When the Narendra Modi government took office in May 2014, the then Information and Broadcasting Minister, Prakash Javadekar, promised to end the “government fiefdom” over Prasar Bharati and recast it on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) model: autonomous in administration, free in editorial judgement, and accountable to Parliament.
Twelve years later that promise remains unfulfilled. The 138th episode of “Mann Ki Baat”, broadcast on September 27, 2026, is only the most visible reminder that the state still treats the public airwaves as its own platform.
Also Read | Budget 2026: ₹4,551 crore for I-B Ministry; funds for Prasar Bharati, to support radio movement
The BBC model, unfulfilled
The irony is sharp. The same political class that invoked the BBC as the template, later accused it of a “continuing colonial mindset” after it telecast the documentary in 2023, “India: The Modi Question”. From April 2024 the BBC had to split its Indian news operation to meet foreign-investment rules.
The deeper story is older than the Emergency. In 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru told the Constituent Assembly — then the only authoritative Indian statement on the British model — “my own view of the set-up for broadcasting is that we should approximate, as far as possible, to the British model, the BBC, that is to say, it would be better if we had a semi-autonomous corporation under the government, of course with the policy controlled by the government, otherwise not conducted as a government department.” Even that caveat — “otherwise not conducted as a government department” — has not been honoured.
Mark Tully, former BBC bureau chief in Delhi, put the same distinction succinctly in a conversation in 2017: public service broadcasting “is not the same as government broadcast”. It rests on two principles, he said — that the government must not interfere in the broadcaster’s autonomy, and that programmes must not be judged by commercial merit alone. Without autonomy and freedom, he added, All India Radio cannot become a broadcaster for transformative change.
The Emergency of 1975 reduced All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan to instruments of the regime. After Indira Gandhi’s defeat, the Janata government asked B.G. Verghese to recommend autonomy. His BBC-style model became a Bill in 1979 (Prasar Bharati Bill), but the Bill lapsed. A new version, introduced in 1989 as “a charter of freedom” under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, received assent in 1990 — as the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990 — and was enforced only in 1997. Its Statement of Objects and Reasons said the corporation should be “a genuinely autonomous body — innovative, dynamic and flexible — with a high degree of credibility”, responsible to the people and to Parliament. Nearly three decades on, Prasar Bharati is not that body. It is a pretender, a mouthpiece of the government of the day. Section 12 of the Act is the editorial constitution that was meant to lock that intent in. The primary duty is to organise public broadcasting services to inform, educate and entertain. Section 12(2)(b) requires the corporation to safeguard “the citizen’s right to be informed freely, truthfully and objectively” and to present “a fair and balanced flow of information including contrasting views without advocating any opinion or ideology of its own”.
Also Read | Prasar Bharati drafts policy to monetise television, OTT content
At the Ministry’s mercy
A truncated corporation was set up so that it cannot function independently of government. Critical Sections 13, 14 and 15 of the Act remain unimplemented. Section 13 requires a 22-member parliamentary committee, elected from both Houses, to oversee Prasar Bharati on Parliament’s behalf. No government has constituted it. Former chief executive Jawhar Sircar has explained why: Ministers insist that they alone are answerable to Parliament and therefore retain the power to summon AIR and Doordarshan officials until they succumb.
Sections 14 and 15 require a Broadcasting Council to receive complaints and guard political impartiality. That Council has never been set up, and it follows that there is no system for editorial redress. The Board, meant to be professionally managed, has been filled with pliable bureaucrats. Ownership of assets and staff was never transferred. Without its own fund, the Board remains at the Ministry’s mercy. Section 23 still lets the Centre issue binding directions on what may or may not be broadcast.
Section 10 required a recruitment board to keep appointments free of government interference. Nothing happened until July 2020, when Jagadish Upasane, who headed Bharat Prakashan, publisher of Panchajanya and Organiser, was made chairman. Autonomy was compromised the moment it was announced. A 2021 manpower audit used the BBC as the benchmark: almost half of Prasar Bharati’s then 25,000-strong workforce sat in engineering, against a little over 10% at the BBC, while content staff were under 20% against about 70%. The numbers described a transmission machine, not a Content-and-News-driven broadcaster.
UNESCO’s 2001 definition is exacting. Public broadcasting is neither commercial nor state-controlled; it speaks to every citizen. Prasar Bharati fails that test. In 2000 the government declared November 12 as Public Service Broadcasting Day to mark Gandhiji’s only AIR broadcast, made in 1947 to two lakh refugees at Kurukshetra. The day has since become tokenism. In 2022 even that tokenism turned into farce when a Christian hymn sung by school students was sought to be dropped from the commemorative national broadcast.
The social contract is simple. The broadcaster has the right to speak freely, and in return it owes the public accuracy, impartiality, and independence from both the market and the Ministry. Nehru’s 1948 formula already drew that line: policy may be set, the daily conduct of broadcasting may not be run as a government department. In 1995, Justice P.B. Sawant, speaking for the Supreme Court in Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting vs Cricket Association of Bengal, went further. Airwaves are public property, he held, and the Centre must establish an independent autonomous public authority to control their use. Public broadcasting is not state broadcasting. That direction has still not been carried out.
Also Read | Government revamping communications machinery, pushes for unified outreach
There must be political will
What needs to be done is already known. The parliamentary committee must be constituted, the Board rebuilt as a professional body, and assets and staff transferred. The regulatory council named in the Act must be created, funding designed without government strings, and Indian Information Service officers removed from operational control. The 1990 Act must be amended where practice has exposed its traps.
None of this happens without political will. The syndrome is familiar: autonomy is criticised out of power and forgotten in power. In August 2026, the government told the Lok Sabha that it had received no formal complaints from journalists or media bodies about its autonomy in the previous year. The absence of filed grievances is not evidence of independence. The Broadcasting Council named in the Act was never created, so there is nowhere for such a complaint to go.
The Chanda Committee, appointed when Indira Gandhi was Information and Broadcasting Minister, concluded in 1966 that “a psychological transformation is necessary” in the government’s approach to broadcasting. Sixty years later that transformation has not come, and Nehru’s “otherwise not conducted as a government department” remains unkept words. The options before the people are two: approach the courts to enforce the Act and the Sawant direction, or wait for the 2029 general election and a Lok Sabha willing to turn Prasar Bharati from a government handmaiden into a public service broadcaster. Until then it remains what it has been for nearly three decades: a disguised pretender.
Suhas Borker is Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV), and has advocated public service broadcasting since the 1990s as convener of Jan Prasar. In 2000, he conceptualised National Public Service Broadcasting Day, on November 12