Lessons from an ongoing federal crisis

Lessons from an ongoing federal crisis

Jawhar Sircar

Ananda Bazar Patrika, 22^nd  March, 2108

English Version

          The recent constitutional conflict in Delhi state is taking new and dangerous turns even after legal action was promptly taken and two MLAs who assaulted the chief secretary in the presence of the chief minister were arrested. Assaulting the administrative head of a state government is unprecedented in its audacity. It is a criminal offence in terms of Section 351 of the Indian Penal Code that defines even threatening gestures and pushing around as ‘assault’. But for the chief secretary to come to the next meeting with CM and his cabinet colleagues with a dozen policeman, who owe their loyalty to the central home ministry, shows a total breakdown in relationship. The chief minister’s unequivocal power to appoint the chief secretary has been settled by the the question long ago by the Supreme Court judgment in E.P. Royappa (1974) where it stated that as “the post of Chief Secretary is a highly sensitive post…and smooth functioning of the administration requires that there should be complete rapport and understanding between the Chief Secretary and the Chief Minister” Later, in Salil Sabhlok (2013), the highest court supported the power of “the Chief Minister......to appoint a ‘suitable’ person as a Chief Secretary or the Director General of Police…because both .... the Chief Minister and the appointee (must) share a similar vision of the administrative goals and requirements of the State. The underlying premise also is that Chief Minister has confidence that the appointee will deliver the goods, as it were, and both are administratively quite compatible with each other.”

    This provision does not exist for appointing Central government secretaries who are selected on rigorous but impersonal assessment of their career records. If senior officers so want, they can opt for central deputation, instead of spiking projects taken up by their duly-elected state governments. There are, of course two issues: first is that they have to qualify through strict standards and the second is that CMs do not want to release officers from the state IAS or IPS cadre. Narendra Modi set the biggest roadblocks to his officers joining the central government when he was CM of Gujarat so he cannot blame other CMs. They may seriously consider releasing officers who oppose or sabotage legitimate policies, provided they get a berth at the centre. While civil service associations rose in angry protest against the criminal assault on the chief secretary, no one protested when the the Lieutenant Governor usurped the powers of CM and appointed the chief secretary, obviously at the behest of the central government. The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had declared in Shamsher Singh vs State of Punjab (1974)that the Governor has to discharge his functionsonly in accordance with the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Chief Minister.

       The BJP has neither forgotten nor ‘forgiven’ Kejriwal for stopping Modi’s tsunami of 2104 and single-handedly wiping both national parties from Delhi state just eight months later. That is the unpredictable Indian voter. But it is not for IAS and IPS officers to join the central government’s do-or-die battle even though Kejriwal is unpleasant to them and stops at no trick himself. This conflict is surely straining the very nerves of the our federal constitution. Different nationalities and linguistic cultures came together on the understanding that diversity and regional variations would be respected. Even though both contestants in Delhi belong to more or less to the same culture and language, precedents that are being decided in this ugly war gain some ‘legal respectability’ and are sure to be used elsewhere where the two parties may differ widely in cultural systems and in approaches to plurality.

        Delhi is not a normal state and it is run according to Article 239AA of the Constitution and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act of 1991. Bothare meant for good governance of this sensitive state but they are regularly interpreted in a one-sided manner to favour the central government. This tramples the spirit of federal co-existence but officers of the IAS and the IPS, who head all critical posts in the Union Home Ministry or in Delhi administration, are duty bound to serve their state government. It is true that their postings are determined by the central government but could not some of them stand up for what is right? So many DMs and SPs have done so in north and central Indian states and paid the price. Two young IPS officers in Uttar Pradesh have shown their boldness and arrested hoodlums belonging to the ruling party. These two Senior Superintendents of Police of Saharanpur and Agra were heckled by communal goons who even attacked the residence of one and traumatised his family. Obviously, these two were transferred by the government but their children will respect them more. Lately, the DM of Bareilly and the SDO of Amethi have suffered as they showed more guts than their seniors in Delhi administration, who dread being posted to the Andamans.

       On the other side, Kejriwal is known for his domineering style, but then, what about Modi or others? And, to be fair, the tradition of central governments stymying state regimes opposed to them was not begun by the present regime. It started in 1959 when Nehru dismissed Namboodiripad‘s elected communist government and later when Indira Gandhi packed off United Front governments in Bengal in 1967 and 1969. Several officers have served in West Bengal and the centre with equal success during the last 41 years when this state created a Guinness record for electing governments that were invariably opposed to whoever ruled the centre. Most such officers were never blamed as being agents of either governments. Entering the civil services is not just passing a tough examination and serving mercurial ministries elected by the people. It also means that one has to weather such stormy constitutional relations and still uphold the values of the federal constitution. The IAS has no right to treat Kejriwal like “just a Revenue Service officer” who resigned, because he has earned his legitimacy the hard way, through the ballot box. The fact that he is cunning and disruptive are not sufficient reasons to undermine his legitimate government. In fact, the IAS and the IPS have tackled bigger mavericks and volcanic ministers and parties in the last 50 years. All those who worked in the districts during turbulent times, especially in politically volatile states, have faced violent mobs, often led by legislators and many officers have been badly roughed up by hotheads. It is an occupational hazard that doctors and hospitals face nowadays.

       What officers need to realise is that the expectations of the people have gone up manifold and no one will listen to why something that is fair and equitable cannot be done because of some colonial or post-colonial era rules. And also that powers in democratic India have definitely shifted in the last five decades from the English educated elite and upper class civil servants to whoever is elected from the bottom of the pyramid. They have their own style and demand immediate delivery but they hold the real India together, however unsophisticated be their style.

India’s Second New Year: Ugadi & Gudi Padwa

India’s Second New Year: Ugadi & Gudi Padwa

Jawhar Sircar

Published in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 1^st April,2016

          Many Indians sincerely believe that the 'Indian New Year', as distinguished from the western date of the first of January, starts with Baisakh in mid-April. After all, it is celebrated from Punjab to Bengal and Assam and all the way up to Tamil Nadu. This is, however, not true as a large number of Indians actually celebrate new year a few weeks earlier on Shukla Pratipada. This is at the beginning of the bright lunar fortnight of Chaitra, the month preceding Baisakh. This new year is observed as Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra and Goa; Ugadi in Andhra, Telengana and Karnataka and the Sindhis call it their Cheti Chand. The Kashmiris also call it Nav-Reh or new year and In western India, this phase marked the end of the Rabi season. This is when the crop was ready and it certainly called for festivities. Surely, religion had also to step in and the Brahma Purana mentions that on this day the Lord created the world after the great deluge.

       The lunar calendar date for Chaitra Shukla Pratipada often coincided or came close to Spring equinox and India’s official Saka calendar also begins on the 22nd of March, coinciding with Spring equinox. This equinox has been respected for several millennia and the ancient Egyptians and Persians started their new year from it. Even Easter was always quite close to it and so is Navaratri. The popular Hindu almanac, the Panchanga (panjika), follows the Saka reckoning but, frankly, India has  special problem of Eras. The Hindu tradition believes in colossal yugas or cycles of millions  of  years,  through  several  stages  of  'formation'  or  kalpa and ‘dissolution’ or pralaya. There was also a 'Vedic' new year that began Agrahayan, in celebration of the Vernal equinox. Astronomers Aryabhatta, Varahamihira and Bhaskara who also contributed to the "Indian calendar". Yet, more than a century ago, British commentator, MM Underhill observed in her excellent treatise 'The Hindu Religious Year' that there were still "several eras reckoned among Hindus, but the great majority follow one of two, either the Saka or the Samvat”. This Vikram-samvat is popularly believed to have been started by one Vikramaditya of Ujjain in 57 BC, but Kielhorn says that this era was hardly known till the 9th century AD. India had so many different calendars based on either solar or lunar days and months and finding a uniform calendar with a common starting point was thus a Herculean task. Attempts were made at different times to unite the solar and lunar calendars, to determine days and hours for the observance of fasts and other religious rites, but they failed. Most common Indians, however, do not bother as they remember dates in terms of important events, like "my son was born in the year of the great flood".

         Nevertheless, we still required an agreed date for the year to begin, at least for accounting purposes. It is interesting that India's official calendar had to be triggered by invaders from the Kazakh steppes  of Central Asia, the dreaded Sakas or Indo-Sythians, who swarmed into this land in the first century B.C.. They settled here and one of the by-products was the Saka era, reckoned from 78 A.D. After Independence, Nehru was keen to settle this vexatious problem of finding a common "Indian Era" and he  entrusted  the  task  to  Astrophysicist  Meghnad  Saha.  After   several debates, the Saha Committee decided to end the long journey from the Vedas to Vikramaditrya in favour of the Saka calendar. But India’s official new year has flopped as even officials hardly know or care about it. Even so, it travelled to Bali without a passport and stayed back with more respect. Indians prefer Chaitra or Baisakh as religious dates matter more than babu directives.

          But we need to be clear that, despite convergences, the Chaitra lunar-based new year does differ from the solar Spring equinox and this year, for instance, the Chaitra new year is as late as the 8th of April, so close to the Baisakhi new year. A hundred years ago, Underhill noted two interesting practices in western India during the Chaitra new year day. One was the the mandatory eating of neem leaves. This must have been for some immunity against deadly small-pox and for the same reason, many worship Sitala at this time. Even now, this paste of neem leaves with jaggery and tamarind is passed around, to purify the blood and strengthen the immune system. The second was the erection of a pole (dhwaja) on  this Gudi Padwa, where Padwa is a derivative of Sanskrit Pratipada. The gudi or pole is what distinguishes the Marathi style of celebration and even the poor stick little rods out from their windows. Marathis believe that these ward off evil and invite prosperity into the house. The poles are ornamented with bright green or yellow cloth and shining brocades or even sugar crystals, neem leaves, mango twigs and colourful flowers. People  take out time to spruce up their homes and draw intricate rangoli designs near the doors.

          While raising the gudi, the ‘Shiva-Shakti’ principle in the universe is invoked because the orthodox insist that this enables all the constituents of the gudhi to accept divine principles. My interpretation of why Marathas stuck victory poles outside their homes at the end of harvest and the beginning of the dry season is that it was a "call to arms". The dreaded Maratha light cavalry was a lightning force that struck havoc in Bengal, Odisha and the southern states in the 18th century. It was based largely on the voluntary services of two classes of peasant soldiers, recruited by the ruling Peshwas, the Shiledars who were given arms and stipends by the State and the Bargis who joined in for whatever they could get. The dry season after Chaitra was most conducive to light cavalry as horses could sweep over the dry soil of the east in summer and the same ground became wet and soft from the first rains. The gudi stuck outside the house was probably a sign that the peasant was ready to join as a part-time raider, the Bargi.

          Chaitra Shukladi is another name for this new year, while Ugadi can be explained as 'Yuga', the word for 'epoch', and 'adi' stands for 'the beginning'. The festival marks the new year day for people between the Vindhyas and the Kaveri river, who follow the South Indian lunar calendar. The day usually begins with ritual showers (oil bath) followed by prayers.  In Karnataka, a special dish called Obbattu or Puran Poli is prepared on this occasion which is a paste of gram and jaggery is stuffed into a flat, roti-like bread and topped with ghee or milk. In Andhra and Telengana, special dishes called Polelu or Puran Poli are prepared on this occasion. A interesting mixture called Ugadi Pachhadi is made of six tastes, including bitter neem, sweet jaggery or ripe bananas, hot green chilly or pepper, salt, sour tamarind juice and unripened tangy mango. It will be clear that this is a medicinal potion, as the season of spring brought in not only joy but sorrow as well: because it carried deadly viruses and diseases.

            As we study Indian festivals more and more, we wonder how Brahmanism managed to bring such varied and often conflicting rituals into one common refrain: unity in diversity. Diversity is quite clear when we see so many different dates and celebrations, but 'unity' is also evident from the fact that more than a hundred crores celebrate their disparate new year all within a band of just one month, or even less. Amazing !

Smriti Irani is Only the Latest Star in the I&B Ministry’s Serial Wars With Prasar Bharati

Smriti Irani is Only the Latest Star in the I&B Ministry’s Serial Wars With Prasar Bharati

By Jawhar Sircar

(The Wire, 4^th March, 2018)

The latest serial that Smriti Irani is playing out as the minister for information and broadcasting is certainly more interesting than all her previous saas-bahu soap operas. It is heartening to find that she has lost none of her talent for histrionics, and that scoring several self goals means nothing to her as long as the trishul can run through the heart of the adversary. 

Her adversary, in the instant case, is A. Surya Prakash, chairman of Prasar Bharati – a pedigreed BJP-RSS loyalist from the ‘Vivekananda Foundation’. When he retaliated in equal measure, he certainly showed a mettle that few knew he possessed, but then, his very existence depends on this battle. As chairman, he refused to believe he has no executive role or powers and that all he needs to do is to chair board meetings. 

Since Narendra Modi felt the Prasar Bharati CEO he inherited when he became prime minister protested too much and was taking the much-assured but never-granted autonomy of the public broadcaster a little too seriously, he decided to implant an ‘executive 24×7 chairman’, though it ran contrary to the law as it stood. Prakash gets a salary and first class travel benefits. Within days of his installation in Prasar Bharati in October 2014, the highly-politicised flock of Doordarshan, All India Radio and even the corporate office of PB headquarters at Mandi House made a beeline for his door, seeking the benediction of the new regime. 

The I&B ministry and Prasar Bharati may have worked in tandem in those first days – especially after a ‘dissident’ CEO was smoked out before the end of his protected tenure – but the ugliest spat in the history of Prasar Bharati now unfolding tells us how wrong the ruling establishment was in hoping peace and harmony would reign merely because the chairman was aligned to it. The fact that Surya Prakash and Smriti Irani are at each other’s throat underlines the adage that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests. And since the adversaries are well matched in terms of political connections, the top management of Prasar Bharati has been forced to deactivate their right and wrong buttons and swear allegiance to both Irani and Prakash. 

The I&B ministry’s increasing stranglehold over a statutory body like Prasar Bharati shows its obsessive urge to control, not improve. It is also a prime example of how politicians and bureaucrats in post-liberalisation India can compensate for the loss of powers they enjoyed under the previous permit control raj. The hard fact is that as long as bloated ministries exist and are staffed and controlled by powerful mandarins, they are genetically propelled to exercise their hegemony — notwithstanding all the Modi jumlas of ‘minimum government’. Public sector undertakings, banks and ‘autonomous bodies’ have now to bear the brunt of the megalomania of ministers and babus. This comes in the form of erratic government directions, unabashed interference and the incessant grilling of the officials of public bodies. 

To be fair to ministries, their domination has often been encouraged by their appointees on the boards as return favour and there is no question the Prasar Bharati board is packed with people whose loyalty is to the PMO or the RSS. After all, every little or big appointment is tightly controlled by the PMO, which takes years to decide even if it brings the organisations concerned to a standstill. No more can one expect a fearless journalist like B.G. Verghese or a film maker like Muzaffar Ali to grace the Prasar Bharati board. It is well known that no minister has any say in these matters, except to function with such appointees he or she never chose and this is where the roots of the present conflict lie. This same board that is so ‘injured’ by the ministry today had, in fact, ganged up with it in the recent past to kill positive proposals put forth by the PB CEO, just because “the minister so desired”. A huge pile of written evidence exists that can substantiate this. 

But if Prasar Bharati was set up by an Act of parliament, how can Smriti Irani continue her depredations on it? To begin with, the Prasar Bharati Act itself provides for political appointees on the board. What is more dangerous is that it has two sections (32 and 33) which ensure that all major decisions require the ministry’s approval. A former bureaucrat related rather proudly how such hidden buttons are required in all such Acts to ensure that “autonomy does not get out of hand”. 

An important mandate of the Act requires a 22-member parliamentary committee to be constituted under section 13, to supervise Prasar Bharati on behalf of parliament. It’s members are to be from both houses of parliament, through proportional representation. No government has, however, set up this committee as it does not want to give up powers and allow Prasar Bharati an opportunity to explain, a bit like the BBC, its problems and projects directly to parliament, thus bypassing the ministry. This would militate against the prevailing narrative as every minister is coached by babus to insist that she/he alone is responsible to parliament and therefore, she/he can summon officials any time, for any reason. Even section officers exercise these powers quite vicariously and the whole idea is to grill the officers of Prasar Bharati, Doordarshan and AIR and to question every act of theirs, until they succumb to the ministry. 

It is almost certain that members of parliament are not even aware of this provision for a parliamentary committee which could cut bureaucratic interference substantially and avoid recurring wars with the I&B ministry. Nor is anyone aware that there are other parts of the Act, such as sections 14 and 15 that require the setting up of a Broadcasting Council to ensure political impartiality. Successive I&B secretaries and ministers have taken pains to play down or forget to mention this vital information — that sections 13, 14 and 15 of the Act enjoin the mandatory democratisation of Prasar Bharati’s supervision before parliamentary committees. How else can all powers remain locked up in Shastri Bhavan? 

Budget and finance are two areas where all public-funded bodies which receive grants from parliament through ‘their respective ministries’ are made to grovel before the ministries. I have had a long stint as secretary of the Union ministry of culture and more than half my time was spent fighting many of my own babus who were periodically harassing the autonomous bodies under the ministry. It is not that Prasar Bharati or other autonomous bodies are filled with saints but the irresponsible power exercised by assistants, section officers and under secretaries of the ministries is definitely 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 attending to the many desires and diktats of the PMO, Niti Aayog and their own ministers to find time to control them. Or, they enjoy the power of adjudicating between the perpetrators and the victims, both of whom are equal in their myopic view. This condition 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 the present regime. 

In the current 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 aimed at bringing the chairman and the board to their knees. This is taking some time, though even the senior-most PB officials have accepted the nuisance of being at the beck and call of the ministry. 

It does not need a former soap star to discover that DD’s serials are mediocre. One of the main reasons for this lies in the decisions taken in the 2000-2003 period when the I&B ministry ran Prasar Bharati by ensuring that only its own tightly-controlled additional secretaries could be CEOs of the public broadcaster. Some unscrupulous Doordarshan officers advised them to junk the outsourcing of serials that had elevated this bland governmental TV channel to historic heights, serials like Ramayan, Mahabharat, Buniyaad and Hum Log. DD decided to file cases against many iconic private producers even though they were literally their golden geese. One Mandi House Machiavelli, who is no more, ensured that private TV channels gained at Doordarshan’s expense. 

DD then started ‘commissioning’ serials, though almost no one inside it knew how to make a box office-busting serial. This meant that instead of earning hugely from (say) a Yash Chopra serial, DD now paid large sums to new producers, many of whom were sub-standard. Some of the tales of how these B-class producers were sent to DD with chits from VIPs or from Shastri Bhavan (where the I&B ministry is located) were found to be true when the CBI raided the PS to an I&B minister in his office. The user friendly CEOs of the last decade and many DGs who ruled DD with the ministry’s blessings had certainly joined the chorus. As expected, more money was paid to these new breed of producers than what DD could earn from their serials, but no one seemed to mind or notice, as long as other pleasures existed. Herein lies the beginning of the end of Prasar Bharati and DD. 

It goes to the credit of Surya Prakash’s board that it finally agreed with the CEO’s persistent proposal to stop the bleeding losses on account of mediocre serials and the corruption that went with it. In 2016, the board finally approved, after several months of discussion and hair-splitting, the policy of sale of DD’s serial slots to the highest, qualified bidder. Some in DD spiked progress several times and a board member fought to extend the patronage raj of serials, as some of the new regime’s followers had started tasting blood. But even this transparent bidding process passed by the board and agreed to by the ministry earlier has now been stymied by Irani and her bureaucrats, with no explanation or justification for acting well beyond their powers. 

Another main source of DD’s revenue, namely the money it earns from its Free Dish satellite slot-auctions, has also been stopped by the minister for reasons not clear. 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 who knows how many crores have been lost when vacant or unused lands were encroached upon by various ‘interests’ in this man-made confusion. 

On the personnel front, Prasar Bharati was afflicted with deliberate incapacitation at birth as 48,000 government servants who were recruited by the ministry over decades for AIR and Doordarshan were ‘transferred’ to it in 1997, without consulting either the employees or the public broadcaster. Under the law, their salaries have to be paid by the ministry, even if they work from home. Prasar Bharati was chosen unilaterally to accommodate all of them, without any option to refuse many who were unwilling or who just do not fit into the cut-throat competitive world of modern broadcasting. 

As Mrinal Pande, former chairperson and journalist mentioned, the cream within 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, rule-obsessed babus. For 25 years, no promotions were permitted 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. 

Smriti Irani’s Tughlaqian decision to stop the salaries of Prasar Bharati employees is not only unjust but quite contrary to the legal obligations that her ministry has to bear. It was bad enough when successive secretaries and ministers complained loudly in public that Prasar Bharati’s salary bill eats up 80% of their budget, for they were being miserly with facts. But no minister can insult parliament which voted for this expenditure of Prasar Bharati as there is really no option, even if it is shut down. This is real life, not a serial where tantrums come with a loud melodramatic clang. 

While Prasar Bharati itself is a glaring example of how a broadcaster should not be run — rife as it is with mediocrity, intrigues and petty corruption — in the present scenario, 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 tit-for-tat order to Prasar Bharati to terminate all its hired hands is ludicrous, as many of these people ensure that the organisation is still alive despite all attempts to finish it off. It was compelled to set up numerous installations all over India for over two decades on the orders of whichever government was in power but no staff were sanctioned. DD and AIR run most of these with contractual employees. 

Another glaring misuse of the minister’s powers has come to light. DD may dish out tasteless fare but on special occasions like Independence and Republic Days, it’s coverage is as good as the best anywhere. Irani arbitrarily stopped DD from covering the opening and closing ceremonies of the International Film Festival of India in 2017. Now DD is being told to pay Rs.2.9 crores to NFDC – a corporation under the I&B ministry – so that it can pay a firm (whose directors are reportedly close to Irani) for the work. But nothing matters to the minister even though parliament is about to meet once again. Because, the more the din, the better it is for the government to claim that it is unable to function and then hustle through all Bills, without debate. 

As far as the I&B ministry is concerned, the current controversy is no skin off its back as it is genetically programmed to dominate the public broadcaster. Without Prasar Bharati, the ministry would be left with 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 wait for the next episode of this tragic-comic serial.

(Please Click Here to read the article of The Wire's Website)

A cosmetic corporatisation will do nothing to improve Doordarshan or AIR

                            

A cosmetic corporatisation will do nothing to improve Doordarshan or AIR

 

                                                   Jawhar Sircar

(Published in Hindustan Times on 12.01.2017)

                If small but repetitive news items are to be believed, then Prasar Bharati may either given a fresh "corporate status", or it may head be for the chopping board. The former would actually degrade a battered body even further, as a PSU or a sarkari corporation, which is often summoned to bestow favours that financial rules hardly permit, is held way down in the pecking order of governance. But, who or what is Prasar Bharati? The opening line of Edward Lear's nonsense rhyme comes to mind: "Who, or why, or which, or what / Is the Akond of Swot?" This amusing creature has successfully bedevilled any clear understanding of its role and functioning.

           On the whole, it may not be a bad idea to corporatise it, except that the law as pronounced by the Supreme Court in 1995 may stand in the way. The Court had freed air waves from state control and had mandated the constitution of a "public body". It thus needs to be seen if a private company or a PSU would fit the bill. Five years before this, VP Singh had passed the Prasar Bharati Act promising to liberate and modernise orthodox AIR and DD, little realising that the Act had been surgically injected with a polio-type virus by officials anxious to ensure state hegemony. Right from November 1997, when Prasar Bharati became operational, the ineradicable government mindset of its 48,000 employees transferred in one stroke from the ministry to the new autonomous body, did its bit by ensuring that security and subservience would always be preferred over performance and innovation. Can the proposed corporate delete-abort them?

         When Indian viewers started deserting a prosaic DD for more colourful private TV channels in early 2000, Prasar Bharati actually aided this exodus by driving away many talented producers. Its  control-raj pomposity and never ending 'demands' resulted in numerous, indefensible court cases that weigh it down till today. Every government has declared that it is keen to improve Prasar Bharati but many have also ensured, or winked at, losses made by patronising sub-standard programmes. If someone is serious about DD, it has to decide once for all whether its has to maintain some 50 mini-TV stations, with hundreds of trained staff and enormous public investment in equipment, land and buildings in prime urban locations: to produce just 6 hours of programming in a whole week. It is easier to sight a rare Malabar Parakeet than come across an old-world roof-top TV antenna, but can a new corporate entity be free to shut down most of DD's 1400 analogue TV towers because of negligible viewership? Not only would it save several hundreds of crores, but what's more interesting, it would prevent expenditure on eager but entrenched suppliers of obsolete technologies. One simply cannot fathom what mysterious force or what ALS paralysis prevented DD from jumping headlong into India's multi-billion 4G race, by offering 20 digital TV channels that it beams every day from the four metro cities, without a single paisa or any viewer. Enterprising broadcasters could reach their inexhaustible saas-bahu serials or never-ending cricket matches to 250 million smartphones, with no talk-time bills, and it would be win-win for DD, broadcasters and viewers.

         If reams of sweated-out proposals containing precise steps for the improvement of DD and AIR are lost in the labyrinthine corridors of power, either by neglect or by design or even an adroit combination of both, one wonders whether a well meaning committee decision can do the trick. "The fault, dear Brutus," rued Caesar so wisely, "is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

(PleaseClick Here to read article on HT’s Website)