All airs about nothing

GOVERNANCE

prasar bharati

 

All airs about nothing

Formation of committees is the only activity done since Jawahar Sircar took over as CEO of Prasar Bharati. And amidst all this activity there is no plan in sight to revive the organisation.

 

by Arvind Tiwari

 

It has been one year since Jawahar Sircar became the CEO of Prasar Bharati, time enough to make one’s presence felt. But the only thing that seems to have been done in this period is formation and dissolution of a number of committees and sub-committees. This was revealed in response to a RTI plea on the working of the Prasar Bharati in the last one year.

 

Sircar seems to have smartly diverted organisational inadequacies to a horde of committees and now sees his future secured! These committees have lofty titles, including Lokvani Committee, Strategy and Vision Committee, Channel & Content Review Committee, Audit & Systems Committee, Technologies & Options Committee for Archives, etc. But none seems to doing anything concrete. All they seem to be ‘achieving’ is wasting hours by drafting ‘minutes’! 

 

These committees comprise of former bureaucrats who do not seem to have grasped the fact that television is medium that works by the minute and thus needs minds who could devise content on the spur of the moment.

 

During Prime Minister V P Singh’s tenure, professionals in Prasar Bharati organised a mile-long protest in form of a human chain near the PM’s residence demanding ‘functional autonomy’. He did give that in 1990 but autonomy got trapped in the superfluity of committees that today have become the order of the day. The result:  Prasar Bharati is facing low public estimation and viewers and advertisers are deserting it...Read More