Abhishek Singhvi, the national spokesperson of the Congress party, has a column in today’s Hindustan Times where he seeks to defend the much criticized Broadcasting Bill. Posts about the bill on this blog (two of which can be accessed here and here) have tended to also be critical of particular aspects of the Bill.

Singhvi attempts to fend off criticism, but I for one remained unpersuaded, perhaps because less than half of the short column focuses on the actual criticisms of the Bill (some of which have been very pointed). Singhvi ends his column by asking readers to have more faith in the capacity of our mature democracy to strike the right balance. This, I thought, was a particularly unconvincing plea, considering how little of ‘balance’ one has seen in debates about public policy at the highest levels in recent times. I hope those of us who have more exposure to the intricacies of this area of the law will comment on the merits of Singhvi’s defence.