According to a latest well considered study by Price Water House Coopers on the growth of media in India, it is estimated that entertainment and media industry have been growing at 18 per cent annually, which is much higher than the economic growth rate. The economic size of the media world in December 2007 is Rs.51,300 crores, which is poised to go up to Rs.1,15,700 crores by 2012. Of this, TV is the largest segment at Rs.12,600 crores followed by print media at Rs.14,900 crores, films at Rs.9,600 crores and radio at Rs.620 crores.

As for TV, the major area of focus has been digitalization. With the introduction of Conditional Access (CAS) in four metros and approval of Direct To Home telecasting for the entire country, intended extension of CAS to the remaining metros and 55 cities and digitalization of TV have got further push. Another area for giving further fillip to digitalization is a recent decision of the Union Council of Ministers to introduce Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) nation wide. Besides, a policy regarding Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) as recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is in the offing. With the implementation of such measures, India would be marching ahead on the road to digitalization of High Definition TV based entertainment and news.

In the area of radio, India has had a growth of 24 per cent. Out of 266 FM radio stations approved, 209 FM radio stations are operational. The balance is in the process of being commissioned. Explosion of FM radio in phase-1 and phase-2 have been entirely in the private sector. Policy on FM radio in phase-3 is in the offing. These FM radio stations are in addition to All India Radio's spread all over the country.

Union Planning Commission has laid down certain priorities for the media during the current 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) that includes the official media, All India Radio and Doordarshan. For these two public broadcasting service providers, digitalization and High Definition Television (HDTV) have been taken up and are targeted for completion during the ongoing plan period.

As for the film sector, process has been set in motion for setting up a Museum of Moving Images, upgradation of the Film and Television Institute of India at Pune to a global film school, and a National Centre of Excellence in Animation, Gaming and Special Effects during the plan period. In the area of information and public campaign, a National Press Centre, the best-in-global standards, and upgradation of the Indian Institute of Mass Communications to an international media university have been taken up. Besides, two major initiatives have been taken to reach out the policies and programmes to the people in order to keep them informed what the Government of India is doing for their uplift. One is the initiative of Public Information Campaigns where all the official media units disseminate jointly information relating to various welfare measures to the public at large. Known as Media Outreach Progrmme broadly, the Public Information Campaigns are piloted by the Press Information Bureau. Publicity campaign is also done by the Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity. Mind you, these are being done at a time when the official media are bogged down by acute shortages of communicators especially in languages and vernacular abetted by incompetent lot of present media heads at the helm, with their poor leadership, unable to inspire and motivate communicators down the line much less develop rapport with the local media to take meaningfully the much touted public information campaigns to the public at large. These programmes sound lofty on paper only but with no real correlation with the targets on the ground, such programmes are bound to come a cropper or counter productive.

The other problem that the Government is facing in the media world is how to ensure accessibility of Doordarshan in rural, backward and hilly areas, where people in groups, in the absence of electricity, use power generator to watch private TV entertainment and news channels. The one and only popular and cheap source of information is AIR and private FM radios. All official data on reach of Doordarshan is bogus and a make-believe. In urban conglomerates, hardly any one watches Doordarshan. This is a ground reality. As a matter of fact, development does not make news. Only negativism and frivolous matters that make juicy and spicy news are viewed by the public.

To stem the rot, the Government should launch one page fortnightly Wall Newspapers in all the official languages within the Eight Schedule of the Constitution of India for giving developmental news with budgetary allocation in each segments of development to empower the people so that they may make the officials account for any let up in the development plan and to save the money allocated from being defalcated by corrupt state government machineries, which are notorious for sending make-believe bogus utilization certificate to hoodwink the Centre, thus depriving the people of India of their rightful due. This is one and only way to empower the people for their all round development. China's saga of all round development is alluded largely to the Wall Newspapers. India needs to emulate it so that the rural India progresses on an even keel and faster. State Governments are implementing agencies for large scale Centrally funded developmental projects. Through Wall Newspapers, people of India will be empowered with developmental information so much so that it would be almost impossible for the local state government to eat up the developmental resources.

The Central Government should reorient its publicity strategies to reach out to the people and empower them meaningfully!.#