The Hindu Opinion:
A great medium of public education declines
Krishna Kumar
PTI The radio's characteristics as a medium redefined education, creating the
possibility of learning long after childhood had passed. File photo
Finding something worth listening to on medium wave in the broadcasts of an All
India Radio station in any part of the country is like looking for life in a
drought-hit landscape.
It is nice to know that Prasar Bharati can now hope to get some financial
autonomy as well as funds to buy new equipment (The Hindu, December 16).
However, autonomy and funds will need a matching increase in spirit and
imagination if Prasar Bharati wants to save its radio services from a final
surrender at the altar of market values. Finding something worth listening to
on medium wave in the broadcasts of an All India Radio (AIR) station in any
part of the country is like looking for life in a drought-hit landscape. Tuning
in to AIR's overseas service is worse. Nowadays when AIR is vigorously
advertising its DTH service, it needs to reflect on how its philosophy and
functioning have changed over the last three decades. A deeper examination is
required to determine AIR's relationship with India's people in the emerging
social order.
Unique technology
In the global history of modern communications, radio grew as a unique
technology which combined the use of sound with narrative without recourse to
visual or graphic imagery. Its appeal came from humanity's long experience of
spoken language as the primary means of communication. Every civilisation was
originally nourished by words uttered by familiar voices in the course of story
telling or singing. The great thing about the radio was that human voice could
now cover long distances and thereby create large communities of listeners. The
radio's characteristics as a medium redefined education, creating the
possibility of learning long after childhood had passed. It opened up a new
world of creative expression in familiar genres like story, drama and poetry.
Radio added a new dimension to music and discursive prose. New genres like
reportage that were specific to radio arose. As a medium of mass communication,
radio found a congenial climate in India's vast geography and varied cultural
terrain. Its role in bringing India together is yet to be fully appreciated,
and if its current crisis continues, we may never realise what all it could
have accomplished in the socio-political and cultural spheres, had it been
nurtured on a sustained basis.
Intellectual & creative interaction
During the first two decades following independence, All India Radio was
perceived primarily as an educative medium. The few stations there were served
as centres of intellectual and creative interaction. With basic technological
aids, the early generation of producers was able to achieve a high standard of
rigour and grace in a remarkable range of forms and subjects. Despite the
internal struggle between bureaucrats and producers that one hears about, AIR
remained an attractive source of employment for talented young people. In
Hindi, for instance, a stint with Akashvani made a palpable impact on the
creative trajectory of a substantial number of major poets and writers of the
post-independence generation. The same can be said of musicians and singers.
The Emergency cast its shadow on AIR, making it a prime vehicle of
dissemination of a culture of chicanery and sycophancy. Before AIR could
recover from this misuse, it was demoted to the status of a poor cousin of
Doordarshan. And shortly thereafter, the policy of drastic reduction in the
size of the state apparatus silently crept in. Like all other Ministries and
departments of the Central government, AIR too lost hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of posts. Perhaps some pruning was justified, but the government
pursued an extremist line, showing limited patience or insight in
distinguishing office staff from jobs requiring specific skills and knowledge.
In any case, the new office technology had blurred this distinction, making
support services an obsolete concept. Machines replaced people, and the culture
of collective thinking was replaced by connectivity among the isolated.
Contractual arrangements became the norm and planning acquired a visionless, ad
hoc character. Outsourcing of tasks emerged as yet another attractive
instrument of reducing institutional liability. A vast number of institutions
fell victim to these policies, incurring irreparable damage to their internal
capacities and pride. This is what seems to have happened to AIR too.
Lack of spirit or vision
Its medium wave coverage now lacks any semblance of spirit or vision. Medium
wave transmission is now treated as a preserve of the rural listeners: those
living in cities have the privilege of FM listening. Barring short insertions
in news bulletins or a few sponsored programmes, AIR's FM frequencies are now
fully devoted to entertainment which essentially means film music. FM
broadcasts supposedly dedicated to young listeners desperately compete with
private channels by using crude strategies of attention seeking. As for AIR's
rural audience, it is now treated as a stereotype of backwardness. Messages
-paid for by different Ministries - intercept news to remind villagers about
the importance of cleanliness and contraception. Both in content and style,
these messages treat India's rural population as a mindless mass. The magnitude
and complexity of their existential challenges are set aside when the innocent
voice of a village girl sings the wonders wrought by a pit for throwing
garbage. A rugged male voice claims victory over his relatives who were
pressuring him to marry off his daughter before the legally permissible age.
Patriarchy is thus happily reinforced; how the girl fared later becomes an
unnecessary detail.
The formation of Prasar Bharati coincided with the full-scale operation of the
neo-liberal regime. One expected that Prasar Bharati would offer AIR greater
intellectual autonomy by giving it a breathing distance from the government.
This was not an unreasonable hope, but who had imagined that the new era would
subject every decision and idea to scrutiny on the basis of market
considerations? Instead of expanding the space available for creative use of
the medium, neo-liberal policies have diminished that space. As a listener, one
notices an all-round decline in quality. A medium dependent on voice, radio
requires people who are competent speakers of a language. Today, reports
included in news bulletins are replete with mistakes of pronunciation, syntax
and word choice in both English and Hindi. It seems there is no provision for
training even in the purely technical matters involved in delivery, let alone
more professional matters like collection of relevant details, their analysis
and editing. Apparently, the task of sending news from State capitals and other
towns carries meagre monetary value and no serious investment is made in
initial training or later upgradation.
A disgrace
I wonder if anyone serving in AIR listens to BBC or even to China Radio
International (CRI). If someone did, he or she would find that the difference
is not merely that of resources or equipment. The urge to excel and innovate is
missing too. AIR's overseas service is a disgrace to a nation claiming to have
become a global economic power. Even if the policy is to use it for propaganda,
its quality is so poor that the propaganda makes one laugh. Now when India's
democracy has matured sufficiently to allow state-published textbooks to eschew
propaganda, one expects radio to arouse interest and ideas rather than
regurgitate platitudes. In its domestic broadcasts too, the quotient and
quality of propaganda remain alarming. Debate and discussion in AIR continue to
be rare and subdued, not just because the participants feel uneasy and
cautious, but also because the anchor has no background knowledge. In-house
research support is just not available to a moderator or an interviewer. Not
surprisingly, the expert invited to comment on a specialised issue does not
feel sufficiently challenged. Commentators who take an independent line go out
of favour and more accommodative voices are ushered in.
Prasar Bharati was ostensibly created to change this culture, both in radio and
television. To an extent, Doordarshan has improved over the recent past, but
AIR has continued to decline. An imaginative policy for AIR would have assigned
it a major role in all areas of social policy, especially in education and
health. A flagship programme like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan would have achieved far
greater success if AIR had provided sustained support to it by giving time to
teachers and experts to analyse new curricular and pedagogic policies. The
Right to Education (RTE) Act has posed several radical issues which need to be
publicly discussed on a daily or weekly basis. As a national system of public
education, AIR can play a vital role over the coming years in the
implementation of RTE. For this to happen, its masters will have to stop
chanting the market mantra.
(The author teaches education at Delhi University and is a former director of
NCERT.)
With thanks and regards
(Rajesh Asudani)
Assistant General Manager
Reserve Bank of India
Nagpur
Cell: 9420397185
o: +91 712 2806846
R: 2591349
It's not activity that wears out the body and spirit- it's inactivity. Keep
going!"
GUS ECKSTEIN
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