.

Some people worry that increased diversity may harm the quality of programming available and reduce standards of decency. The new communications media can transform crime as well as commerce, by helping criminals to operate globally.

India should create communications infrastructure and services which will allow consumers and citizens, parents and children, business and markets, to make the most of the opportunities emerging around them. First, we should make India home to the most dynamic and competitive communications and media market in the world. Second, we must unleash the potential for these convergent communications technologies to extend choice, deepen democracy, enrich entertainment and enable learning. Innovation in content and technology need to go hand in hand. These new technologies will be taken up only if they provide citizens, consumers and students with attractive applications, services and content. We need a dynamic market for innovative content to drive the spread of these technologies. Communications play such an important role in the life of a modern society for commerce, learning and democratic debate that it is vital that no part of society is cut off. Formation of Communications ghettos must be avoided by allowing and providing access to all the ar3as of the country or groups in society to with new information networks and services. To bridge the levels of widespread ignorance that exists in the Indian society, the Indian Government must create levels of access to the communications infrastructure of the new economy that at least match the best in the world. It is also vital that people can have access to public service content through a diversity of media.Our public service broadcasting television and radio is perhaps one among the largest but is surely not among the best in the world. There is a definite need that the interests of citizens and consumers who rely on the media for entertainment, education and information, and who depend upon accessible, high quality communications systems must be protected. Our society rightfully deserves right to information and free and balanced access and flow of information. The Government must also ensure to make sure the right balance should be struck between right to information and free and balanced flow of information to protect the citizens’ freedom of expression.