AUTONOMY FOR TV. AND RADIO ITS FEASIBILITY For a long time the Indian opposition parties have been loudly demanding an Autonomous...
AUTONOMY FOR TV. AND RADIO ITS FEASIBILITY
For a
long time the Indian opposition parties have been loudly demanding an
Autonomous Broadcasting Corporation and charging the Government with the
misuse of these powerful media of mass communication. It was forgotten that the
ruling party has to convey its achievements, plans, and objectives, to the
masses and also undo the campaign of misinformation and distortion that is unleashed by position from time to
time.
The
various parties that constituted the National Front government made the
autonomy of T.V. and Radio an important item in their election menifestoes for the election to the IX Lok Sabha held
in November-December 1989. The ruling
Congress government was criticized for misusing these powerful media and it was said, that if elected to
power, thay will soon end this misuse and
establish an autonomous corporation to put an end to such misuse.
So soon
after coming of the V.P. Singh Government into power, The Prasar Bharti
Bill was drafted and tabled in the Lok Sabha in December.1989, so that it may be taken up for discussion and approval
in the monsoon session. Let us first examine its provisions in detail and then
see if they really make T.V. and Radio
autonomous.
It is
proposed through the Bill to set up a single autonomous corporation (to be
known as the Prasar Bharti Broadcasting Corporation of India) with two
distinct wings- television and radio-to ensure its working in fair, objective creative manner. According to the Bill, the corporation
will have a 10 member Board of Governors
with four full time members and also, an
11 member broadcasting council. The council will monitor the working of the corporation and hear complaints.
Under
the bill, the Government will have the right to make rules for the
corporation and remove or suspend the Governors after reference to the Supreme Court. The annual accounts of the
corporation will be certified by the
Controller and Auditor General and presented to the Central Government for
laying them before the Parliament. It was presumed that the proposed corporation would function as a genuinely
autonomous body, innovative, dynamic and flexible, with a high degree of
credibility. However, one difficulty was
conveniently forgotten or ignored. It was forgotten that T.V. and the Radio have a combined income of nearly
200 crores while the expenditure on the
proposed corporation would run to over Rs. 280 crores. As the subsidy 'or financial aid would be supplied by
the Govt., its hold over the media would
continue. It will not be autonomous in the real sense.
The
proposed structure of the corporation takes into account the need for ensuring
that radio and television, which belong to two distinct ways of communication, are enabled to evolve and grow in their
own way while ensuring co-operation of overall approach which alone can ensure
that the requirements of the people regarding entertainment, information and
education are met, that the programmes are
useful for all.
The
Board of Governors will consist of a Chairman, an executive Governor, two
Governors in-charge of finance and personnel, and six part-time governors. The
Board will also have a representative of the Information and Broadcasting ministry. One of the important provisions
has already been modified the Chairman of
the corporation will only be a part-time officer so that there may be no conflict between the Chairman and the other
Governors.
The
Chairman and other Governors will be appointed by the President on the
recommendation of a committe comprising of the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Chairman of the Press Council, and a
nominee of the President of India, The Chairman and the Governors shall be
persons of eminence from public life. The
Governors will be people with considerable experience in various fields assigned to them. This provision has
come in for a good deal of criticism as
an insult to the personnel working on the staff of the media. It has been said that it is a slur on their
experience and efficiency, and protests
have been made against it.
The Executive Governor will be the Chief
Executive of the corporation. The Broadcasting
Council will receive and consider complaints, and advise the corporation in the discharge of its functions, It
will also receive complaints from any person claiming to have been treated
unjustly or unfairly including unwarranted
invasion of privacy, misinterpretation, distortion, lack of objective. The Elected Government may issue to
the corporation directions it considers
necessary in the interest of the security of the state or preservation of public order.
The
staff of the AlR and the T.V. is unhappy about the Bill. Too much of bureaucratic
control over the media is feared. A number of provisions of the Bill go against
the very concept of autonomy. No doubt P. Upendra, the former Union Information and Broadcasting
Minister, did go to the UK. and the
U.S.A. to study there the functioning of their Broadcasting corporations. But
then the question has been repeatedly asked if the Government did not have full knowledge of the working of these
bodies, and if not, why did it make its
election promises regarding this issue, without making a full depth study of the whole problem. The Minister might
have returned from his foreign tours
wiser and with more knowledge but will the newly gained wisdom and knowledge help him much when he is back in
his chair in Shastri Bhavan to deal with
the autonomy question again?
However,
one fears that it is not lack of knowledge on the part of the Government
that deters it from going ahead with its plan of giving autonomy to Doordarshan and All India Radio. The real problem
is that no Government wants to relinquish control over such powerful media. If
the Congress blatantly misused the
electronic media, the National Front Government also wanted to retain its control over them. This explains
why the Prasar Bharati Bill has turned out to be a joke.
The
proposed amendments to the bill go against the very concept of autonomy which
the National F u and other Opposition parties had promised during the general elections. In the bill, a
board of governors, consisting of persons of eminence, integrity and independence
is envisaged to ensure the autonomy of
the electronic media but there is also a proposal to add a sub-clause which will empower Government to
suspend or dissolve the board in the
interest of "national security". Another proposal is to entrust the Government with powers to suspend the
entire Act in emergency-like situations. Evidently, the N.F. Government
developed cold feet on the autonomy question
with the result that it wanted to settle for a diluted autonomy for the electronic media. After an initial
hands off phase, the National Front Government could not resist the temptation
of making use of radio and T.V. for
propaganda.
The
problem is a complicated one and no simplistic solution is possible. The
more one thinks over the matter the more is one convinced that it is all a political affair, and not a desire for real autonomy.
We may add that the Chandar Shekhar Government which succeeded the V.P. Singh
Government has not been able upto date to give thought to this problem. It has
been pre-occupied with other more pressing problems.
COMMENTS