The biggest challenges for the bureaucrats in the country can be summed up in just a few words: being unprepared, and forced to make compromises.
Thus, a person taking charge as the head of the bureaucracy in any Ministry has to put aside his or her own personal views and get down to translating the decisions of the Government and the Minister/Ministers into action, apart from the fact that he or she may be completely new to the field.
And this task becomes even more onerous when there are deadlines to be met in short periods of time.
Senior Indian administrative service officer Ajay Mittal is taking over the reins of the administrative machinery in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry from Sunil Arora who had barely eight months to grapple with problems. Arora joined the Ministry on 31 August last year just as the Ministry was making preparations for the Digital Addressable System Phase III and was in the midst of the Phase III auctions of FM Radio.
Mittal, who has taken over after the retirement of Arora, is a senior Indian administrative service officer of the 1982 batch from the Himachal Pradesh cadre.
Now, Mittal has to deal with not only the onerous task of overseeing the implementation of the last phase in DAS which will cover all remaining urban and all rural areas of the country by December-end, but bringing the Government out of the morass of legal cases which stayed the implementation of DAS Phase III in many states and have now been transferred to the Delhi High Court.
Born on 24 February 1958, Mittal is a law graduate and also has a Masters degree in rural development. His first posting was as principal secretary to the then Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh and in the Information and Public Relations wing in the state. Mittal was empanelled as Secretary in December last year when he was additional chief secretary, transport, social justice and empowerment department, Shimla.
TRAI
Although these are issues that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is dealing with, all decisions relating to the broadcasting sector can only be effective if there is proper coordination between the regulator and the Ministry. This effectively means there has to be a quick response to any issues that either of the two raises to the other, if deadlines have to be met.
Other issues pending before TRAI relating to broadcasting include the need to reconsider the foreign direct investment norms for media, shortage of spectrum, a growing demand by states seeking permissions to start their own television channels despite the TRAI having opined against it twice since 2008, and the imperative to work on the tariff issues for commercial and non-commercial set-ups following directives of the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal.
Although broadcasting duties were handed over to TRAI just over a decade earlier, it is also clear that the Ministry will have to consider whether there is need to form a broadcasting-specific body since TRAI is primarily a body set up for the telecom sector. If the Government decides to continue with TRAI handling both portfolios, the Regulator will be under pressure from the I and B Ministry to strengthen its broadcasting team and also ensure greater coordination among officers in both broadcasting and telecom.
With convergence of technologies becoming a reality, and with issues of spectrum already bringing telecom and broadcasting together, the National Democratic Alliance Government has again begun to talk about convergence and this is bound to gather pace over the next two years.
Film Industry
The film industry has been raising similar issues year after year. As far as taxation issues were concerned, it was hoped that the Goods and Services Tax when implemented will help. But the way the matter is stuck in Parliament forces the industry to just wait and watch.
Entertainment tax is another issue on which there has been no unanimity and states have different taxes. A proposal about a decade earlier for bringing cinema into the Concurrent List of the Constitution might have solved the problem, but most states opposed the idea. Perhaps the only positive move has been that service tax or cess on entertainment tax has been done away with.
In a country producing around one thousand feature films every year apart from the large number of films from overseas, the country still suffers from an acute shortage of theatres, with the number less than 11,000. With the high rates of ticketing charged by the multiplexes, the average cinegoer is denied of the pleasure of seeing a film in a cinema hall.
All attempts to curb video piracy appear to have failed because the film industry and the government have failed to work together to curb the menace, which means huge losses for the makers of bold films unless there are big stars to lure the audiences.
The Film Museum has been in the planning and making for more than a decade, but it does not appear that the Museum planned for 2013 to coincide with a centenary of cinema will seek the light of day for at least a couple of more years.
The Centre of Excellence for Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics
For almost ten years, Minister after Ministers have promised to set up a Centre of Excellence for the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC), and Hyderabad and Bangalore have even claimed that they have the right ambience for such a centre.
But for now, it’s been confirmed that a Centre of Excellence will be established in the Film City in Goregaon in Mumbai, a decision that may not be digestible to studios of the AVGC industry in cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore. Though this year at ABAI, V Manjunath did promise about opening a Centre of Excellence for the AVGC industry in Karnataka, it’s still unclear by when will one open over there.
Clearly, the new Secretary has a difficult task ahead, moving on a road that is not without political or bureaucratic potholes that can hold up even his best intentions.