India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) is once again signalling that streaming services should be folded into the proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill — a framework that would graft cable-era obligations, including a programme code and potential local-content carriage rules, onto Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, JioHotstar and a long tail of niche platforms. The renewed push, after two earlier drafts triggered fierce industry pushback, deserves scrutiny on both legal and economic grounds. The risk is not that India regulates streaming; every major jurisdiction does in some form. The risk is that it regulates streaming as if it were 1995 cable.
What the Bill Actually Proposes
The 2023 draft of the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, circulated by MIB for consultation in November 2023, expanded the definition of "broadcasting network operator" to include OTT platforms and digital news. It mandated three-tier self-regulation, a programme code, content evaluation committees, and registration with the government. After the draft leaked in mid-2024 and triggered alarm from journalists, creators and platforms, MIB publicly withdrew it in August 2024 — but officials have continued to indicate that a revised version remains on the legislative agenda.
The version now being floated reportedly retains the core architecture: content codes modelled on the Cable Television Networks Rules, and the possibility of local-content carriage obligations comparable to those that apply to terrestrial broadcasters. India already regulates streaming content through the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which created a three-tier grievance redressal mechanism for OTT players. Layering a second regulator on top, with broadcasting-style obligations, is the issue.
The Quota Idea: Borrowed From a Different Problem
Local-content quotas have a long pedigree in audiovisual regulation. The European Union's Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), revised in 2018, requires on-demand services to ensure that at least 30% of their catalogues consist of European works and to give those works prominence. France goes further, imposing investment obligations on streamers operating in its market. Proponents in Delhi cite these precedents as cover.
But the analogy is weaker than it looks:
- India is already a net exporter of content for global streamers. Indian-language originals are commissioned at scale precisely because the addressable audience justifies it commercially. The market is producing local content without a mandate.
- Catalogue quotas were designed for markets where domestic production was structurally undersupplied. The EU rule responded to American catalogue dominance. India's situation is the opposite — the constraint on Indian audiovisual output is not demand, it is distribution and discoverability.
- Cable-style "must-carry" rules assume scarce spectrum. Streaming has no scarcity problem. Importing the logic without the underlying constraint produces regulation in search of a problem.
The Compliance-Cost Problem
Even setting aside quotas, applying a broadcasting programme code to streamers raises a free-speech and a cost problem simultaneously. India's OTT sector has grown rapidly — industry estimates from the FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment report place digital media revenues at over ₹80,000 crore in 2024, with subscription video forming a substantial share. A meaningful portion of that growth comes from smaller, independent platforms covering regional languages and niche genres. They are precisely the operators least able to absorb the cost of content evaluation committees, registration filings, and discretionary takedown obligations.
The 2023 draft's content evaluation committee requirement — a pre-publication review body for every regulated entity — would functionally re-introduce the kind of prior restraint India's Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down in the print and online context.
The Constitutional Overhang
The Supreme Court's decision in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) — which struck down Section 66A of the IT Act — set a high bar for content-based speech restrictions. The Court has been similarly cautious in Anuradha Bhasin (2020) and the ongoing IT Rules 2021 challenges. A broadcasting-style code that vests discretionary takedown powers in the executive, applied to a medium that the Court has treated as more analogous to print than to broadcast, will face serious Article 19(1)(a) scrutiny.
A Proportionate Path Forward
The pro-innovation case is not that streaming should be unregulated. It is that the regulatory tool should match the actual harm. Specifically:
- Consolidate, don't duplicate. The IT Rules 2021 framework already covers grievance redressal for OTT content. Adding a second regime under MIB creates forum-shopping and uncertain liability.
- Drop catalogue quotas. India's content economy is the wrong patient for that prescription. If discoverability of Indian-language works is a concern, address it through prominence guidance, not mandated percentages.
- Avoid prior restraint. Content evaluation committees should not be a precondition for publication.
- Differentiate by scale. Compliance obligations should be calibrated to subscriber size, as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, did for Significant Data Fiduciaries.
India has a real opportunity here. It hosts one of the world's largest streaming audiences, a thriving creative sector, and meaningful global platform investment. Importing a regulatory model designed for the cable-and-spectrum age would not protect Indian culture — it would tax it. The Ministry's continued nudging toward this framework suggests political momentum that the consultation process has not yet redirected. Industry, civil society and Parliament should keep pushing for a lighter, narrower, scale-aware approach before a third draft hardens into law.