Having spent the last three months in Karachi with brief interludes in Wah, Lahore and Sri Lanka, I find the sudden mushrooming of private TV channels the most refreshing change in Pakistan in a long time.

Suddenly, subjects long considered taboo by the state-controlled PTV are being debated live. Heated discussions are now taking place on major events like the break-up of Pakistan in 1971, Bhutto's judicial murder and the army's dismissal of elected governments.

Current political events are also being openly and energetically debated: even the military's nation-wide real estate operations are now no longer off-bounds. In short, there are no longer many sacred cows that cannot be targeted.

This development is specially welcome in a country where people do not read very much: I was shocked when my old friend Ghazi Salahuddin informed me recently that the combined circulation of all newspapers in Pakistan in every region and in every language is less than the sale of newspapers in New Delhi alone. One reason for this is that our newspapers cost several times what an average Indian paper costs (around Rs 10 against Rs 1.50). The other reason, of course, is the low literacy rate here.

Thus, far more Pakistanis watch TV than read newspapers. Earlier, we were forced to watch the rubbish aired by PTV in the garb of political discussions. These consisted of tightly scripted and censored programmes where a group of talking heads solemnly agreed with the official line. Then, mercifully, CNN and the BBC came to our rescue, but as these are in English, many Pakistanis still had to suffer PTV's puerile programming. Now, finally, a number of local channels have stepped in to satisfy the appetite for honest, uncensored debate on a wide range of national issues.

A few weeks ago, a London-based Urdu channel had Mustafa Khar tell us about Bhutto's last torments at the hands of his army gaolers. Then he took on Ijazul Haq, Zia's son, who was also present in the studio, and asked him to identify the source of his healthy bank balance, alleging that the late dictator had lined his pockets during his baneful stint. This kind of televised hatchet-job would have been unthinkable a year ago.

Another very useful role the new channels are playing is of informing us of points of view the state had successfully kept out of the public eye thus far. For instance, when the Indian foreign minister was interviewed before the Saarc summit, he categorically accused Pakistan of refusing to submit to the 1948 UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir.

So far, Pakistanis have been brainwashed into believing that it was India who did not permit a plebiscite in Kashmir. But in actual fact, the resolutions clearly called for the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from Azad Kashmir followed by the 'thinning' of Indian troops as pre-conditions for a plebiscite. In the event, since Pakistani troops remained in place, the other steps could not follow.

Similarly, instead of getting second- and third-hand accounts of what Indian politicians are saying, we now get their views directly. Many of them have come on the record to state their support of the embryonic peace process. This demolishes the image cultivated by the Pakistani establishment of a monolithic, warlike India bent on imposing its will on the region.

Indeed, the open and ongoing debate on Indo-Pak relations is probably one factor propelling our rulers to the negotiating table. Without the distorting filter of PTV to keep reality obscured from us, enterprising reporters and analysts on the private channels keep us up-to-date in a way we are unaccustomed to.

Unfortunately, the decision to force local cable operators to prevent us from watching Indian news channels goes counter to the refreshing spirit of openness and free discourse now in the air. What does the government fear from Indian TV channels?

Initially, the Indian government had banned PTV from being shown by their cable operators, and this resulted in a tit-for-tat reaction from our side. Expecting maturity and sophistication from bureaucrats in New Delhi and Islamabad is a bit like expecting intelligence from the wrestlers who maul each other daily on some of the sports channels.

Alas, private radio networks do not have the same freedom of expression their TV cousins enjoy, largely because they beam their programmes from Pakistan-based stations while the TV channels have sensibly based their operations offshore. This permits them to escape the stranglehold of the information ministry. Thus, the new FM radio channels stick to music and sanitised news and discussions, depriving their listeners of more refreshing fare. But it is only a matter of time before the control of the airwaves is permanently wrested away from the state.

Indeed, market forces are working inexorably to undermine PTV and Radio Pakistan. With declining viewers, more and more advertisers are flocking to the private channels which have more flexible rates than their bureaucratic state-owned counterparts. Sooner or later, the red ink on their balance sheets will force the government to privatize these white elephants, ridding us of them forever. Just as the BBC's role in Britain is now being debated, it is time we discuss the future of state broadcasting in Pakistan.

It is clear that the one-sided and clumsily censored news and discussion programmes aired by the government are not just self-serving, but also self-defeating. Over the years, the public has learned not to believe anything radio or television tells them.

In the 1971 war, the only way we found out what was really happening on the battlefield was to tune in to the BBC. There are far too many other examples of the blatant lying the state channels indulged in over the years to warrant a repletion here. But all Pakistanis above their teens will recall how constantly we have been deliberately misled by our leaders over the airwaves.

However, the emergence of private channels does not mean that suddenly all the truth is available to us: there is a tendency among many print and electronic journalists to support their country, right or wrong. But at least now many professional journalists are looking for the truth, prodding and poking around in Islamabad, trying to scoop their rivals. It is this competition that is our best guarantee that, in the long run, we will get a close approximation of the truth. In short, the government's monopoly on the news is drawing to an end. Let us toast its early demise.