In praise of Narendra Modi: Doordarshan's anniversary coverage reveals BJP hypocrisy

All Indira Radio, Rajivdarshan and now Prasar Modi.

For the next few weeks, the Information and Broadcasting ministry will do what it has done over the past several decades: make Doordarshan sing in His Master’s Voice, perform paeans in Raag Darbari.

According to news reports, the ministry has asked the public broadcaster to launch a publicity blitz for the government when it completes a year.  “As celebrations for the Modi government’s one year anniversary pick up pace, over 20 senior ministers will be giving interviews to Doordarshan to mark the day,” reports the Times of India .

According to the Business Standard , Doordarshan has been asked to capture the mood of the nation after a year of Modi raj through special programmes, interviews and jingles composed by Prasoon Joshi.

So, over the next few days, we will have ministers extolling their achievements and gratuitous people telling us how their lives have changed in the past year and Doordarshan reporters spinning stories of the success and achievements of the NDA government. All of it on a channel that nobody really cares to watch, but that’s a separate point.

The real bad news is that the Modi government has no intention of implementing one of its brightest and honest suggestions: set Prasar Bharti free, give up government control over public broadcasters.

“There is no need for I&B ministry in a democracy; Prasar Bharati should be free of government interference; it should have an independent editor-in-chief.” These were the ‘philosophical and ideological’ words of I&B minister Prakash Javadekar during an interview in 2014 .

Javadekar’s philosophy was sacrificed at the altar of obeisance to another kind of ideology when Doordarshan decided to broadcast live RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Dusshera speech in October 2014. Whatever was left of left of Javadekar’s brave idea perhaps died when he was shifted to a different ministry. And the government has now given up all pretensions of freeing Doordarshan and AIR of the burden of propagating its mann ki baat.

Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with a government using a broadcaster as its pet. Many totalitarian regimes across the world have their own news agencies and media. The Russians have their TASS and Pravda, China has Xinhua and many regimes in Islamic countries control every word that is written or spoken. The Indian government too is entitled to believe that it should have a mouthpiece. But, the problem is that political parties preach autonomy and independence for Prasar Bharti while in opposition but refuse to give up the state’s control on becoming part of the government.

For instance, during the 2014 election campaign, the BJP had protested when Doordarshan ‘edited’ some portions of the interview with Modi. “I feel very sad to see our National TV channel struggling to maintain its professional freedom,” Modi had tweeted his outrage then. Will he now allow Doordarshan to air interviews with opposition leaders on his government’s first anniversary? Will the I&B ministry allow the state broadcaster to give equal space to critical analysis and public opinion?

Forcing government propaganda on people rarely helps. It didn’t work for too long for Joseph Goebbels, it didn’t help Indira or Rajiv Gandhi. During the 80s, AIR and Doordarshan were used shamelessly by the Congress to prop up Rajiv as Indira’s heir, and later when he became the PM, most of the prime time news was dedicated to his programmes and speeches, forcing critics to call it Rajivdarshan . But none of this helped Rajiv avoid a crushing defeat in the next election.

If it didn’t work in the age of Doordarshan monopoly, only a naïve government would believe that His Master’s Voice can be heard and blindly believed in the din of contrasting, competing and contradictory voices that rule India’s airwaves today.