Opinion The broken promise of Prasar Bharati

A lot of water has since flown down the Yamuna and everyone seems to have forgotten about Javadekar’s promise.

Was the government really serious about making Prasar Bharati as robust and truly independent a public service broadcaster as the BBC? Another important question is: Does the autonomy of a public service broadcaster actually carry any real meaning in the absence of a strong legal framework shielding it from external manipulations? Or is it just a smokescreen that politicians use to pull the strings without having to bother about being accused of direct interference and arm-twisting?

Prasar Bharati’s autonomy is guaranteed by law. The National Front government led by Vishwanath Pratap Singh enacted the law in 1990 to establish a broadcasting corporation free of government control. Though it took seven long years to implement the law, the state broadcaster has never been actually allowed to come out of the government’s shadow, while politicians keep paying lip service to safeguarding its autonomy and editorial freedom. According to the information and broadcasting ministry’s website, Prasar Bharati is administered by its Broadcast Wing which “takes care of the affairs of All India Radio and Doordarshan.”

The Prasar Bharati Act (1990) even authorises the central government to “give directions” to the public service broadcaster.

Ironically, concepts like autonomy and human rights often get trampled by the very people who are responsible for protecting them. In most cases, instead of acting independently, the guardians of these mechanisms serve the interests of their appointing authority, that is, the government.

In practical terms, there is no guarantee that a state broadcaster — despite its autonomy being protected by law — will be allowed to function independently. Politicians treat the functionaries of an autonomous body exactly as they treat government bureaucracy. Academic Chris Hanretty studied 36 public service broadcasters across the world and concluded that “de jure independence is no guarantee of de facto independence”. Prasar Bharati is no doubt de jure independent, but is it also de facto independent?

The architects of the Prasar Bharati Act were aware that government-appointed officials would hesitate to exercise fairness in the face of political pressure. That’s why they put a provision in the Act that allows the broadcaster to set up its own recruitment board so that the government has no interference in appointments, either in programming or on the technical side. However, this mechanism was not implemented until July 2020 when the Modi government decided to constitute Prasar Bharati’s own recruitment board. Senior journalist Jagadish Upasane was appointed as its chairman. But here is the catch: Upasane has direct links with RSS-affiliated bodies. He heads the Bharat Prakashan, which is responsible for the publication of RSS-affiliated papers Panchajanya and Organiser. Upasane’s brother is a BJP spokesperson in Chattisgarh and his mother was a Jana Sangh MLA from Raipur in the 1950s.

That is not to say that before Narendra Modi took charge of the country, Prasar Bharati was a shining example of how an autonomous institution should function. During Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure, Doordarshan earned the unflattering sobriquet, “Rajiv Darshan”. And before him, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi also had a firm grip on the state media.

Congress is equally responsible for perpetuating the culture of political interference in the affairs of the public broadcaster. One glaring example of direct interference by the UPA government in Doordarshan’s editorial decision-making was the allegation of editing out large portions of Modi’s interview during the height of campaigning for the parliamentary election in April 2014.

Against this backdrop, Javadekar’s statements about protecting Prasar Bharati from any governmental and political influence seemed very promising. He assured Thapar that what happened with Modi’s interview “will never happen even with a Congress leader’s interview”. However, the initial euphoria proved to be short-lived.

Sample this: Only four months after Javadekar’s announcement, Prasar Bharti came under heavy criticism for telecasting RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s annual Vijayadashmi address live from Nagpur. It was one of the first indications that the ideological fountainhead of the governing BJP would be given easy access to the national broadcaster. Now juxtapose the privilege enjoyed by Bhagwat – a private individual with no constitutional authority – with the attempt by Doordarshan officials to scuttle the Independence Day speech of Manik Sarkar, who was then heading the Communist-led government in Tripura. Sarkar alleged that Prasar Bharati officials wrote to him at the last moment that his speech would not be aired unless he agreed to “reshape” it.

In his seminal study of the relationship between state and broadcaster, author and academic Anthony Smith evocatively explains the vulnerability of the idea of autonomy: “The autonomy of a broadcasting institution is a delicate flower, nervously planted, tenderly nurtured and easily plucked up by the roots.” Indeed, V P Singh nervously planted the delicate flower to alter the image of Doordarshan as the mouthpiece of Rajiv Gandhi. But successive governments also used every possible trick in the book to hollow out the roots of the flower.

The BBC, on the other hand, has a long list of bitter run-ins with both Conservative as well as Labour governments, but its bosses have an impressive record in defending the organisation’s editorial independence. One of the reasons why the BBC is largely able to protect its independence lies in its structural composition. It draws its constitutional mandate from a Royal Charter and not from the British Parliament. The Royal Charter defines the roles and powers of BBC managers. It expressly directs board members to protect the independence of the BBC and “neither seeking nor taking instructions from Government Ministers or any other person.”

It’s not clear whether Javadekar had studied the Royal Charter before promising to restructure Prasar Bharati to resemble the BBC.

BBC bosses follow the rule of impartiality almost like a religious vow. The BBC’s former director-general, Hugh Greene, wrote way back in 1969 that without true independence, “it is difficult for any broadcaster to maintain the highest standards of truth, accuracy and impartiality. Conversely, of course, without a reputation for these things — truth, accuracy and impartiality — it is difficult for any broadcast organisation to be recognised as truly independent and to be generally trusted.”

The BBC has often been criticised for taking impartiality to insane levels. During the Falklands War between Argentina and the UK in 1982, the BBC stubbornly described the warring armies as the “British forces” and the “Argentinian forces”, as opposed to “our forces” and “enemy forces”. Prime Minister Margret Thatcher was so peeved with the even-handed coverage that she famously accused the BBC of “assisting the enemy”.

Can we imagine a scenario in India where Prasar Bharati is allowed to take a completely independent editorial line that runs counter to government policy?

The writer is a Delhi-based independent journalist and political commentator. He worked for the BBC World Service in London and Delhi