Why can’t India have its own BBC? This question pops up at fairly regular intervals, especially in ‘cocktail circuits’, where the rather provincial presentation of Doordarshan comes up. It also features in media discourses, with the obvious innuendo that Prasar Bharati – along with Akashvani and Doordarshan – is not fulfilling its mandate as an autonomous body in the same spirit as BBC. Let us get into the facts and gain some clarity.
We may begin with size and mandate. The UK has one major and five ‘minority’ languages, while India has 22 official languages and over 600 dialects. The audience base of the British public broadcaster and its Indian counterpart are also vastly different, where literacy and worldviews are concerned. After Independence, AIR took up the task of ‘uniting’ a fragmented polity, which was conscious that it was one nation but spread over 14 British provinces and 565 princely states. The large number of languages, ethnic groups and multiple competing cultures did not make its task any easier.
In a way, Akashvani brought India together in the 1950s and 60s through a renewed respect for its own classical traditions, with Nehru’s information minister B V Keskar leading the campaign. This was then reinforced by spreading, intensively and extensively, the denominator that soon emerged as the nation’s common idiom: Bollywood’s filmi music, through Vividh Bharati.
It was popular film music which actually brought much needed ’emotional unity’ to diverse Indians, especially when several elements were up in arms to secede from the Union. Doordarshan came in later, and further helped consolidate the nation with iconic serials like Hum Log, Ramayan, Mahabharat, Nukkad and Buniyaad.
No such task was bestowed upon BBC except during the World Wars and it does not have to broadcast in 30 different languages every day for 30 lakh people, as in Manipur. India’s broadcaster is present from the freezing heights of Kargil to the solitude of Car Nicobar, from the Rann of Kutch down to the islands of Lakshadweep, and right up the nation’s lengthy borders. BBC does not have to operate programmes in highly disturbed areas like Dantewada.
One is not attempting to gloss over the obvious inadequacies of Prasar Bharati – it simply does not have the sheen, elan and image that BBC possesses. To the urban Indian, BBC is a metaphor for quality, autonomy and fearless independence, but this autonomy is paid for by the people of Britain through an annual licence fee of Rs 13,500 per person to maintain the broadcaster. Are Indians prepared to pay such a levy, or even half?
