I&B Secretary Amit Khare: The role played by I&B Ministry is of facilitation, not regulation

On Monday, during the

CII Big Picture Summit

, Siddharth Roy Kapur, President of the Producers Guild of India, raised the issue of

regulation

of

digital platforms

and said that Indian series are doing well and winning Emmys, and government should consider 'a very light touch regulation'.
Meanwhile,

Amit Khare

, Secretary, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, pointed out that he has repeatedly mentioned in summits that the role of I&B ministry is that of a facilitator and not a regulator.

It is important to not have regressive regulatory scheme: Siddharth Roy Kapur
Siddharth Roy Kapur said, "TV and

OTT

have seen a massive jump this year because people were not able to go to cinema halls. It just went from one distribution channel to another, but the need for entertainment didn’t go away. What we have seen in this period is that while the need for entertainment exists, the form of distribution may change from time to time, depending on what is happening within society. It is important for us as an industry to realise the importance of every form of distribution to take out content to the audience.”
He added,"Now that OTT has come under the ambit of I&B ministry, we hope that we will continue to have a dialogue in that regard. Our content is winning Emmy awards. It is important for us to ensure that we don’t have a regressive regulatory scheme there, and a very light touch regulation. We have to ensure that our creators can give the audiences the very best of our content. You can access all kinds of content on the internet, so I think our regulatory scheme should really be able to reflect on that and make sure that we give the industry a massive push.”

Role of I&B ministry is of facilitation, not regulation: Amit Khare
Referring to amendment in allocation of business rules in November, Amit Khare said, "I would start with what

Mr Siddharth Roy Kapur

had mentioned about the OTT platform. Behind the change done in the month of November, the idea was to bring content in one place, that is Ministry of I&B, and platform sets in another place, that is Ministry of IT. It has been done for not parity, not uniformity, but only so that all content is at one place, and all platforms should be at other places. I will again mention that the role of government in this sector is mostly that of a facilitator. I keep telling my colleagues within the ministry and outside that with a budget of around Rs 4,000 crores, this ministry is one of the smallest in terms of budget but largest in terms of influence. That influence comes only through the private sector because all the filmmaking in this country except for a few films made by National Film Development Corporation (

NFDC

), it is entirely private."
He added,"Broadcasting channels except for Prasar Bharati, all OTT platforms are private, and now

Prasar Bharati

is also considering to have a private platform of its own. NFDC is also thinking on those lines.” NFDC has been showing films on its online platform.