CAS (conditional access system) is almost dead. Long live CAS!

But, throughout the entire saga, the posturing that has taken place on CAS till now and the role of the government, the arbiter, leaves many a question unanswered. It also throws up telling a tale of the ineptness of the Indian policy-makers and the politicians, too, in dealing with issues related to new technology and the resultant new regime.

After almost an year of deliberating on the various finer points of CAS, the industry and the government are still groping in almost darkness. Leave aside the political pressure - which is anyway debatable and dubious and would be discussed later here - but the ham-handed way addressability has been handled will make many ask the question whether a country like India is really capable of handling a change.

Yesterday, when the information and broadcasting (I&B) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad lamely explained that despite CAS being a consumer-friendly move, it has become an avoidable and unnecessary political issue, it reflected the coalition government's inability to stand up to pressures from diverse quarters.

If CAS was a consumer friendly move, why couldn't the government make the pay channels come out with individual pricing to the consumer's liking even after six months of issuing `threats' that the government "knows its legal position" on the issue? Just bringing out advertisements in newspapers and running promos on the national broadcaster Doordarshan certainly has not proved to be adequate education for consumers, it seems. That, it was a non-starter educational move, can be gauged from the fact that the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), leading the coalition government, has not been able to convince its own cadre, which prides itself for discipline.

They say 'charity begins at home' and the BJP should have known it. Many senior leaders from the BJP itself, including former Delhi chief minister Madan Lal Khurana who is making a grab for the post again in the ensuing elections later this year, have been against CAS. Is it an indicator that, probably, former I&B minister Sushma Swaraj had more charisma and political strength? Otherwise, what could be the possible explanation of the CAS issue getting steam-rolled through Parliament in the face of stiff competition from other political parties like the Congress and the Left-oriented ones last year.

When government sources indicated that Prasad had to "give in to the wishes of the elders of the party" at yesterday's meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, it became apparent that the elders had anyway decided to abandon CAS; at least in Delhi where the BJP is desperately trying to wrest power from the Congress.

Having deferred implementation of CAS in Delhi, the government has also lost the moral authority to try making the other metros of Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai go ahead with CAS from 1 September. No wonder, the vocal Shiv Sena member of Parliament, Sanjay Nirupam, yesterday dared Prasad and the government to try rollout CAS in Mumbai - already battered by bomb blasts and fear. "I have told him (Prasad), first implement CAS in Patna (the I&B minister's hometown in the almost lawless state of Bihar) and then try Mumbai," a seemingly pleased Nirupam thundered whose party wields immense clout in Mumbai.

And, why would politicians of all hues, mostly ill informed on addressability, join issues with the government on CAS? It makes for popular politics. In India, better governance means, populist measures; the economy and the effect on it of such measures be damned.

Imagine Khurana mouthing words like "CAS would effect the common man." Even when the cable operators of West Delhi, where Khurana's so-called vote bank constituency falls, had petitioned him that in the long run CAS would be good for the industry and also for the consumer. Moreover, in the first phase, CAS was not being rolled out in West Delhi at all.

Khurana's political excuse had been that if Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit can be asked to stop bandying around CAS as an election issue, he'd also stop making it a poll issue. This he had conveyed to Prasad and the BJP's top brass umpteen time.

This brings us to the industry, which also cannot be spared the blame for wasting so many man-hours and the resultant financial implications of importing set-top boxes that would have been needed to access pay channels as per a government mandate. What would happen to those boxes now already in the country?

Would they be accepted if CAS is rolled out in other metros and even in Delhi sometime? What would the politicians and government do if the cable ops raise cable subscription fee as a backlash to yesterday's government decision?

Without going into specifics, it would suffice to say that the reason for politicians taking positions on CAS is the result of lobbying and counter-lobbying by various sections of the broadcast and cable industry. If these pressure tactics had not been applied, CAS, like any other technology issue, would have got implemented and evolved on its own over a period of time - initial hiccups notwithstanding.

Though, we are not getting into the merit or demerit of addressability as a system here --- after all, a new technology and a new regime would face initial resistance --- but if the lesson learnt from CAS can be used as a yardstick, then it can mean it'd be difficult to introduce any new technology in the country.

The `rollback government' --- a sobriquet earned because of the oscillating stand taken on various issues like petroleum pricing during its yet-to-end five-year tenure --- has again proved that in populist politics, anything goes.

Also read:

One CAS deadline gone, will the next go the same way?