Indian state wields too much power over everything. I guess it's remnant of a socialistic past. Consider this: CBFC is film certification board that can block a movie's release until appropriate cuts are made subject to their whims and fancies. This makes no logical sense. Why should the Govt. interfere in whatever the movie wants to show? The max stipulation should be on what content is appropriate to which age group.
Websites can be blocked by people who have zero clue what they are about. Television programmes can be asked to censor everything from expletives to kissing scenes. (Try seeing Kill Bill with all violent scenes removed). Hell, Karnataka Govt. even tried to cap the price of movie tickets. [1]
The fact that a random litigation can persuade a judge to order to block 1000+ sites is downright scary. I don't see anything changing near future. Politicians (and even judiciary) rarely want to do away with any power they have.
Many countries have film certification boards with similar powers, though they tend to be lenient. Same for web and television censorship.
While you may consider these powers authoritarian, there’s nothing inherently “socialistic” about them.
In the UK and US for example, censorship laws are often bundled into anti-terror legislation, which generally has its strongest proponents on the political right.
Maybe not "socialistic" in the traditional sense but if you see India's history, from 50s to 90s, you'll see how it all evolved. Govt. ran everything (Banks, Telecoms, Automobile manufacturing) and installed thousands of institutions to regulate everything. Even after liberalisation, there's a strong tendency to regulate and feeble support to give a free-hand.
The power to block movie releases is common. For example, A Serbian Film "has been banned in Spain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Norway, and South Korea, and was temporarily banned from screening in Brazil."
It would have been better to offer free screenings of A Serbian Film to movie critics and bloggers, and then nobody else would have wanted to watch the atrocity.
> Hell, Karnataka Govt. even tried to cap the price of movie tickets.
This just sounds like a good thing to me.
The state government was under pressure from Kannada
organisations to cap movie tickets in multiplexes to Rs
200 so that a common man can afford to watch Kannada or
non-Kannada films even in [multiplexes]
It sounds good but price ceilings rarely help people. The free market generally does a good enough job at finding the optimal price. It's easy enough to say that movie theater owners are greedy and just want more money, but that's exactly why they're even in the business--to make money. If you remove that incentive, they really have to reason to continue operating.
You can see this in action in New York with its rent controls: the government decided the common man needed to be able to afford housing. Seems like a noble goal, but soon landlords couldn't afford to fix their houses or pay for utilities, and so they left the market. And nobody was going to start a new apartment and nobody was going to fund one because it's unprofitable. As a result, the housing situation is even worse than how it was before.
There is no free market. They would sell popcorn at 2x the movie ticket cost. And the movie ticket costs are absurd here in karnataka. And its all one player game.
I understand what you are trying to say, but the movie ticket prices had sky rocketed beyond reach of a large section of the population. Now, you may argue that it is somehow the loss of the multiplexes by alienating people, but movies are somewhat of a necessity for cultural and social reasons.
Imagine having a consortium of telecom companies deciding to charge $100/Gb of data (assuming they are making profit nevertheless). There is no incentive for them to reduce the price.
To give you an example, a movie ticket would cost upto $20 in an economy where a bottle of water costs ~$0.2.
> Why should the Govt. interfere in whatever the movie wants to show? The max stipulation should be on what content is appropriate to which age group.
You should realize that what you say here is very relative to your cultural context. Some other group could say "The max stipulation should be on what content is appropriate to which as demonstrate the ability to handle it" while another could say "where is there a max stipulation ? Why should they dictate something like that ?".
Also, our gov do censor a lot of things as well, by different mean. Using laws, economic influence, information flooding, etc.
I get that we should aim for as much freedom (and associated responsibility) as possible for the people, but your analysis that "Indian state wields too much power over everything. I guess it's remnant of a socialistic past." quite a shortcut.
> Indian state wields too much power over everything
I think its part of our culture, it begins in our childhood where our parents tell their kids that kids (even when they become adults) should blindly obey their parents.
Websites can be blocked by people who have zero clue what they are about. Television programmes can be asked to censor everything from expletives to kissing scenes. (Try seeing Kill Bill with all violent scenes removed). Hell, Karnataka Govt. even tried to cap the price of movie tickets. [1]
The fact that a random litigation can persuade a judge to order to block 1000+ sites is downright scary. I don't see anything changing near future. Politicians (and even judiciary) rarely want to do away with any power they have.
[1]: http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/kar...