Assignment 1

Q Analyze the following case and answer the questions given at the end

All India Radio & Doordarshan are two classic examples of institutions whose ‘mission
statement’ has certainly not been met with. ‘Bahujana Hitya Bahujana Sukhya’ (the good &
happiness of the majority) and ‘Satyam Shivam Sundram’ (truth that is permanent &
beautiful)are among the best mission statements of any broadcasting organisations the world
over. But sadly, these statements have been totally ignored by policy makers & media planners
in All India Radio & Doordarshan. If the good & happiness of the majority is the aim, where are
the majority people residing in India? If 64% of India’s population lives in the countryside
spread over more than 6.15 lakh villages, far away from the urban influence, it needs to be
examined whether All India Radio is sensitised to the information, entertainment & educational
needs of this majority (bahujans). Also, the real truth about Rural India is that every third person
there lives below the poverty line. Year round employment, easy access to safe drinking water,
sanitary toilets & electricity are still distant dreams. So, is Doordarshan portraying these truths,
though they are not ‘beautiful’, to promote introspection & public debate.

That Doordarshan is totally urbanised & commercialised is a known fact. Let us therefore
examine AIR’s role & responsibility since this is a cheaper medium within people’s access.

Less time: In the straight jacket programme pattern of AIR, the time devoted to ‘rural
programmes’ has never been more than 6% and sadly enough, this has remained ‘static’ over the
decades. Ten-minute farm new in the morning & ten minutes of farm & home dialogue in the
afternoon are the staple items for the listeners by most of the 183 radio stations in the country.

 Poor propaganda of development programmes: Successive governments have been

implementing rural development & poverty alleviation programmes including wage
employment, self-employment & integrated development programmes for many years now.
What role has the radio played in creating awareness about the objectives of these programmes?
By educating rural listeners about their role, rights & responsibilities vis-à-vis rural development
programmes it could contribute to their better implementation.

 Gender insensitivity: Media professionals are aware that the informational needs of women are
different. Furthermore, 65% of rural women are non-workers (Rural Development Statistics,
1998, NIRD) and thus are available at home for listening to radio. Though most AIR stations
broadcast for more than ten hours daily, they do not find it possible to set apart even 30 minutes
of programming time for women.

 Neglect of children: India’s population pyramid has a broad-base with children below 15 years
accounting for 38% of the total population (RDS, 1998, NIRD). We also proclaim that children
are the future hopes of the nation. But the tragedy is that the AIR cannot boast of a single
programme for children. Broadcast planners have remained under the mistaken notion that it is
enough to broadcast programmes for children during the weekends.
 Indifferent entertainment: It is disquieting to note that even the needs of the rural audiences
are not given any weightage. Hari katha programmes in Andhra Pradesh, Kathakali Padangal in
Kerala and Nautanki in Uttar Pradesh & other hindi speaking states – all go on air after 9:30 pm.
By this time, most of the village folk are fast asleep. What prevents radio from broadcasting
them between 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm? National relays & cntral news bulletins are often cited as the
stumbling blocks. The argument put up by the broadcast planners in lieu of these allegations, is
that the Planning Commission has driven them to view every programme from the angle of its
revenue earning potential. However, this argument does not cut much ice. On the contrary, it is
observed that programmes for rural audiences too have a lot of revenue earning potential. This is
borne out by the fact that advertisements about chemical fertilisers, pesticides, tractors, pump
sets, certified seeds etc. are crowded around regional news & farm news bulletins.

 Serving different categories: Radio for decades, has retained programmes like ‘Anuranjani’
(classical music) which logs zero listening and ‘Sangeet Sarita’ whose listenership is far too
negligible compared to film music programmes. In defense of these programmes, radio
professional emphasis on their role to uphold cultural traditions & their duty to the society. But
they seem to forget that they are as much duty bound to serve the rural masses who are in a
majority as against patrons of music & other fine arts who are an elite group & mostly urban-
based.

 Need of the hour: There is no justification for a public service broadcasting medium depending
on public funds, to ignore the interest of the vast majority of peole who need & want its service.
There is a wide-spread belief that with the advent of television & more particularly the cable
television, radio has almost disappeared from the urban media scene in India.

 Questions

1. Do you agree with the view that there is a need for a rural channel in broadcasting? Why or
why not?

2. How far do you appreciate the stand of AIR and its present programming policy?

 3. What kind of programmes do you suggest for the rural audience?