Even in her brief 13-day stint in the information and broadcasting ministry last year, no one could have faulted minister Sushma Swaraj for her zeal. Since shes had a somewhat longer run in the same ministry this year, it is now safe to add another adjective: misplaced.
Take, for example, the laffaire Prasar Bharati. After making a lot of noises about extending autonomy to the electronic media, the BJP-led coalition government has now decided that it should be made accountable to the Parliament and an MPs panel should be there to oversee the activities of the board responsible for managing the affairs of Doordarshan and All India Radio. Most politicians would love this in private, but criticised it in public.
Then again, in its efforts to bring about the change, certain legal aspects were completely overlooked. The biggest to date: that the original Prasar Bharati Act does not come into force ipso facto after the ordinance that started it lapses. Its restoration will still need to be ratified by Parliament.
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In fact, in a candid moment, Swaraj finally admitted that her ministry was so taken up by the Prasar Bharati Act, that it did not have any time for the broadcast bill, a much-needed regulation in these times of rampant media manipulation.
The manner in which the tenure of chief executive S S Gill was handled was another example of a lack of homework. First, the I&B ministry declared that Gill will go after the ordinance, promulgated by the United Front government, lapses. Later, it became clear that he could only be shifted after Parliaments okay on restoring the original act.
But what really is Gills fault? According to Swaraj, the 70-something head honcho is over-age (the original Prasar Bharati Act put an age bar of 62 years on the CEOs post), and a friend of the previous government who, along with other board members, was appointed in dirty haste.
In that case, the entire Prasar Bharati board should be reconstituted. But no, the rest of the board members most of whom, according to media analysts, are giants in their own field but have no inkling of running terrestrial networks as huge as DD and AIR are fine.
Replete with such contradictions, laffaire Gill then casts doubts over the credibility of the selection board that short-listed the Prasar Bharati board members.
The august panel comprised the vice-president of India, chairman of the Press Council of India, and economist Pai Panaidhikar, a nominee of the President.
So is the minister suggesting that all these people erred in their judgement? The government prefers to keep mum on this subject.
What is more irksome is the way the rest of the Prasar Bharati board distanced itself from Bull Gill as he is known amongst mandarins of DD and AIR after he had fallen out with the government.
After undergoing serious surgery, Prasar Bharati chairman Nikhil Chakravarty ought to have acted more gracefully and stepped down, setting a precedent for maintaining high moral standards, especially when the government was targeting one of his colleagues, says a media analyst.
The brouhaha apart, all this points to one thing: if the present government so much wanted to remove Gill and also bring back government control over Prasar Bharati, it could have done so in a more mature way instead of muddling through in a hamhanded fashion.
Especially so when a media-savvy person like Sushma Swaraj is at the helm of the Information & Broadcasting Ministry.