Prasar Bharati Vs The Ministry of I&B

Prasar Bharati Vs The Ministry of I&B   

Jawhar Sircar

(Published in The Lokmat Times, 27.02.2018)

        

                 The recent public fight between A Surya Prakash, Chairman of Prasar Bharati and Smriti Irani, the minister for Information and Broadcasting reveals that even when both swear allegiance to the same BJP and its parent, the RSS, their interests and differences can be deadly. It rudely belies the fond hope of the ruling establishment that peace and harmony would reign once a ‘dissident’ CEO was smoked out before the end of his protected tenure. From the self goals made by both sides emerges an interesting case study of how the Indian state functions after the biggest historical electoral mandate brought Modi to the Centre. 

             The information ministry’s increasing stranglehold over a statutory body like Prasar Bharati shows its obsessive urge to control, not improve. It is also prime example of how bureaucrats in post-Liberalisation regimes compensate the loss of powers they enjoyed under the previous Permit Control raj. As long as there are ministries, that are manned and controlled by powerful mandarins, they are genetically propelled to exercise hegemonic strength, even if the PM goes on giving assurances of ‘minimal government’. Since the license-patronage has gone, it are the public sector undertakings, banks and ‘autonomous bodies’ that have to bear the brunt of the megalomania of ministers and babus. This comes in the form of erratic government directions, unabashed interference and incessant grilling of the officials of public bodies.  To be fair to ministries, their domination has been whetted by their appointees on all boards, and the Prasar Bharati board is packed with people whose loyalty to PMO is without question. After all, every little or big appointment is controlled by PMO that takes years to decide and no more can one expect a fearless crusading journalist like BG Verghese or a film maker like Muzaffar Ali to grace the Prasar Bharati board. It is well known that no minister has any say, except to function with such appointees he never wanted and this is where the roots of the present conflict lies. This same Board that is so ‘injured’ by the ministry today had, in fact, ganged up with the ministry in the past to kill positive proposals put forth by the executive, just because “the minister so desired”. A huge pile of written evidence exists that can substantiate how this.  

            But, since Prasar Bharati was set up by a Act of Parliament, how can Smiriti Irani continue her depredations on it? To begin with, the Prasar Bharati Act itself provides for political appointees on the board, but what is important is that Act also requires a 22-member Parliamentary Committe to be set up. It should be constituted under Sec 13, to supervise Prasar Bharati on behalf of Parliament and its members are to be from both houses of parliament, through proportional representation. No government has set up this committee as it does not want to give up powers to Parliament and allow Prasar Bharati an opportunity to explain, a bit like the BBC, its problems and projects directly to Parliament, bypassing the ministry. This militates against the prevailing narrative as every minister is coached by babus to insist that he alone is responsible to parliament. Thus, he can summon officials of Prasar Bharati, Doordarshan and Akashvani and question every act of theirs, until they succumb. It is almost certain that members of parliament are not even aware of this provision of a Parliamentary Committee which could cut bureaucratic interference substantially and avoid recurring wars with the information Ministry. Nor is anyone aware that sections 14 and 15 of the Act requires the ministry to set up a Broadcasting Council also, to ensure political impartiality. So fed up was an earlier Information minister, Manish Tiwari, that he made several public statements that his ministry should be wound up. 

              Budget and finance are two areas where all public-funded bodies that receive their grants from parliament through ‘their respective ministries’ are made to grovel before the ministries who act like thanedars. I have had a long stint as Secretary of the ministry of Culture and more than half my time was gone in fighting my own babus who were harassing the autonomous bodies quite periodically. It is not that Prasar Bharati or other autonomous bodies are composed of saints but the irresponsible power exercised by Assistants, Section Officers and Under Secretaries of the ministries is the most negative force that stymies any positive progress in India. They have no idea what the real India outside Delhi is, but they flourish because IAS and Central Service Officers are too busy in attending to the many desires and diktats of PMO, Niti Aayog and their own ministers to find time to control them. This applies to every Ministry and every autonomous or public body in India (except Atomic Energy and. Space) and the mechanics of hegemony have actually become more intolerable under rather present regime.

             Prasar Bharati was afflicted with deliberate ‘polio’ at birth as 48,000 government servants who were recruited by the ministry over decades for Akashvani and Doordarshan were ‘transferred’ to it, without consulting either the employees or the broadcasters. As Mrinal Pande, former chairperson and journalist mentioned, the cream of broadcasters left for greener pastures in private television and radio and there is no doubt that Prasar Bharati could have done better if it did not have to inherit so many rights-conscious and rule-obsessed babus. For 25 years, no promotions were permitted to them by the ministry, sadistically quoting rules, until Prasar Bharati revolted a few years ago and gave ‘ad hoc’ promotions to lots of employees: mainly to pep up their morale. Under the law, the salaries of this huge army has to be paid by the appointing authority, the Ministry of I & B, but Secretaries and Ministers complain loudly that Prasar Bharati salaries eat up 80 percent of its budget, omitting to mention that their predecessors created this problem. 

             In the present imbroglio, it is clear that Prasar Bharati’s back is to the wall. An imperious minister, who can teach babus several tricks in repressive techniques, has embarked on a rather whimsical scorched-earth policy until the chairman and the board are on their knees. This is taking some time, though even the senior-most officials have accepted the nuisance of being at the beck and call of the ministry. It is a reported that the main source of DD’s revenue, namely its revenue from its Freedish satellite slot-auctions has been stopped by the minister for reasons not clear. Other revenue measures like the open transparent auction of its prime and near-prime slots have also been choked. The cumulative result will be to pauperise the gasping organisation. In 21 years, the ministry has not found time to frame rules to operationalise the transfer of assets to Prasar Bharati under section 16 of the Act and god only knows how many hundreds of crores have been lost when vacant or unused lands were encroached in this man-made confusion. 

            While Prasar Bharati itself is an glaring example of how a body should not be run, rife with mediocrity, intrigues and petty corruption, in the present case, it is correct to resist the minister’s attempt to force it to hire high cost journalists, even if they are saffron. The ministry’s order to terminate all hired hands, many of who ensure that the organisation is still alive despite all attempts to kill it, is just mindless retaliation. But then, the Ministry has to dominate as without Prasar Bharati, I&B would only be engaged in lack-lustre film festivals and boring tasks like registering newspapers or tom-tomming the limited achievements of a government that sold so many rosy dreams. As for Smriti Irani, let us watch the next episode of this tragic-comic serial. 

 (Please Click Here to read the article on The Lokmat Times' Website)

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Valentine’s Day, Maha Shivratri and the Perennial Problem of Love in Patriarchal Orthodoxies

Valentine’s Day, Maha Shivratri and the Perennial Problem of Love in Patriarchal Orthodoxies

By Jawhar Sircar

(Published in The Wire on 14.2.2018)

The middle of February is when spring travels to Europe to tell the snows that it is time to start leaving and then rushes to India to a grand welcome. It is also the time when two festivals, the Christian Valentine’s Day and the Hindu Maha Shivaratri also arrive, but they take care not to meet each other, face to face.

But this year, they have decided to break this rule and will arrive together on the February 14. The morning is for Valentine and the night of February 13 and 14 is for Shiva. So, let us see what we can expect.

Hindus celebrate Shiva’s wedding anniversary for it is on this day that he is said to have married Parvati. On the other hand, the Christian Church has been rather embarrassed with this mid-February festival of love. For several centuries, the Church tried to suppress this basically pagan celebration called Lupercalia by ancient Romans, which permitted a lot of sexual liberties. The Church naturally condemned as downright immoral this open free mixing of the sexes and it denounced the goddess Juno Februata in whose name this ‘fever of love’ went on.

It did not succeed fully and so, according to scholars like Barbara Walker, “The Church replaced the goddess with a mythical male martyr, Saint Valentine.” He had conflicting origins and one of them said that he was a pure, handsome Roman youth who gave his life for his chaste sweetheart. One may notice how the central character changed from female to male, as all religions have an overriding patriarchal streak, and how relationships between lovers were sanitised to become more respectable.

That reminds us how the Nimbarka sect of Vaishnavas and several poets of northern India declared that Radha and Krishna were actually a married couple and how many noted religious leaders endorsed this stand. Love has been a perennial problem with patriarchal religious orthodoxies, especially if it dares to come before or outside legitimate marriage or beyond caste or class. Can we forget the tragedy that visited Shiva and Sati in Daksha’s yagna and the cost that they had to pay for ‘love marriage’?

The custom of Shivaratri became more pronounced mainly in the last two or three centuries after Brahmanism was restored in Bengal following the defeat of Muslim rulers by the British. The philosophy was that marriage is so serious and complex that it was best left to parents to consult gods, caste rules and horoscopes to locate husbands like Shiva for good girls who prayed and kept fasts.

At the same time, we see glimpses of how, throughout history and legend, societal respectability had to gulp and accept cheeky (bearaa) characters like Kama and Rati in India and Eros, Cupid or even Priapus in Europe. Kāmadeva, for instance, is linked not only to Shiva, but also to Brahma who created him, according to the Shiva Purana. He can be traced to the Rig Veda and the Atharva Vedaand while the Vishnu Purana says that he is a side of Narayana, the Bhagavata Purana claims that he is an aspect of Krishna. This just reveals that his existence and symbolism could not be denied by the high and legitimate schools of Hinduism. If we go just by the dates of these texts, that span a period of two and a half thousand years, we see that Kama or Madana was in considerable demand and did not disappear from the stage like Indra or Varuna.

It is interesting to note that, like the handsome Roman youth who was visualised as Valentine by the Christians, Kāmadeva is represented as a good looking young man with green skin who wields a bow made of sugarcane and has a string of honeybees following him. His arrows are decorated with five kinds of fragrant flowers like Mallika and Ashoka and he arrives with the symbols of spring like cuckoos, humming bees and the gentle breeze.

More fascinating is the fact that civilisations so distinct and distant from each other like the Hindu and the Graeco Roman had the same bow and arrow motif for the god of love, who was called Eros by the Greeks and Cupid by the Romans. In fact, Cupid appeared in ancient Europe as a phallus with wings, and it was much later that Renaissance art converted it with a new visual form: as a cherubic baby angel flying around with a sweet little bow and arrow. The heart pierced with the arrow of love remains the most widely understood symbol all over the world and card manufactures make millions of dollars from it on Valentine’s Day, which is basically a highly commercialised festival.

Coming back to India, we now encounter aggressive fanatics policing public places to control couples on Valentine’s Day, without realising the roots of their own religion. Renaming it as Kama-Rati Divas may make sense to this mentally weak tribe. It is my submission that while the powerful Vaishnava sect absorbed various aspects of troublesome love through Radha-Krishna and Holi in the heady spirit of spring, the rival Shaivas also tackled the issue of desire through a very virile Shiva, who also has his tales of frolics.

But without restraint and order, society cannot function and it is usually thought that Shiva’s punishing of Kāmadeva was like showing the ‘red card’ to uncontrolled players. We have heard the story of Madana-bhasma or Kama Dahana, that appears in the Matsya Purana, where Kāmadeva is burnt to ashes by Shiva for tempting him with lust while he was deep in meditation.

Hinduism is basically the management of contradictions and this is evident in this story as well, which also says that all Kamadeva was doing was performing a sacred duty by arousing lust in Shiva. After all, the gods had sent him on this sacred mission so that Shiva and Parvati could mate and produce a super hero, Kartikeya, who alone was destined to defeat the unvanquished Tarakashura, the terror of both the worlds. In a way, therefore, it was not Kama-Dahana, but Shivaratri with all its vratas that was supposed to bring in an order into the matter of desire, through a religiously regulated festival.

Further contradictions are evident in the next part of the story, where Shiva listened to the wailing pleas of Rati, Kama’s devastated wife, and resuscitated Madana, but in a disembodied form. Hence Kāmadeva is called Ananga or Atanu, i.e, one who has no body. The spirit of love embodied by Kama, however, fills the cosmos and humans remain afflicted with lust, on and off. Incidentally, the legend of Kama was exported with all other fascinating stories when Shaiva dharma went abroad, and the Hindus of Java-dwipa celebrate in their 12th-century poem Smara-dahana. Kama and his consort Rati are called Kamajaya and Kamarati in Kakawin poetry and later Wayang narratives, that Indonesians perform with their famous shadow puppet shows, with leather characters.

Before we end, let us observe how an original god of fertility in Greece was represented by a phallus, like Shiva. He was the brother of Eros and his name was Priapus, which is also a medical term for the male organ. He was supposed to have gone from the present day Turkey and was worshipped in the Roman Empire as well, where he became the patron of merchants. The worship of this phallic god continued among rural folk, even after Christianity removed all pagan gods or absorbed them as saints.

There were other phallic gods like Hermes in Greece and Mutunus Tutunus among Romans whose role was to ensure satisfaction within marriage. Even earlier, the Egyptians worshipped Isis and Min, while the Norwegians had their extra-manly deity, Freyr. The Balkan kingdoms celebrated their phallic Kukeri and distant Japan still has fertility shrines with this symbol.

Wallis Budge states very clearly that in Europe, “giant phalli were adored up to the 17th century as saints” and he produces a long list as well. Sir William Hamilton describes the rites of worship of phallic saint, Cosmo in the 18th century. When bomb ravaged English churches were being rebuilt after the Second World War, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments discovered several phallic stones buried under the floor. Therefore, the shock that Europeans visitors to India expressed at even the civilised version of Shiva worship, especially on Shivaratri and in the month of Sravana, appears quite uncalled for.

As an ancient civilisation, Hinduism has shown remarkable tolerance towards all needs of humans, and it is tragic that this accommodative spirit is being perverted by some. Ancient India mastered the art of accepting all facts of life and embedded their spirit into festivals that celebrate them with maturity: quite openly, cleanly and without any self righteous shame.

 (Please Click Here to read articleon The Wire’s Website)

https://thewire.in/223762/valentines-day-maha-shivratri-perennial-love-patriarchy/