Whose service is it, anyway?

Malgudi Days and Tamas are currently enjoying a rerun on Sony and Star Plus. Astonishing? Not at all. Many serials that were made for Doordarshan during the late 1980s, were good; good examples of quality programmes a public service broadcaster can provide if it wants to.

The tragedy is that it no longer seems to want to. As long as Sri Krishna and Jai Hanuman bring in the dough, DD will bake bread with them. In the last year, even more, there hasn8217;t been a single, new serial that would make one exclaim, 8220;Wah DD8221;. Just the same ghisa-pita stuff.

Is it any wonder, that commercial satellite channels have taken over? But wait on: not only have they taken over the job of entertaining people, they have also assumed responsibility for informing them and educating them. It makes you want to rush across to Mandi House, DD headquarters in New Delhi, and shake the entire edifice, screaming: 8220;What is the matter with you8221;?

In the last six years Doordarshan has increasingly resembled a channel in search of an identity. This isn8217;t entirely DD8217;s fault. It is primarily the fault of successive governments and the Planning Commission. Since the beginning of the nineties, word has gone out to Doordarshan and AIR that it must become financially independent. Like a child who has obtained adulthood, it must learn to support itself. But how can an organisation which is controlled by the government, become self-reliant? Aye, that8217;s the contradiction.

A contradiction for which Doordarshan continues to pay for, dearly. Since it is heavily subsidised by the government, it has to justify such funding by telecasts which are thought to be in the public interest. Krishi Darshan is the perfect example of how Doordarshan justifies its existence. Or the UGC broadcasts.

Ah, the UGC broadcasts. They8217;ve run into and collided with that contradiction we mentioned. To earn its keep, DD has to ignore its public duty and turn to advertising. That compels it to consider air-time as an object it must sell. To gift even half an hour, is to disobey the first rule of the market place: there are no free lunches. But though DD is in the market place, it is also firmly in the government8217;s or the public8217;s financial pocket. So it has to provide space and time, free, to certain programmes. The result is that UGC programmes are broadcast at 6 am when all good students are either asleep or just struggling awake.

Public service broadcasting which follows Darwin8217;s survival test, is a contradiction in terms. In the competitiveness of the commercial environment, it is also becoming an anachronism.

Doordarshan has to make money, air programmes people will watch. Q.E.D.- public service programmes don8217;t make money; public service programmes don8217;t get watched. Not quite true. BBC, Discovery, National Geographic and DD itself, have made good, public service programmes which people watch, which make money. It can be done. Doordarshan can tell UGC that it must produce better programmes. If UGC can8217;t, DD can look to someone else. But it cannot argue that it will dispense with public service programmes or telecast them when no one is watching, because it is chasing lucre.

If it says that, all public funding must be stopped. Because then, it will face the same contradiction it ran into a while ago, put differently: you cannot be funded by the government as a public service and live like a commercial enterprise. The government, the Planning Commission, Prasar Bharati must resolve that contradiction. Otherwise, Doordarshan is sunk.