Apar GuptaTHE HIGHEST NUMBER OF VIEWER complaints received by the Broadcast Content Complaints Council (BCCC), a two-year-old organisation responsible for the regulation of objectionable content on Indian television, has been about the reality television show Bigg Boss. A table of decisions, published online by the BCCC, indicates that the council is a repository of some exceptionally close, if not wildly radical readings of the morals of India’s hit shows by their audiences. Objections range from coarse language to obscenity. For example: “Contestants Imam and Rajiv Paul abuse each other. The abuses are often muted but they are still completely evident to viewers”, cites one complaint for an episode from January 2013. Another complaint for an episode that was aired in November 2012 says, “The programme showed the psychic-manic act of torturing a girl in the house by a contestant called Iman. His [sic] wears body-fits with a tiger mask, makes obscene gestures, smokes on prime time TV and indulges in excessive violence by breaking household items. He threatens to strip to get his wishes fulfilled by the programme’s controllers.”
However, the table of decisions shows us that the majority of the complaints received by the council for the fifth season of Bigg Boss, which ran from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012, were, in fact, not related to the content of the show at all. They were triggered by the mere participation of Sunny Leone, the pornographic actress of Indian origin who, though renowned abroad as a much-feted Penthouse Pet, among other things, was then barely known in India. This changed about two years ago, and her sudden popularity, it appears, caused considerable heartburn in conservative households. The constituency of the offended included industry associations and even leading national political parties, all pleading that her participation would indirectly promote pornography in India. “Thousands of youth including minors who were earlier not aware of Sunny Leone’s status or profession have been specifically searching for her photographs, biodata, etc on the internet,” said a letter from the Indian Artistes and Actors Forum to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Swift action was taken. The BCCC issued a notice to the broadcasting channel, Colors, strongly disapproving of the choice of the participant, and directing them to take greater care in future. It even recommended that all references to Bigg Boss should be removed from Sunny Leone’s website.
On 15 September this year, Colors launched the seventh season of Bigg Boss. We may well expect the latest edition to spark off a whole new set of complaints from its passionate viewers. Many of these will be at least as absurd as the objections to the television appearance of someone who happens to be an adult film star. This, if anything, should occasion a deeper evaluation of our existing standards for cultural acceptability.
Given the BCCC’s record over the past two years, during which, according to a reading of available data, it has routinely acted as a conservative, expediency-based institution rather than the independent and unprejudiced body as which it was envisioned, it might be a good time to question the structural basis for broadcast regulation in India. Why, despite the growing diversity of television content and viewer tastes, do we continue to impose a narrow set of values on an entire medium?
The BCCC was actually meant to be an alternative to rigid government regulation. It was formed on 1 June 2011 as a self-regulatory body by the Indian Broadcast Federation (IBF). It came into being in response to a spurt in the number of viewer complaints about the nature of content in television shows, both fictional and in the “reality” format. The broadcasters had long complained that government orders, decided by an inter-ministerial committee (IMC)—a selection of representatives from various ministries—had been determined on the basis of loosely worded laws by bureaucrats who were not domain experts. Government decisions, the broadcasters argued, were not only censorious to commercial interests, but undermined content diversity.
In August 2011, the BCCC was recognised by the Delhi High Court as a self-regulatory body in a judgement that concerned a government order issued to the reality television show Sacch Ka Saamna in which contestants underwent a lie-detector test as a host posed a series of personal questions to them. The IMC stated that “the programme was not adhering to good taste and decency,” and was, on the whole, “vilifying, slanderous, obscene and defamatory with suggestive innuendoes and half truths.” But the court, while upholding the show-cause notice to Star Television which had sparked off the whole affair, found favour with the channel’s defence that bureaucrats were not the best people to monitor television content. “It is doubtful if an IMC comprising entirely of bureaucrats would be able to discharge that responsibility with the degree of objectivity it requires,” said the judgement. The court suggested that there had been a serious effort by channels to self-regulate content and future complaints might be referred to the BCCC.
That judicial acknowledgement was hailed as a huge step towards the independence of the broadcast industry. But the BCCC faces the same dilemma as many self-regulating organisations: an over-reliance on an outdated and inefficient government guideline, in this case the “programme code”, contained in Rule 6 of The Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994. This is a joyless and outdated policy which has not once been updated in 18 years—years that have marked the most vibrant and expansive time in Indian television.
The government’s absolute monopoly over broadcasting comes from the colonial Telegraph Act of 1885. Though this position was diluted by a subsequent Supreme Court judgement, which stated that the airwaves are public property, the regulatory power of the state remains undisputed.
The programme code contains various classes of content not deemed suitable for television broadcast. It prohibits the telecast of programming which is “obscene” or “offends good taste or decency” or even “encourages superstition and blind belief”. But even though “good taste” and “decency” may be found at dinner-table conversations, it is absent from legal definition. As it stands, the code does not permit “irony” in the portrayal of certain ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups or even allow “snobbery” on air.
The violation of the programme code can lead to penalties that range from apology scrolls at the bottom of the screen, to outright banning of the channels. Broadcasters are frequently compelled to challenge government orders in the Delhi High Court, since the license for beaming signals to India may be revoked if more than five such notices are issued—a pragmatic reason for them to have sought enforcement via a private regulatory body, instead of resigning themselves to the mercies of the inter-ministerial group in the first place.
However, with every order issued by the BCCC, the danger of its emulating the state grows. The BCCC’s effective similarity to the severe, literal government line is starkly evident from the “Self-Regulatory Content Guidelines for Non-News & Current Affairs Television Channels”, a charter for the BCCC’s adjudication process. (This self-censorship is institutionalised in each channel through the establishment of an internal Standard and Practices Department which screens content before it is broadcast according to these content guidelines.)
The charter reveals a phalanx of prohibitions, based on seven key categories: Crime and Violence; Sex, Obscenity and Nudity; Horror and Occult; Harm and Offence; Drugs, Smoking, Tobacco, Solvents and Alcohol; Religion and Community; and General Restrictions. The guidelines under each theme are applied not in substitution, but in addition to the programme code under the Cable Network Rules, with the general result that the code’s reasoning is built on and extended. The guidelines with respect to Sex, Obscenity and Nudity, for instance, state officiously that such themes should be handled in a “responsible and aesthetic manner”. It includes the caution that while content on human relationships may include sexual relations, it should not present sex, nudity, kissing, or offensive behaviour or language.
As limiting as all this sounds, the guidelines are in fact so vague that they tend to promote self-censorship. For instance, the regulation with respect to “lip locks” asks for “sensitivity in presentation”. This is so broadly phrased that a broadcaster would prefer to omit a kiss instead of worrying about whether or not one would meet some obfuscating aesthetic standard.
Indeed, the table of complaints, which includes a handy column detailing judgements and recommendations, also records how channels have promised not to renew shows for which complaints were received and issued notices to that effect. In August, the BCCC imposed penalties of Rs 10 lakh on Big CBS Love and Rs 2.5 lakh on Big CBS Spark, for telecasts of Sex and the City and America’s Next Top Model, respectively, for instances of female nudity, gestures and kissing, most of which were termed as “suggestive”.
All this engenders serious doubt about the presumption that self-regulation is a sort of benevolent liberal alternative to state sanction. The danger, in fact, is that this private adjudication of legality of content may further diminish media diversity. By pushing shows that question, provoke and excite out to the fringes of primetime, broadcasters leave themselves with little room to experiment.
A list of decisions taken by BCCC from 20 June 2011 to 20 June 2013 shows the regulator responding sympathetically to viewer complaints such as, “It teaches gullible girls to wretchedly kill with brute rudeness and to amass others’ wealth,” with regard to Bangaru Koddalu on Gemini TV. Or: “It shows the protagonist, a British, stuffing hashish, contraband, inside the idol of Lord Ganesha. The idol could have been concealed and not shown to avoid hurting of religious feelings,” about National Geographic’s Banged Up Abroad.
Any debate on the models of regulation should be preceded by an honest examination of the underlying law. We need to ask ourselves if we are, as a society, truly uncomfortable with irony and snobbery on television. Such an inquiry is necessary not for an absolute allowance to programmers but a clearer legal identification of problematic content. Until we fail to address this, the regulatory action will remain schizophrenic, irrespective of the authority that enforces it.
Perhaps it might even give us some food for thought on what truly constitutes harm to viewers. Last year, the BCCC, which had taken serious note of the danger of encouraging pornography through the participation of Sunny Leone on Bigg Boss, received a complaint concerning a particular episode of the same show, in which one participant says to another: “Tum karo to chamatkar, hum kare to balatkar” (When you do a thing it is a miracle, but when I do the same thing it is rape). Finding “nothing objectionable” in the joke, the BCCC disposed of the complaint.
This article was originally published in The Caravan on October 1, 2013.