NEW DELHI- Indigenous Technology and Colour TV

PUSHED hard at first by the Information and Broadcasting Minister as a personal fad or, more appropriately, as a personal enterprise, colour TV is now beginning to throw up interesting questions and ticklish policy issues. The official position is as ambivalent and obfuscating as can be. This is part of the style of functioning of the present government. Will one hundred or four hundred thousand colour TV sets be imported in the next few months? Or will only colour TV kits to be fitted into cabinets by Indian manufacturers of black and white TV be allowed to be imported? That there is no firm decision on such issues is clear from the apprehensions being publicly expressed by the Indian TV Manufacturers' Association. According to the Association, alter its members had placed adequate orders on the ETTDC, the public sector canalising agency for the imports of colour TV kits, to meet domestic demand, there should be no import of colour TV sets as such. There is a division also among local TV manufacturers since only the relatively larger units among them are being allowed to assemble colour TV sets and the smaller ones feel that they would be left out in the cold in the switch from black and white to colour TV. What is indeed interesting is that the question of colour TV has come to a head in the name of the Asiad which is supposed to generate so much demand for colour TV that things have to be done immediately to satisfy this demand. The pull of elitist demand in the market, real and contrived, on official policy has never in the past manifested itself so grossly as in the case of colour TV.