We are the only country in the world to have a legislature that owns and operates its own TV channel. And now we are going to have a legislature that owns two! The number of days Parliament functions in a year maybe shrinking, but the institution's broadcast footprint is increasing, almost as if to compensate. Four years after the Lok Sabha Secretariat launched a TV channel to broadcast the proceedings of the House live, it is the Rajya Sabha's turn to launch its own satellite channel.
Across the world there are channels telecasting proceedings of legislatures, but they are usually run by autonomous national broadcasters or cable networks. BBC Parliament is one model, C Span in the US another. In India former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's founding logic for the Lok Sabha Channel, as enunciated by Bhaskar Ghose who got the channel going, was that it should be an extension of the public gallery in the Lok Sabha, primarily meant for citizens to have access to its proceedings.
It was meant to be run by Prasar Bharati but the national broadcaster asked for a considerable sum to run the channel. So eventually Chatterjee decided the Lok Sabha could do it on its own for a fraction of the cost. Till today the Rajya Sabha telecast continues to be done by Doordarshan but that will change once the RS channel gets going in mid year.
Separate entities
The logical thing would have been to have a Parliament-owned broadcaster running two channels, one for each house. That was the initial concept — Sansad TV — a channel each for the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to telecast proceedings and do parliament-related programming. The presiding officers of each house approved but others down the line put up enough resistance for the idea to be dropped, and eventually just a Lok Sabha channel went on air. When the Rajya Sabha channel idea was revived by the current Vice President, it did not initially preclude being a wing of the existing set up. But finally what is about to emerge by mid year is a separate entity altogether.
The problem with a channel devoted to the public gallery concept is that even if the Houses function for all days when in session, which they often don't, there are still 260 plus days in the year when there is no session to telecast. You could shut it down for those periods but cable operators, despite a must-carry clause, would balk at displaying colour bars for large parts of the year. So, willy nilly, you have a programming challenge on your hands. Bhaskar Ghose and Sunit Tandon, who evolved the Lok Sabha channel, decided to give it a public service broadcasting persona, which, over the years has won itself a steady viewership. It is more worthy than scintillating, but in several ways the channel discharges a public service remit more single mindedly than Prasar Bharati does. And it does not shrink from carrying long studio-based programmes on serious subjects.
The Rajya Sabha is conceptualising its own channel rather differently, with parliamentary functioning squarely as its raison d'etre. Rather than be an extension of the gallery of Parliament, primarily relaying the proceedings, it hopes to shed more light on the institution's deliberative and monitoring roles, and the quantities of information that get generated within the Parliamentary system. And in the process, it hopes to energise several tools of the institution that are neither well known nor in a particularly dynamic state.
The Petitions Committees of the RS and the the state legislatures, for instance, are barely known to the public, says the new channel's CEO Gurdeep Singh Sappal, a young officer on special duty to Vice President Hamid Ansari. There are a lot of tools of parliamentary functioning not known to people, and the channel will not only publicise these but in the process hopefully re-energise them and make them more effective. People don't know how and for what to petition legislatures. The channel hopes to make the criteria for petitions public, push for the liberalisation of the rules that currently govern the functioning of these committees, and make them higher profile so that their members are energised too.
Parliament-derived institutions are in the happy position of not having to turn to the government for money. If you want a budget you simply decide what it should be and give it to yourself! So the RS channel has given itself an operation budget four times that of the LS channel, at about Rs. 40 crore, and is also looking to get additional funding from state legislatures for this channel. Armed with these resources, it hopes to do a lot of its programming based on parliamentary research and travel.
Making it accessible
One focus is on what goes on in Parliament, telling people about the papers laid on the table of the house when it is in session, and focusing on the work of the Committee on Papers Laid on the Table. It aims to make the masses of information generated, including the answers to 350 odd questions each day, accessible to viewers across the country through the programming the channel does. Easier said than done, but to begin with, the channel is setting up a research unit headed by a journalist. The details of law-making will get more attention too. Such as the issue of whether rules framed for laws are in consonance with the spirit of the law. All very constructive, but can it avoid being dreary?
Staffing the channel will be a key issue. Some eyebrows have risen because the Executive Editor chosen for the channel does not have a dot of TV experience, but he was apparently chosen for his knowledge of Parliamentary functioning. The Executive Director of the channel is a former TV channel man.
The other focus of the channel will be, we are told, on the history of India after 1947. There will be commissioning of documentaries on this theme, with a 10-member committee of RS members such as Shyam Benegal, Javed Akhtar, Sitaram Yechury and H.K. Dua to screen and approve the concepts.
Doing broadcasting on behalf of Parliament is a rather different ball game from doing broadcasting anywhere else. In theory, the money for it is not difficult to come by because Parliament simply votes itself what it needs. Advertising is considered dicey, so it is not solicited. And in theory you can be more confrontational with regard to government because you are not answerable to it, though you are answerable to all parties. “Parliament has the huge advantage of being truly free and fearless,” Shyam Benegal told this newspaper recently, while talking about the RS channel.
In practice though, things are less rosy. The Lok Sabha does not delegate financial powers, so in the channel run by its secretariat, all sanctions have to come from the Secretary General. Everybody employed, even when they have proper editorial designations, is a consultant in status. Full time anchors are also designated consultants. In order to circumvent some of the problems that the Lok Sabha channel faced, the Rajya Sabha channel will have its own administrative and financial unit separate from the RS Secretariat. But again, everybody will be designated a consultant!
As for not being answerable to government, there have been instances in the experience of the Lok Sabha channel when programmes were not shown because cabinet ministers objected to questions asked on it. Programmes have also been dropped after one telecast because the Speaker or an MP or minister objected to something on it. Journalists, particularly freelance ones, remain a huge beneficiary of the first channel, and will doubtless be of the second one as well. Political contacts help get them programmes to present on the Lok Sabha channel. But programmes have also been withdrawn from presenters without any explanation being offered. Parliament, after all, does not have to be answerable to anyone outside.
