Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani’s 2017 Sardar Patel Memorial lecture, delivered on October 26, and broadcast/telecast on October 31, the 140^th birth anniversary of the Iron Man of India, is a fine one, sophisticated and even subtle.

She has the advantage of being an entertainment industry insider, and she is intelligent enough to grasp the basic truth of entertainment that it thrives on diversity. She has spoken about the fact of the existence of differences of ideologies and points-of-view in a democracy, and she showed the political insight to emphasise the need to look at the many languages recognised in the Constitution because language remains the main and vital vehicle of communication. And as an entertainment industry insider, she underscored the importance of technology. She said that 70 per cent to 80 per cent of Internet users will be on the mobile by 2018. And she talked about the challenges that this poses to broadcasting. The lecture was titled, “Broadcasting landscapes in a democracy”.

While talking about the need for free and fair news, and the need to avoid and overcome the competition between headline and hashtag, and the reality of news as spectator sport in private broadcasting, she hinted at the need for news without the colouring of opinion. As a member of the government, she did bring in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Mann Ki Baat as an example of how technology is helping to reach the message to millions and how the listeners count was a record 61 per cent, thanks to technology. She was at pains to show the importance of regional languages.

Apart from mentioning Mann Ki Baat and Prime Minister Modi’s New India by 2022 agenda, Irani did not speak like a member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and member of the Modi government. She said that she was speaking in her capacity as a consumer and not as an I&B Minister. It is praiseworthy for what she did not do. She did not speak about the obligation of the public broadcaster to spread nationalism, which is the silly hobbyhorse of the ruling party. Though she did talk of national interest, she did not do so in terms of national security and patriotism but in terms of the interests of ordinary people far away from the national capital, especially those tucked away in the nooks and corners of rural India.

She avoided propaganda and ideology. She spoke about the challenges of providing information news which is inexorably intertwined with technology and spoke of “designer thinkers’ where content is wrapped in changing technology. Interestingly, her focus was on the officers of the Indian Information Service (IIS) and it seems that as I&B minister, she is particularly sensitive to their needs. She seemed to want the IIS officers to be in the vanguard of conveying information, and this could only be information of what the government is doing. But what has IIS to do with Prasar Bharati? That is indeed the crux of the challenge facing the public broadcaster’s independence.

She tactfully avoided the troublesome question whether a public broadcaster is a state broadcaster and whether a public broadcaster can be critical of the government of the day. It is not necessary to fault her for this omission because the lecture was not meant to be a lesson in political philosophy and she did not make any attempt to make an ideological statement about the issue. But she made the very pertinent observation that the government supports the public broadcaster through the tax-payer’s money because the largest advertiser is the government.

This leads to the all-important question whether the public broadcaster is obliged to toe the government line because as the saying goes the one who pays calls the tune. She spoke of Prime Minister Modi’s vision of “New India” by 2022 but she did not say whether the public broadcaster should spread the message of New India, which, in other words, is nothing but being the voice of the government of the day. She seemed to be acutely aware of the fact that Prasar Bharati is autonomous and it is not a department of the ministry of I&B. As a matter of fact, she complimented Prasar Bharati chairman A. Surya Prakash – who demitted office on October 30 – and chief executive officer (CEO) Shashi Shekhar Vempati for creating the professional ethos – that is, independence of DD and AIR – thus acknowledging, however, indirectly that Prasar Bharati is a public broadcaster and that it is not a state broadcaster.

But Irani laid bare the problem in the example she gave couched in polite language. She revealed that as Minister for Textiles, she requested the famous filmmaker Muzaffar Ali whether he could help in bringing to the fore the textile traditions spread across the country through a film and that he had agreed to do it and he did make a film on the saree-makers spread from Pochampalli to Odisha. And she looked at Surya Prakash and Shashi Shekhar Vempati and said that she hoped Prasar Bharati would show the film. It was a mere hint. She implied that the decision to show the film on textiles made by Ali was entirely theirs. But there was also the unsaid directive that they should.

The problem is this: Ministry of Textiles is right in taking the help of a well-known filmmaker like Ali to showcase the riches of Indian textiles. But it is only the ministry that should make use of it. What the ministry can do is to buy the time-slot on Doordarshan and screen the film, instead of expecting Doordarshan to take the initiative to show it. There should also be the possibility that Doordarshan should be able to commission its documentary on Indian textiles and do it in its own way. That is what Prasar Bharati’s autonomy should mean.

It is unlikely that Prasar Bharati would ever do what the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) did during the 1982 Falklands War. It criticised then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government for the indulgent war, and it angered the Conservative MPs so much that they said, “Throw these bastards out.” Doordarshan is unlikely to do such a thing though it would be fun if it did. But the government takes care that such a thing never happens by making a careful choice of the Prasar Bharati chairman and CEO.