New Delhi Apr.14 (ANI): With a new Director General in Professor K.G. Suresh, it is a good time to reset the aims and objectives of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC).
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I have had the opportunity to be associated with the IIMC ever since it was founded. The first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, had sought the advice of democracies in the West as to what should be the role of public information organisations in the country and what should be the training given to the personnel 'manning' such institutions.
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The advice received from the UNESCO and the Ford Foundation was that the country should have a Indian Information Service and the personnel of the service should be selected through a competitive examination, given initial training at the Services Training Institute in Dehradun, and then given professional training at an institution named the IIMC.
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The IIMC was initially housed in two buildings in South Extension in New Delhi. Senior officers of various departments of the Ministry of Information were appointed to head the IMMC academic staff. To name a few, we had eminent communicators like H.Y. Sharada Prasad, who received training at Harvard in the USA after a stint with a leading English newspaper in Bombay -- now Mumbai --G. N.S. Raghavan, a news editor with a English newspaper in the capital and many others. It had the blessings of Indira Gandhi, the then Minister of Information and Broadcasting, who inaugurated it on August 17 , 1965.
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After the passing away of India's second Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, there was confusion with the break up of the Indian National Congress. During the Ministership of the Information Ministry of Nandini Satpathy it was decided to suspend recruitment to the Indian Information Service. The IIMC would have had no work to perform and it was decided to admit students to the institute through a competitive examination, and in addition to train personnel of the Indian Information Service. The recruitment to the Indian Information Service resumed after the return of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister.
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When the institute was shifted to its present location near Jawarharlal Nehru University, a committee was appointed to draw up its aims and objectives . It was then headed by N.L Chawla, a former senior official of the broadcasting service. He had suggested that the IIMC should be given the status of a 'deemed university'.
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The committee, after deliberations, decided that while it should continue to train students in journalism and advertising, it should not dilute its primary role, which is to train personnel of the mass communication departments of the Government of India, have short courses for those manning the publicity departments of the state governments and public sector undertakings. By that time the country had fought four wars -- in Kashmir in 1947-48, the India China War, the war with Pakistan and 1965, and 1971. It was felt that the armed forces personnel should receive orientation regarding the role they and communication personnel have to play in future wars.
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The examinations conducted for admission to the institute were highly competive. To accommodate more students, K. P. Singh Deo who had taken over as the new Information Minister, decided to establish a branch of the institute in Orissa and allowed it to function from a location in Dhenkanal which belonged to him. There were more demands of opening more branches and they emerged in Aizwal (Mizoram) Amravati (Maharashtra), Kottayam (Kerala) and Jammu (Jammu and Kashmir).
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Meanwhile, the mass communication scene changed with the emergence of many television channels in the country. Some newspapers established their own mass communication establishments. Many training institutions also emerged in the country and the IIMC soon lost the importance it had as a mass communication training institute.
Teaching staff at the institute also started drifting away. There were periods when the institute was' managed' by a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
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After a long time, a 'professional journalist' is heading the institute. One hopes that he would not dilute the initial aims and objectives of the institute. It is also necessary that literature is available at the institute which is relevant to India. I have had the advantage of being a visiting professor at the institute decades ago in addition to directing its aims and objects till I reached superannuation in 1992.
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Good luck Prof K. G. Suresh.
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Mr. I. Ramamohan Rao is a former Principal Information Officer of the Government of India. He can be reached at raoramamohan@hotmail.