Prasar Bharati

Prasar Bharati (abbreviated as PB) is an Indian state-owned public broadcaster, headquartered in New Delhi, India. It is a statutory autonomous body set up by an Act of Parliament and comprises the Doordarshan television broadcasting and Akashvani (formerly, All India Radio or AIR), which were earlier media units of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The Parliament of India passed the Prasar Bharati Act to grant this autonomy in 1990, but it was not enacted until 15 September 1997.^[1][2]

Navneet Kumar Sehgal, a retired bureaucrat, was appointed as the new chairman of Prasar Bharati on 16 March 2024 as A. Surya Prakash finished his second term in February 2020.^[3] Prakash had succeeded Mrinal Pande.^[4] Gaurav Dwivedi is the CEO of Prasar Bharati (he succeeded Shashi Shekhar Vempati who was the CEO until June 2022).

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021 said that DD News and All India Radio are the most trusted news brands in India.^[5]

The Prasar Bharati Act provides for the establishment of a broadcasting corporation, to be known as Prasar Bharati, and define its composition, functions, and powers.^[6] The Act grants autonomy to All India Radio and to Doordarshan, both of which were previously under government control.^[6] The Act received the assent of the President of India on 12 September 1990^[1] after being unanimously passed by Parliament. It was finally implemented in November 1997. By the Prasar Bharati Act, all property, assets, debts, liabilities, payments of money due, as well as all suits and legal proceedings involving Akashvani (All India Radio) and Doordarshan were transferred to Prasar Bharati.

The organization started as All India Radio (AIR) in the past and Doordarshan (DD) was born to cater television services later and finally came Prasar Bharati (PB) by enactment of an act by the parliament.

The Prasar Bharati Act vests the general superintendence, direction, and management of affairs of the Corporation in the Prasar Bharati Board which may exercise all such powers and do all such acts and things as may be exercised or done by the corporation.^[6]

The Prasar Bharati Board consists of:

• Chairman
• One Executive Member
• One Member (Finance)
• One Member (Personnel)
• Six Part-time Members
• Director-General (Akashvani), ex officio
• Director-General (Doordarshan), ex officio
• One representative of the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (India), to be nominated by that Ministry and
• Two representatives of the employees, of whom one shall be elected by the engineering staff from amongst themselves and one shall be elected by the other employee from amongst themselves.

The president of India appoints the chairman and the other members, except the ex officio members, nominated member and the elected members. Board meetings must be held at least once in every three months each year.

• Chairman – Navneet Kumar singhal^[7]
• Chief Executive Officer – Gaurav Dwivedi
• Member (Personnel) – Additional charge with CEO Gaurav Dwivedi
• Member (Finance) – DPS Negi^[8]

• Additional Secretary and Representative of Ministry of Information & Broadcasting – Ms. Neerja Sekhar^[9]
• Ex Officio members – Vacant
• Part-time member : Shaina NC, Alok Agrawal, Ashok Kumar Tandon, Sanjay Gupta^[10]

• ^[11] The Chairman is appointed by the President.
• Member (Personnel) – Additional charge with CEO Gaurav Dwivedi
• Ex-Officio Members – Vacant
• Nominated Members – 2 Vacancies

In May 2020, Doordarshan and All India Radio began broadcasting^[12] weather reports on Mirpur, Muzaffarabad, and Gilgit in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in their prime time news bulletins. Pakistan had rejected this move by India, terming it as a "legally void" action to change the status of the region.

Obsolete technologies are being replaced with new technologies. Starting from 2017, more than 1200 old technology^[13] Analog Transmitters have been phased out and 23 Digital Transmitters have been installed at 19 locations across the country.

The footprint of Doordarshan has increased between 2017 and 2021. In 2017, the number of satellite channels stood at 23 as opposed to 36 in 2021.

Timeline of ATT Phase out and Resource rationalisation:

From 413 in 2017, the number of All India Radio stations has gone up to 485 in 2021. All India Radio's FM stations are now reaching 70 percent of the Indian population.^[14] As part of Prasar Bharati's drive to phase out obsolete technologies, the number of Short Wave and Medium Wave stations has come down from 48 to 12 and 148 to 128 respectively between 2017 and 2021.

Since 2017, Prasar Bharati has shifted its focus to digital first which has rendered promising results with a digital network spread across more than 300 Twitter handles, 190 YouTube channels, multiple news websites and NewsOnAir App with more than two million downloads. The digital network viewership growth has witnessed a 66% rise since 2017.^[15] Now Digital has become integral to all Prasar Bharati activities with daily 800+ digital uploads happening across the network, so that all in-house produced news and non-news content is available for on-demand consumption on digital platforms. NewsOnAir App has been a game-changer with 270+ radio and TV live-streams.

Between 2017 and 2022, Prasar Bharati's digital platforms across the country have together written a brilliant growth story with many of its YouTube channels already in the Million club and multiple others inching closer to the milestone, together taking the current total YouTube subscription base to more than two crores. In 2021, more than 185 YouTube channels of Doordarshan and All India Radio together registered more than a billion views. Their ‘watch time’ for the entire duration of 2021 summed up to a figure of 94 Million Hours.^[16] YouTube channels of both DD News and DD National crossed 4 Million Subscribers in 2021. Prasar Bharati's App NewsOnAir clocked a listenership of 214 Million+ in 2021. Prasar Bharati's digital platforms in the remotest areas of Northeast registered significant milestones in 2021, by together clocking more than 220 Million Views and 1 Million+ Subscribers on YouTube.^[17]

Prasar Bharati's National Archives,^[18] India's oldest and biggest audio-visual Archives, has an exclusive collection of rare recordings of historical value – interviews, documentaries, features, music, radio plays, etc. It is a treasure trove of not only the memorable performances of the great artistes, who have contributed to India's rich cultural, music and dance heritage but also a collection of rare media assets related to important events like Independence Day celebrations, Republic Day Parades, address to the nation by prime ministers, presidents etc. as well as other important broadcasts since the advent of broadcasting in our country. These rare assets are in the form of sound recordings and audio visual footage in all genres like music, dance, drama, interviews, short films, documentaries, feature films etc.

Archival activities started in the form of transcription service of radio recordings on 3 April 1954, with transcription of speeches of all dignitaries, especially the presidents and prime ministers of India. Though informal archiving had been there in the country before 1954, setting up of transcription service converted it into an organized activity. Doordarshan Archives was established in 2004 with an objective to digitize and preserve the valuable audio-visual footages. Initially the archival setups in AIR and Doordarshan grew separately under their respective verticals. In 2018, these separate setups were combined and brought under a common umbrella as a new vertical ‘Prasar Bharati Archives’.

Radio autobiographies are one of the unique collections in the archives of Prasar Bharati, wherein audio autobiography of eminent personalities^[19] who have made invaluable contributions in different fields of nation-building is recorded. Besides being anecdotal about the lives and works of the personalities, these Radio Autobiographies also chronicle the contemporary history of India narrated through the life's journey of these eminent personalities.

In his Radio Autobiography recorded by All India Radio in 1986, India's then leading industrialist and former chairman of Tata Group Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata recalls his memories of the Emergency era, his conversations with Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi on the excesses during the Emergency. Recollecting one of his interactions with Indira Gandhi in the beginning of Emergency, JRD Tata^[20] said, “When she declared Emergency, I went to see her. I said, Indira ji, why did you have to put all these people in jail including old people like Morarji Desai. She said, because they were plotting against me. I can't have people against me from within.”

In an interaction with All India Radio in January 1986, Sahitya Akademi Award winner and renowned poet Amrita Pritam^[21] said that in popular culture, people count Hinduism as one of the religions along with Islam, Christianity, etc. But in reality, Hinduism is not a religion. Everyone born in Hindustan is a Hindu.

This treasure trove is being digitized and made available on Prasar Bharati Archives YouTube channel^[22][23] in public interest for academic purposes. Apart from the content mentioned above, audio of around 50 original Constituent Assembly Speeches from 1946–1949 have been uploaded on this YouTube channel.^[24]

Priceless recordings of the likes of maestros Ustad Bismillah Khan, MS Subbulakshmi, Begum Akhtar, M Balamuralikrishna and the epic Ramcharitmanas, among others are part of Prasar Bharati archives and are available on the counter at Akashwani Bhawan^[25] on Parliament Street in Delhi.

Prasar Bharati Archives has contributed significantly to PradhanMantri Sangrahalaya,^[26] inaugurated by PM Modi on 14 April 2022, providing about 206 hours of audio and 53 hours of video content. This includes Address to Constituent Assembly (Tryst with Destiny), Broadcast to the Nation on 1st Independence Day, Oath-taking ceremony, Inauguration of Atomic Energy Establishment and Opening of the 1st Atomic Reactor, Declaration of Emergency, Address to the UN General Assembly, Non-Aligned Conference, Inauguration of Delhi Metro and much more.

From among the rare audio-video content of historical, political and cultural significance available in Prasar Bharati Archives, we have created decade-wise YouTube playlists of such content starting from 1930s till 2000s.

In 2010, as many as 24 candidates out of the 30 selected for the posts of journalists in Doordarshan News were alleged to have been appointed on the basis of political considerations.^[27] For example, one of the successful candidates was closely related to a former Congress Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, another successful candidate was the daughter of a sitting Congress Union minister, and a third was a close relative of Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma.^[28][29]

The number of applicants called for interview was increased from 25 to 35 to accommodate the daughter of a Congress politician, who held the 33rd rank, and would have otherwise been eliminated at the cut-off stage. Another successful candidate, Anika Kalra Kalha, was not even called for an audition and reporting skills test, and the remark in the relevant columns read “Did not qualify for this stage”. Similarly, the weightage given to interviews was arbitrarily increased two days before they were held.^[28]

In 2014, over allegations of DD editing out portions of interview of the then BJP's PM candidate Narendra Modi, then Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar had admitted that some parts of the interview "were apparently edited" and pointed a finger at then I&B Minister Manish Tewari for failing to grant the "operational autonomy" that the public broadcaster had been seeking for years.^[30]

In August 2017, then Tripura CM Manik Sarkar alleged that Doordarshan and All India Radio had refused to broadcast his Independence Day speech unless he reworked it.^[31]

In September 2017, following instructions from the ministry of information and broadcasting, Doordarshan had put on hold prime time slots auctioned to Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms and Saaibaba Telefilms.^[32]

Fake offer/appointment letters for jobs at Prasar Bharati's DD Kisan channel were given by scamsters on fake letter heads of DD Kisan.^[33]

In September 2017, following a complaint of alleged abuse of dominance with regard to infrastructural facilities for FM radio broadcasting, Competition Commission ordered a fresh investigation against Prasar Bharati.^[34]

In March 2018, then Prasar Bharati Chairman Dr. A Surya Prakash said that the I&B Ministry had been refusing funds to Prasar Bharati since December 2017 and that the funds for the month of January and February were drawn from the broadcaster's contingency funds to pay its employees’ salaries.^[35]

In early 2019, Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry floated a draft Bill ‘Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Amendment Bill, 2019’, which would have given Ministry the power to appoint Director Generals of Doordarshan and All India Radio directly,^[36] instead of the then practice of recruitment of DGs through Prasar Bharati Board. The Bill sought to remove the provision to establish a recruitment board ‘Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board’ (PBRB). According to the explanatory note of the draft Bill, “As per Section 9 of the Prasar Bharati Act, officers and employees of the public broadcaster were to be appointed in ‘consultation’ with the Recruitment Board, which was to be established as per Section 10 of the Act. However, the Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board (PBRB) could not be established due to one or another reason” and the ministry has now decided “not to establish PBRB” and remove the relevant section of the Act which empowered Prasar Bharati to set up recruitment boards.” Soon after, the notification seeking public feedback on the draft Bill was removed from the Ministry’s website, and another notice was issued which said that “the matter has been kept in abeyance till further orders”.

In April 2019, then Congress President Rahul Gandhi's office did not respond to Prasar Bharati CEO's request for Gandhi's interview by DD News. Earlier that month, Congress had submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission with allegations of bias in the political coverage by the public broadcaster.^[37]

In October 2019, Prasar Bharati suspended a Chennai Doordarshan Kendra^[38] official citing "disciplinary proceedings". According to media reports, Doordarshan Kendra assistant director R Vasumathi had allegedly blocked the telecast of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at IIT Madras.

In March 2020, Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati turned down BBC^[39] invite for an awards function, alleging that the BBC did “one-sided” reporting on Delhi violence in February 2020. In his letter to BBC Director General, Vempati said, “I must respectfully decline the invitation in view of the recent coverage of the BBC of certain incidents of violence in Delhi.”

In February 2021, Twitter blocked the account of Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati^[40] for using a hashtag which was deemed inappropriate by the government. BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, who chairs the Parliamentary Committee on Data Protection Bill, condemned blocking of Prasar Bharati CEO's account, saying that Twitter has "victimised the person who told you to take the right step”. The account was restored later in the day.

In October 2021, a few media reports alleged that Prasar Bharati is shutting down transmission^[41] from DD Kalaburagi and DD Silchar. Taking note of these reports, Prasar Bharati clarified that broadcast reform steps to phase out obsolete analog terrestrial TV transmitters was being misrepresented.^[42] That these DD Centres will continue to generate program content for broadcasting on the satellite channels of Doordarshan dedicated to their respective States, apart from maintaining their presence on digital media via YouTube and on social media. For instance, program content generated by DD Silchar and DD Kalaburagi shall now be broadcast on DD Assam and DD Chandana respectively.

This article incorporates text from the "Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990" in compliance with the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 Section 52 (1)(q)

• Prasar Bharati India
• NewsOnAir
• DD News