Jurassic Vision

SUPERANNUATED bureaucrat S.S. Gill, in his capacity as the executive-member of the newly-constituted Prasar Bharati Board, a perch that places him on par with the cabinet secretary, has been assigned a pivotal role in the autonomous corporation that will henceforth be the sole authority in charge of Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR). So when the former information and broadcasting secretary decides to make all the right noises about weeding out commercialism from Doordarshan, clamping down hard on surrogate advertising, mercilessly yanking off shows that don't measure up to his idea of healthy entertainment, and propping up programmes that uphold Indian values, for whatever they are worth, it is time to worry.

Worry about the future of Doordarshan. Worry about the real intentions of the Prasar Bharati Board. Worry about the cherished concept of autonomy going awfully awry. For this past week, Gill has sounded more like a power-crazed, intemperate, muscle-flexing C.M. Ibrahim than a wise old man who, along with seven other eminent people, has been pitchforked into the cockpit of a high-profile organisation whose primary brief is to unshackle Doordarshan and AIR from the control of the rulers of the day and prepare it for the challenges that lie ahead, especially in the form of private satellite channels. He seems bent upon grabbing the two national broadcasters from the clutches of Shastri Bhavan and promptly delivering them into the hands of the India International Centre (IIC). If there is anything that can be worse for the health of India's electronic media than constant interference from political quarters, which was hitherto the unfortunate norm, it is being subjected to the whims and fancies of septuagenarians hopelessly out of sync with the times. Will Gill's will be allowed to run riot and kill the golden goose that is Doordarshan?

Gill's pronouncement that the Prasar Bharati Board, which is headed by veteran columnist Nikhil Chakravartty, will "put an end to crass commercialism as we attempt to strike a healthy balance between viewer-friendly shows and culturally rich programmes" sounds just great on paper. Quality programming, after all, should be the top priority for any network. But it leads to grave doubts: why should the Board be in such a tearing hurry to lay down programming norms? It smacks of a degree of intolerance that is unbecoming of gentlemen who are known to be wedded to the liberal cause. One is sure they will readily agree that it can only be in the interest of Doordarshan and AIR if a plurality of voices and programming options are allowed to flourish on the same platform. Public service broadcasting need not be a lifeless, colourless vehicle for drab, unimaginative doses of high culture.

What the masses want, even if it is not always exactly what the cultural establishment likes, should also find its rightful space on Doordarshan and AIR. Simply because it is infra-dig for a certain segment of our society, popular culture cannot be forcibly kept out.

Especially from Doordarshan, which needs its share of Hindi films, mythological serials and long-running soaps to sustain the flow of advertising revenue. True, what sells might not always be great television, but the solution doesn't lie in hastily blacking out popular programmes. It lies in supplementing mainstream fare with alternative software concepts—independent documentaries, chat shows that address significant social issues, programmes devoted to serious cinema, theatre and art—and gradually creating a natural demand for them. Blanket bans and sweeping changes cannot but be counter-productive as much for Doordarshan itself as for the millions of households that tune in every day. The latter will simply switch off and Doordarshan will fall off the popularity charts.

Television, one must remember, is a young, protean medium. It needs the raging fire of juvenescence, not the cold embers of old age, to keep ticking. It is a medium in which the future zooms in even before the present has fully faded out. So it requires the dynamism of youth to stay abreast of the times. There can be no place here for relics of the past. Sadly, that is precisely what the Prasar Bharati Board is packed with. The chairman is 80 years old and the average age of the eight members is over 70. Is this an admission by the government that India doesn't have younger people who are capable of shouldering the onerous task of running Doordarshan and AIR? Or is this simply, as is being widely suspected, prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral's farewell gift to his IIC friends?

Well, our quarrel is certainly not with the credentials of the personalities who have been nominated to the Prasar Bharati Board. Nikhil Chakravartty, a widely respected political columnist, is still as prolific as ever with his opinion pieces. Former newspaper editor B.G. Verghese, who chaired the Working Group on Autonomy for AIR and Doordarshan immediately after the Emergency, understands media dynamics more than anyone else in the country. Litterateur Rajendra Yadav has singlehandedly kept the literary magazine in Hindi, Hans, alive in the face of heavy odds. Leftist historian Romila Thapar, space scientist U.R. Rao, former Indian ambassador to the US Abid Hussain and erstwhile Tamil Nadu chief secretary A. Padmanabhan, too, are people of unimpeachable integrity, personages with an enviable track record in their respective fields of endeavour. But, rather unfortunately, all of them represent a single age group—the age group that I.K. Gujral belongs to. Certainly not a situation that augurs well for DD and AIR.

It is said, and quite justifiably, that there's no substitute for experience and maturity. Especially when the gentlemen involved are of the stature of B.G. Verghese and Nikhil Chakravartty. But the value of youth and dynamism, too, cannot be discounted. Hence the Prasar Bharati Board would have had a more confidence-inspiring look had it achieved a mix of the B.G. Vergheses and Rajendra Yadavs on the one hand and a few 50-year-old poets, painters, architects, maybe even doctors and engineers, on the other. But since that hasn't happened, the nation is stuck with a cultural cabal that could end up turning DD into a pocketborough of the IIC. If S.S. Gill, during whose tenure as I&B secretary sponsored serials began on DD, is allowed to cut the tree that the sapling he planted has yielded, the well-meaning exercise initiated by I&B minister S. Jaipal Reddy by the July 22 revival of the long-mothballed Prasar Bharati Act is in grave danger of turning sour. It is a tragedy in the making that must be averted at all cost before the rot sets in.