To curb dominance of a single player in the cable sector, broadcasting regulator TRAI has recommended restrictions on the market share that a single Multi System Operator can hold.
As per recommendations made by the broadcasting sector regulator, rules should be amended to ensure that market share of Multi System Operators (MSOs) is restricted up to 50 per cent.
TRAI made the recommendations after I&B Ministry sought its advice saying that the cable TV distribution had been virtually monopolised by a single entity in some states.
In its recommendations, TRAI approved the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for measuring the level of competition or market concentration in a state.
The regulator said that to ensure that at least three MSOs of comparable size operate in a market, it would be desirable to restrict the building up of market share up to 50 per cent.
“The Authority recommends that the threshold value for any individual or ‘group’ entity contribution to the market HHI should be no more than 2,500,” TRAI said.
TRAI has also said that rules should be amended to ensure that any merger or acquisition involving MSOs or LCOs should require its prior approval of the regulator. The decision on any proposal, complete in all aspects, shall be conveyed within 90 working days, it said.
TRAI Chairman Rahul Khullar told reporters that virtual monopolisation of the market was not a pan-Indian problem but in certain states it had a serious dimension.
He said there were complaints that a particular channel was not shown if it did not toe a particular line. He said the issue was a complex one and involved a web of “power, money and politics”.
In its recommendations, TRAI said proposals of mergers and acquisitions of MSOs and LCOs shall be approved, provided that after the merger, market share of the entity does not exceed 50 per cent and certain other conditions.
“A time of 12 months is given to group(s), contributing more than 2,500 to market HHI of a relevant market, to limit its ‘control’ in various MSOs or LCOs in such a way that the contribution of market HHI of that ‘group’ reduces to less than or equal to 2500,” the TRAI recommended.
An official said that a single entity, if it is covering over 50 per cent of the market, it will not be allowed to merge with or acquire another MSO or LCO in that particular market.
TRAI has also said that if an entity controls many MSOs and LCOs simultaneously in a relevant market, these shall be treated as inter-connected entities.
TRAI said that it had been observed that certain markets like Delhi, Karnataka, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Maharashtra have a large number of MSOs while other markets like Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Odisha, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are characterised by dominance of a single MSO.
It also noted that a case of denial of market access was brought to the notice of Competition Commission of India (CCI) in 2011, when a broadcaster alleged that a group of MSOs, controlled by the same entity, operating in Punjab had acquired substantial market share in cable TV distribution and denied market access to its channel.
It said Tamil Nadu government had incorporated Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV Corporation Ltd in September, 2011 and had been expanding by taking over Headends from private MSOs.
“Interestingly, channels of the SUN group, an integrated player providing both broadcasting and distribution services, were not available on the TACTV network for quite some time,” TRAI observed.
GoM likely to have more sittings, indicate Ministers
Even as the Group of Ministers on Telangana interacted with government officials on the formation of the new State, a delegation of Seemandhra Ministers in the Union Cabinet on Wednesday met GoM member and Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and reiterated its demand that Hyderabad be made a permanent Union Territory.
Ministers have indicated that the GoM is likely to have a few more sittings, including one on Thursday, before sending its report to the Cabinet. The delegation insisted that the temple town of Bhadrachalam, now in Khammam district, in Telangana, be remerged with East Godavari district (in Seemandhra).
Officials from various government departments — Home, Finance, Water Resources, Health, Power and Personnel — presented their reports during the interactions. The GoM had sought clarifications from the Ministries of Home and Water Resources about naxal threats and water-sharing from the Krishna and Godavari. Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) V. Narayanasamy, a special invitee to the GoM, told The Hindu he was confident that the Telangana bill would be introduced in the ensuing winter session of Parliament, which begins on December 5, after all formalities were completed. Even as Seemandhra leaders seek that Hyderabad be brought under the Centre’s control, Telangana Rashtra Samithi MLA K.T. Chandrasekhara Rao maintains that his party was dissatisfied with the Centre’s announcement to make Hyderabad joint capital for 10 years. “Five years is more than enough for the Seemandhra people to create their own capital,” he said
Mars mission’s D-day in three days
ISRO readies to thrust spacecraft out of Earth orbit on December 1
The first Indian Mars mission began its last orbit around the Earth on Wednesday morning, even as its controllers prepared for the big night three days away.
On the night of November 30-December 1, the spacecraft will be finally thrust away from the Earth, and all the way towards the Red Planet, after gathering a total escape speed of around 11.4 kms a second.
Indian Space Research Organisation’s Scientific Secretary V. Koteswara Rao told a pre-event briefing at the control centre at the Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) on Wednesday, “We are planning for the Mars spacecraft to depart the Earth in the early hours of December 1.”
‘SECOND BIG CHALLENGE’
Dozens of controllers at the Mission Operations Complex at ISTRAC were getting set for what the space agency’s chairman, K. Radhakrishnan, earlier termed ‘the second big challenge in the Mars mission’: the day when they must precisely increase the spacecraft’s velocity and slingshot it exactly towards Mars.
Saturday’s trans-Mars insertion (TMI) is set for 12.49 am. The spacecraft has been orbiting the Earth once in almost four days or 91.3 hours, since November 16.
About the TMI, Mr. Rao said, “On that day we must burn the liquid engine for roughly 23 minutes, which will impart to it an incremental velocity of 648 metres per second. Then begins a journey of 680 million km over 300 days.”
Once it nears Mars, we will have another major operation in September 2014 to make it orbit the planet, he said.
In six orbit-raising operations from November 7 to November 16, the spacecraft has gradually been given its present velocity of 873 metres a second and it reached an apogee (farthest point) of 1.92 lakh km.
Once it moves beyond 2 lakh km, ISTRAC’s Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu would come into the picture with its two large antennas which can track huge interplanetary missions.
The spacecraft carrying five instruments to study Mars was launched on November 5 from Sriharikota.
Recording the sholas
Six hundred and forty one flora species of the Nilgiris are identified and recorded in IFGTB’s seminal book 'Flowering Plants of Sholas and Grasslands of the Nilgiris'
“From cradle to coffin, every single custom of the Todas is associated with plants and trees,” says Dr. N. Krishna Kumar, director of Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (IFGTB). He has co-authored Flowering Plants of Sholas and Grasslands of The Nilgiris along with P.S. Udayan (an assistant professor in Botany in Kerala with rich research experience in the flora of the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats), S.P. Subramani (currently in-charge of the Fishcer Herbarium at IFGTB, Coimbatore. He has 20 years of research in the Western Ghats and the Western Himalayas) and scientist R. Anandalakshmi who has done studies on seed biology of shola species.
“The tribals know the names of plants and trees in their language and we have recorded their botanical names, commonly used names in South Indian languages, besides their distribution, habitat,” he says.
The book also covers other species associated with Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Siddha, Tibetan, and modern. “We have included 641 species that is 90 per cent of species of the Sholas and the grasslands of the Nilgiris.”
The idea for the book came about when Krishna Kumar was the District Forest Officer in the Nilgiris from 1990 to 1996. “I was involved with a study on the fencing of shola patches and seminars on their restoration. I photographed the flowering plants and trees along with intern P.S. Udayan. We brought out a pictorial ready reckoner with 250 flowering plants and their taxonomy. But there was so much more to explore,” he says.
When he came back to Coimbatore as director of IFGTB, he decided on a more detailed work. “Udayan and Subramani who had earlier worked with Foundation for Re-vitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), an NGO in Bangalore that recorded medicinal plants of the Western Ghats, and Anandalakshmi joined me. The result is an important reference document.”
Subramani and Udayan visited over 20 different shola and grassland belts in the Nilgiris including Ankinda, Anumapuram, Bangitappal, Burliar, Coonoor, Doddabetta, Masinagudi, Mukruthi, Pykara, staircase shola, Thaishola, and upper Bhavani.
P.S. Subrami says, “We surveyed flowering plants, herbs, shrubs and trees. Every shola is unique with species diversity. The book has the combined data from the various sholas.”
The book classifies the species taxonomically along with details on distribution, flowering and fruiting time of the species and the altitude at which they are found.
Krishna Kumar mentions the Mappia species found in some of these sholas. Its leaves and bark are used in treating cancer. “Such species that have high medicinal value should be restored along with other dwindling medicinal plants,” he says. Subramani says accurate identification is important. “Over 100 tree species are endemic to the sholas.”
Free copies of the book have been distributed to forest offices in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Krishna Kumar says: “It is a benchmark reference especially at a time when climatic changes are affecting the Nilgiris. It serves as a handy guide for students, foresters, botanists, scientists, and researchers on Ayurveda and Siddha. A decade of work has gone into the making of this book.”
The book is published by IFGTB, Coimbatore along with Hill Area Development Programme, Ooty and National Biodiversity Authority, Chennai. It costs Rs. 1150. To get a copy of the book, call 0422- 2484100 from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. on working days.
China Moon probe next month
China on Tuesday announced plans to launch its third lunar probe early next month, which will, according to officials, attempt to carry out the first “soft landing” on the Moon by any nation in more than three decades.
The Chang’e-3 probe will carry a moon rover – named Jade Rabbit, or Yutu in Chinese – and conduct a soft-landing on the lunar surface in the middle of December. The rover, which takes its name from a popular Chinese mythological story about a rabbit that lives on the moon, will spend three months exploring the surface. Media reports said this would mark the first “soft landing” on the moon since 1976, when the former Soviet Union achieved the feat. If successful, China’s space mission will be only the third to do so, with the U.S. also carrying out soft landings in the 1960s. China, a decade ago, joined the U.S. and Russia in another landmark feat by sending its first astronaut into space.
Wu Zhijian, a spokesperson with the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, told reporters on Tuesday the mission will be “the most complicated and difficult task in China’s space exploration”.
The mission reflects the fast-growing ambitions of China’s space programme, which earlier this year launched its fifth manned space mission, after also achieving its first docking exercise in space with a laboratory module – a key step in its plans to launch its own space station by 2020.
Taking place close on the heels of the launch of India’s Mars orbiter, next month’s lunar mission underlines the rapid strides in both countries’ space programmes.
Chinese officials have, however, been at pains to downplay suggestions of competition between the two countries. Earlier this month, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told reporters that both countries had “expanded mutual cooperation” when asked about India’s Mars orbiter launch, although many Chinese media outlets saw India’s successful launch this month as a challenge to their space programme.
The Global Times, a widely read tabloid, in an editorial about the Mars orbiter wrote that “in front of an India that is striving to catch up with China, we have no other choice but to construct our comprehensive strategic power.” On Tuesday, Li Benzheng, the deputy commander-in-chief of the lunar programme, reiterated that there was “no space race” with India and that China “never thought we are in competition”, State media reported. He also praised India’s Mars orbiter launch as “a great accomplishment”, the New York Times quoted State media as saying.
Mr. Wu, the administration spokesperson, highlighted the difficulty of next month's lunar mission, saying that scientists needed to “ensure a timely launch because of multiple narrow windows of time”.
India and the European Space Agency, like China, have carried out lunar missions ending in impact crash landings on the moon’s surface.
India’s Chandrayaan-1, its first unmanned lunar probe, carried out an impact landing after its landmark mission, while the Chandrayaan-2, scheduled to launch in around three years’ time, is slated to attempt the more complex soft landing on the lunar surface.
Mr. Wu said that after carrying out a soft landing - the first since 1976 - the Jade Rabbit rover will explore areas around the landing spot and send back 3D images and lunar soil analysis. The rover will be carried on the Chang’e-3 probe. The first Chang’e probe in 2007 mapped the moon, and crash landed on its surface after a 16 month-long mission. The Change'e-2 probe in 2010 improved the resolution of the map.
Cyclone Lehar weakens
Speed of the winds during landfall will be 70-80 km/hr as against 200 km/hr predicted earlier
Cyclone Lehar, which is expected to strike the Andhra coast close to Machillipatnam on Thursday afternoon, lost it’s very severe intensity on Wednesday night. According to the India Meteorological Department, it will make a landfall as a normal cyclone. Speed of the winds during the landfall will be 70-80 km/hr, gusting up to 90 km/hr.
The state authorities, who had to redeploy the rescue forces and make changes in its disaster management plans on Wednesday after the cyclone changed its direction, heaved a sigh of relief. The cyclone was originally expected to make the landfall close to Kakinada in East Godavari but by Wednesday afternoon it started moving towards Machillipatnam in Krishna district.
Despite the storm losing its intensity, the coastal areas are on high alert. More than 27,000 people have been evacuated from Krishna, West Godavari and East Godavari districts. Of them, more than 21,000 people were evacuated from East Godavari alone.
“Initially, our focus was on Visakhapatnam and West and East Godavari districts. Since the cyclone is going to make the landfall close to Machillipatnam, we’re now focusing on Krishna and the Godavari districts,” said C Parthasarathi, commissioner for state disaster management department. People from Guntur and Visakhapatnam will be evacuated only if it’s required, he added. More than 100 relief camps have been opened in Krishna and Godavari districts.
After getting cyclone alert from the fisheries department almost all boats that had ventured into the sea safely returned to the coast by Wednesday evening.
