Last week, I&B Minister Anurag Thakur grabbed headlines when he reacted to the growing volume of obscenity and abusive language on the OTT platforms. It followed a number of complaints received by the government. If the government is serious about the complaints of increasing abusive and obscene content on OTT platforms, then there is a need to make changes in the rules. The minister did state that if needed the I&B ministry was willing to consider changing the rules.
Reads like a typical political statement. What is ‘willing to consider’? Is the ministry blind? Don’t they see what is being peddled in the name of creativity? You say you have received complaints, so act!
Stranger than the government’s non-committal stand is the rejection by a court of a petition that asked for a committee to be set up to check OTT content before it’s allowed to be streamed. A two-judge bench ruled that it was not feasible.
A committee can be formed on the lines of the Censor Board, which has regional offices in Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Cuttack and Guwahati, besides the main office in Mumbai. They charge each applicant and can easily create another examining system for OTT content.
The courts were not asked to do the job, but merely direct the government to set up a mechanism. Don’t know how that is not feasible!