Akashvani । আকাশবাণী

Just a couple of days after the sad death of the one and only Ameen Sayani, I stumbled upon a photo with him, taken by his son at the NCPA, Mumbai. ‘August 2019’ was scrawled on it and I had gone there to deliver the Jamshed Bhaba Memorial Talk on Indian Culture. I was his great admirer and came to know him well from the time I headed All India Radio and Doordarshan, as CEO, Prasar Bharati.

Just a couple of days after the sad death of the one and only Ameen Sayani, I stumbled upon a photo with him, taken by his son at the NCPA, Mumbai. ‘August 2019’ was scrawled on it and I had gone there to deliver the Jamshed Bhabha Memorial Talk on Indian Culture. I was his great admirer. And came to know him well from the time I headed All India Radio and Doordarshan, as CEO, Prasar Bharati.

কাহিনির সূচনা ১৯৫২-র অগাস্ট মাসে সিংহলি রেডিওতে একটি হিন্দি ফিল্মি গানের অনুষ্ঠানের মধ্য দিয়ে। পাঁচ বছর আগেই ভারত স্বাধীন হয়েছে। দেশভাগ, দাঙ্গা ও আঞ্চলিক সংঘাতের বাতাবরণেও বাহ্যত দেশটা তখন সংহত, ঐক্যবদ্ধ। তবে সে দেশের না আছে কোনও সাধারণ ভাষা না আছে কোনও অভিন্ন আবেগ। 

My first recollection of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is imbedded in my mind, as it was also my first brush with the law. It was in January 1969, a month after I had appeared for my class 11 School Board examination, that my political 'mentor' decided that we must join a protest outside the Pakistani High Commissioner's office to demand the release of Sheikh saheb from jail. Who? Sashanka Sekhar Ray explained the Agartala Conspiracy Case and how the Pak government had put Sheik Mujib behind bars for two long years.

B V Keskar was Pandit Nehru’s Information Minister for a decade, from 1952 to 1962. For him, Hindi film songs were a strict ‘no-no’ where Akashvani was concerned, as in his opinion, it should be the mission of the public broadcaster, to encourage only classical music. He had to face a lot of pressure and ridicule for this rather obdurate stand, but there is no doubt that had it not been for him, Indian classical music may have never reached and enthralled the common man,because classical music by its very nature was meant primarily for the elite.

Every major nation in the world has a public broadcaster and there must be some reason why they do. Before we can discuss the shortcomings of Prasar Bharati, the autonomous body that supervises Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR), we may recall that even as its Act was passed by Parliament in 1990, its spirit of autonomy was vitiated by two sections, 32 and 33, which took away with the left hand what the right gave. They ensured that all its major decisions like manpower, recruitment, service conditions, salaries and critical issues would be decided only by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (I&B).

Prasar Bharati came into being on 28 th November 1997 after Prasar Bharati Act of 1990 was finally implemented by the Government and the Directorates of All India Radio (Akashvani) and Doordarshan were separated from Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and placed under an ‘autonomous body’. It was a momentous decision that came some seven years after Parliament had taken pains to conceive of a Public Service Broadcaster, whose character was eloquently worded in the Statement of Objects and Reasons.