Tavleen Singh
India Today
December 6, 1999
Title: Given its incompetence, do we need a Prasar Bharati Board? Author: Tavleen Singh Publication: India Today Date: December 6, 1999 As one of the victims of the Prasar Bharati BoardI have been more than slightly amused by the public whining that has emanated from the two members of the board who were recently retired. Rajendra Yadav has accused the Government of fascism and Romila Thapar said, "They have deliberately picked up the two persons who they thought were ideologically opposed to them. Quite clearly it confirms their fear of people who don't share their opinion." Personally, I found this most interesting because I was one of the journalists who was considered unsuitable to anchor programmes on DD because of my alleged soft corner for the BJP. The facts are that I have never been a supporter of the BJP and have been as critical of its policies as I have of the Congress' but my open objections to India having an Italian prime minister were interpreted by the Prasar Bharati Board as support for the BJP. So when DD -- desperate for programming for its news channel -- constantly refused to allow me to anchor anything, I made some inquiries and was told that the board considered me unsuitable because of my BJP leanings. Fair enough, you might say. This board was appointed when Inder Kumar Gujral was prime minister and he naturally chose people who supported his leftist worldview. But the matter does not end there. The board proceeded to favour television programmes from journalists whose leftist leanings were cast in iron. One journalist for whom they appear to have had a particular weakness is reported to have been a card-carrying member of the CPI(ML). During DD's election programmes the board's soft corner for leftist journalists and analysts became blatant. It openly objected to those who did not fit its pinko bill and as openly insisted on featuring those who did. Should we consider this fascism, Mr Yadav? Fascism is a word that often gets misused in an Indian political context. It is usually used by our more leftist political leaders to describe those whom they consider too right of centre. Technically, the word means "a philosophy or governmental system marked by stringent socio-economic control, a strong central government usually headed by a dictator, and often a belligerently nationalistic policy". It is a European word which first entered the political lexicon with the advent of Benito Mussolini. If we search honestly for parallels in India then we could, perhaps, use it to describe Indira Gandhi's politics during the Emergency. Bal Thackeray fits the bill and would, undoubtedly, be proud to be described as a fascist. L.K. Advani's Ayodhya movement had its fascist moments in the way in which Muslims as a community became a target. But to describe Atal Bihari Vajpayee's namby-pamby government as fascist is almost as absurd as using that word to describe the Prasar Bharati Board. What the board definitely was, though, was thoroughly incompetent. Its members seemed to believe they had been appointed solely to be arbiters of Indian TV tastes and so confined themselves to interference in programming. None of them had any real experience in this area, so DD programmes remained as bad as ever. Corruption flourished as we saw from the crores of rupees worth of assets that a CBI probe into a DD official's affairs revealed last year. The new I&B minister will probably find that the roots of corruption go so deep that destroying them is almost impossible. We spend about Rs 1,000 crore of taxpayers' money on DD every year to keep it afloat. So, can anyone explain why we need a Prasar Bharati Board at all? Arun Jaitley is absolutely right when he says that Prasar Bharati needs to be professionalised. But, from Professor Thapar we get more sneers. "What do they mean by it?" she told The Hindu. "Do they want to fill the board with media people and exclude people from areas such as education, health, etc? This was not the original intention of the Prasar Bharati. As a public service broadcaster, it was expected to both inform and educate the people. That's why people from different areas of expertise were put on it." Well, we then have the right to ask why DD spends most of its time churning out soap operas, Hindi movies and unwatchable "educative" programmes. Should it not already have been promoting literacy, healthcare, population control, sanitation? Should it not, at the very least, have been able to come up with one channel to spread primary education in areas where schools have failed to do the job? The truth is Prasar Bharati is an idea whose time has gone. State-controlled TV, for that matter, is also an idea whose time has expired and the best thing that the Government can do is privatise TV and radio if it cannot get them to make money. The Rs 1,500 crore spent annually on DD and air could be much better spent on schools and hospitals. Since this Government is unlikely to have the guts to make a dramatic change can we at least have a Prasar Bharati Board that understands that broadcasting is a business and not some kind of intellectual exercise? When Jaitley chooses new members, could he also keep in mind that just as it was wrong for the board to be treated as a dharamshala for ageing leftists it would be equally wrong to now fill it up with ageing knickerwallas. We really do need professionals and the success of the private channels is proof that there are plenty around.
This archive was generated by (modified version of) hypermail.pl 1.00