Bookwatch
Handmaiden of the Government
By Anita Joshua
Doordarshan Days, Bhaskar Ghose, Viking, Rs. 395
SHORTLY after taking charge, Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister, S. Jaipal Reddy resurrected the issue of license fee on radio and television sets to address Prasar Bharati's perennial shortage of funds. The public broadcaster remains in the red, but nothing has been heard of it since.
Unpopular though such a fee will be, it has a staunch advocate in former Doordarshan Director-General Bhaskar Ghose. An annual fee on radio and television sets was in place till the 1970s and Ghose's calculation is that Prasar Bharati would be able to collect Rs. 4,000 crore per annum. He arrives at this figure by suggesting a Rs. 100 annual fee on the 15 crore radio sets and Rs. 1,000 per annum fee on the eight crore television sets in the country.
Ghose makes a forceful argument for license fee in his book Doordarshan Days, that comes at a time when the demand for dropping the façade of Prasar Bharati being an autonomous institution is gaining currency. Though a votary of autonomy for the public broadcaster, he argues that the Prasar Bharati Act is flawed as the corporation is dependent on the Government for funds. He is equally critical of the decision to introduce advertising in Doordarshan.
Quoting studies which show the most successful public broadcasters to be those funded by license fees, Ghose signs off this account of his association with Doordarshan — first as DG and later as I&B Secretary — with a hope that many would think is misplaced. For, he hopes the Government and Parliament will eventually wake up to the virtue of a television network that is dependent on neither State finances nor advertising and, "therefore is not bound to yield to pressures from either"... and will be able to "fly to its own destiny".
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