'Name and shame' has helped improve states' biz rankings: Kant
Davos: Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant today said some states have improved in terms of ease of doing business after they were ranked very low on an index, as he credited the change to "name and shame".
Speaking at a session here at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Kant said he is a great believer in "name and shame" and that seemed to do the trick for poorly ranked states.
Talking about the government's focus on improving ease of doing business across the country, Kant said, "When we started ranking states on ease of doing business, we saw that the states that were ranked lower in first year, they started improving later."
He was speaking on how real time data management can help in the economic growth process.
"We are doing this with real time monitoring of data and now we are going to rank districts. We are doing these rankings on different parameters," Kant said.
He said the data is not designed by government officials but by independent entities like Tata Trusts and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This real time data is helping capture the reforms undertaken by the concerned state on a continuous basis and results in appropriate change in the rankings.
He explained how real-time data monitoring is proving to be a game-changer in improving outcomes in health, education and financial inclusion for the people of India.
He said the government is using indices to achieve development goals and making states compete with one another.
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Union government assumes full control over TV ratings, TRAI role curtailed: Report
New Delhi: The Union government has assumed full control over television audience measurement, removing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from oversight of the ratings system that underpins the country’s ₹36,000 crore television advertising market, according to a report published on Wednesday.
The report in Mint said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) now has exclusive authority over the framework governing how television ratings are measured and regulated. TRAI had been entrusted with oversight of TV ratings in 2012 during the UPA government’s tenure. TRAI is no longer mentioned in the relevant policy document, effectively vesting sole authority in the MIB.
The report said TRAI will continue to regulate other aspects of broadcasting, including channel pricing, advertising caps, interconnection and distribution norms, service quality and compliance standards. Its role in determining how ratings agencies track viewing behaviour has been withdrawn.
Television Rating Points (TRPs), which reflect viewership patterns, guide advertisers in deciding where to allocate spending across channels and time slots.
A government source quoted in the report said the ministry could modify TRAI’s decisions even when the regulator oversaw broadcasting.
A former CEO of Prasar Bharati told the newspaper that the MIB has historically regulated rating agencies through licensing and guidelines, and by holding them accountable under existing norms.
During its tenure overseeing ratings, TRAI had taken decisions affecting the broadcast sector, which included capping advertising time at 12 minutes per hour following complaints about excessive commercial breaks and it now remains unclear how these matters will be addressed under the revised arrangement.
Satya N. Gupta, former principal advisor at TRAI, was quoted as saying that merging regulatory functions with policy oversight and removing an independent regulator from the process was a retrograde step.
TRAI’s involvement in broadcasting had earlier attracted criticism as well. In 2012, its consultation paper on quantitative limits on television advertising was viewed by some as overlapping with the Advertising Standards Council of India’s code. Subsequent recommendations covering television audience measurement, ownership of news channels and issues such as paid news had also raised concerns among sections of the industry.
Television ratings have faced scrutiny in recent years, including during the controversy involving the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), where officials of the ratings body were prosecuted over allegations of manipulation of viewership data.
