By Faraz Ahmad
IANS
New Delhi : Nearly a year after its launch, Lok Sabha TV (LSTV), touted as a "milestone for Indian democracy", has lost its way somewhere in the thicket of mushrooming television channels with most cable operators refusing to show it on the plea there is "no demand".
"There is a niche for such a TV. It exists in England, it exists in other democracies. The idea is to get people involved in serious political issues being deliberated and decided in parliament," outgoing LSTV editor Raman Nanda told IANS.
However, cable operators like S.S. Luthra in south Delhi say there is just "no demand" for the channel, which is the brainchild of Somnath Chatterjee, who took over as Lok Sabha speaker in 2004.
Faced with a hostile opposition and unseemly scenes in the house, he suggested telecasting the entire proceedings of the two houses to serve as a sobering influence on MPs. Launching the channel, Chatterjee had declared: "I am not the owner, and nobody is the owner of it. The parliament of India is the owner of this channel."
The primary purpose is to offer a fair and objective analysis of house proceedings that many feel is not given by mainstream media.
But has Lok Sabha TV (LSTV) fulfilled that mandate?
One programme aimed at providing that perspective is "Dateline Lok Sabha" that reviews the proceedings of the house over the preceding week with MPs across the political spectrum. But in one recent episode, there was only one BJP MP discussing the events for an entire hour!
Another instance is the Nandigram agitation in West Bengal, where four people were killed in police firing over land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ). Parliament was rocked by opposition protests and it was frontpage news in all the papers next day as the debate over displacement vs industrialisation hotted up in the country.
But not on LSTV. On March 14, the prime time, phone-in programme (Public Forum/Lok Manch) took up the Bal Shramik (child labour) issue. On March 15, the subject of Public Forum was 'Alternate Dispute Redressal System – A Status Report'. On March 16, Lok Manch discussed 'Schooli Shiksha' (school education). And on March 17, Public Forum repeated the discussion on the redressal system.
"Throughout the eventful week, a discussion on Nandigram in the Public Forum was evidently taboo for the officers running the parliament channel," said Nanda.
While Nanda is leaving, other senior officials have already left. These include LSTV executive director and former Doordarshan deputy director general Sudhir Tandon, head of anchors Jagmohan Bhasin, senior producer Shakeel Ahmad Shamsi and senior cameraman Ajay Shetty.
LSTV CEO and former information and broadcasting secretary Bhaskar Ghose was reluctant to discuss the matter.
"I will speak nearer the date. We complete one year in July," Ghose told IANS.
Kainthala, who had suggested 'filler features' on MP's clothes and is number two in the channel, was also reluctant to discuss the channel's obvious failures: "The right person to talk is the CEO because this is his brainchild. He is the one who had conceived it."
Officials are also reluctant to disclose how much the Lok Sabha spends.
At the end of the day, just no one was willing to talk – at a time when the first anniversary celebrations should be planned.