17 `staid' AIR state units asked to pack up and go back to states

17 `staid' AIR state units asked to pack up and go back to states
VRINDA GOPINATH

NEW DELHI, NOV 21: The Directorate General (News Services) of All India Radio (AIR) has decided to shift the 63-year-old language services unit back to the respective home states, much to the shock and dismay of its 85-odd broadcasters and personnel. Last week, a formal notice of transfer was handed to several units, including Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Gujarati, among others, to report to their state kendras with immediate effect.

The unit, which represents 17 states in the country, was launched on October 1, 1937, and has been broadcasting a daily national news bulletin in 17 major languages since then. However, according to Harish Awasthi, DG, News Services, the move is a measure to improve the quality of service and to complement the ambitious and expensive 24-hour FM channel to be launched in every state capital on the 50th anniversary of the Republic on January 26.

``We have been concerned with the quality of these language broadcasts for a long time as they have been staid and dull. Also, these people sitting in Delhi have lost touch with the changes their languages have made back home. To successfully re-package these bulletins, we need dispatches from correspondents, live inputs and Q&As. Now, with their added strength in various state AIR stations, the FM channel also will take off smoothly and swiftly,'' says Awasthi.

But many of the staff in the language units are resentful about the way they were given their marching orders. Said one irate official: ``As the letter informs me, I am to proceed to my home state and report to the station director immediately as my services have been terminated in the language unit. Why is there this haste to wrap up the units overnight?''

Several questions crop up in the minds of unit personnel. ``We have not been informed about the terms and conditions of our new assignment. There is a procedure involved when any decision is taken. Should we not be given an option to decide whether we want to take up the assignment? Are we going to be part of the Government or the Prasar Bharati Corporation? And if the authorities believe that the content has to be improved, is it not their responsibility to do so? After all, we only read the bulletin but the content comes from the top,'' says another official. He adds the orders are discriminatory as only eight languages units are being sent back while the rest will be phased out in time. The choice has been arbitrary, he alleges.

Awasthi, however, waves away the allegations. ``Ask them what procedures have we violated,'' he retorts. On the charge of being arbitrary, Awasthi says not all language units will be shifted immediately, but will depend on how well the FM service develops as a full-fledged network. ``Currently, only 35 people are being shifted and all the units will continue to broadcast till we set up the FM network. In any case, these units were started because news-gathering was difficult in those days but today, they can sit in their own cities and still broadcast national news. So, what's the fuss?''

Unit personnel, however, claim that for one, the transfer order violates most norms of service as the choice of units and people is arbitrary; two, if the intention is to boost services, the FM channel is certainly limited as it has a 60-km radius and most parts of states will be denied their national news service which is currently broadcast on short wave. Awasthi claims news will eventually reach every corner of the state through RN channels and satellite. For another, the FM launch is the brainchild of the Indian Information Services (IIS) cadre so that they can entrench themselves in the network as the Gita Krishnan Committee report has recommended the closure of their nesting grounds like Films Division, Publicity Division, DAVP, etc. The Prasar Bharati Corporation is yet to formulate its rules and policies for its employees and hence, the future status of AIR and DD employees is anybody's guess. In the face of this uncertainty, unit officials wonder why AIR is in such haste to shift and eventually stopthe language broadcasts from New Delhi.