Fifty-five years ago, when India was still living the Nehruvian dream, President Rajendra Prasad inaugurated a centre in New Delhi fitted with a five kilowatt transmitter that would broadcast India’s first television programmes to 180 tele-clubs – a collective TV-watching experiment imported from France – in the city and surrounding countryside.
The educational experiment was aimed at school children and farmers.
“These twin objectives of India's first step into TV broadcasting – firstly, the education of farmers in improved techniques for agricultural production and secondly, facilitating education,” writes Sudeep Dasgupta, an assistant professor in the department of media and culture at the University of Amsterdam, “signalled the close connection envisaged between TV as a medium for social change and development and the role of the state in facilitating the process.”
Scaling up the experiment, on 26 January 1967, Doordarshan launched a 20 minute programme dedicated to farmers called Krishi Darshan.
The programme would go down in the cultural history of urban India as the nation’s best medicine for insomnia.
While it is unsurprising that city-viewers failed to appreciate the programme – they came to see it with amused distaste, actually, because it took up a daily slot on the only channel available to them – two researchers of the Haryana Agricultural University were astonished to find that even in the villages, Krishi Darshan was “accorded low priority and was not watched regularly”.
Writing about their survey in his book Communication Technology, Media Policy and National Development, VS Gupta says part of the reason for this was the show was telecast at a time of the day when there were power cuts or when farmers were not free. Also, the recommendations of the experts were mostly suited to large farmers. But there was another reason linked not to utility but aesthetics: people in the villages did not find Krishi Darshan appealing as most of the programmes “were studio-based monologues with low visual content and appeal”.
Change and continuity
Much has changed about Krishi Darshan. It is no longer a one-size-fits-all programme. Regional and local versions are broadcast by 180 transmitters of Doordarshan, five days a week, with five transmitters, on an average, sharing the same programme. Five different regional versions can be telecast in Uttar Pradesh, with three in Maharashtra. Attempts have been made to enliven it by taking it out of the studio and into the fields.
Yet, some patterns persist. Media scholar Sevanti Ninan points out in this recent column in Mint that the programming continues to lose out on account of power cuts and its scheduling at 6 pm “when farmers are not home yet”.
Rural viewers continue to make “unflattering observations” about DD’s production values.
And farmers continue to question the practical utility of the advice dished out on Krishi Darshan and its local variants. “What’s the point telling us how to produce more? We need information on marketing,” farmers in coastal Andhra Pradesh told Ninan.
But Ninan says there is great demand in rural India for farm telecasting, and it is for this reason that Arun Jaitley’s announcement during the budget of investing Rs 100 crore in a channel dedicated to farmers – to be called DD Kisan – is a good idea.
The problem, she says, is that it is unclear whether the government has given much thought to the finer details.
Farm telecasting is relevant only if it is produced in local languages with localised content. Doordarshan’s local variations of Krishi Darshan are telecast on the terrestrial beam, which has gone out of fashion. “Even the poor who are buying their first TV,” said Ninan, “go directly to DTH (direct to home)”.
If DD Kisan is a satellite channel, there rises the problem of how to schedule localised content at different time slots for different regions, and if it is terrestrial, then the problem of access remains.
Scroll.in made several attempts to contact officials at Prasar Bharati and the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting for more details on DD Kisan, but could not get any response.
Without thinking through these questions, DD Kisan could go the way of its earlier, stillborn avatar. Few remember that in January 2004, when the National Democratic Alliance government was in its last leg, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched an exclusive channel for farmers, called Kisan TV, with great fanfare. Many saw it as an instrument of pre-election propaganda. But even before the elections could commence, it started to sink as cable operators simply did not bother to add it to their channel bouquets. After the elections, Business Standard reported, it stood little chance as the new government did not have the will to keep it running. It delayed the release of funds and even called off tenders.
While Vajpayee's government was voted out of power and could not implement its idea of Kisan TV, this government has no such excuse. The Rs 100-crore allocation to DD Kisan, although not a huge amount, will be watched closely.
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The educational experiment was aimed at school children and farmers.
“These twin objectives of India's first step into TV broadcasting – firstly, the education of farmers in improved techniques for agricultural production and secondly, facilitating education,” writes Sudeep Dasgupta, an assistant professor in the department of media and culture at the University of Amsterdam, “signalled the close connection envisaged between TV as a medium for social change and development and the role of the state in facilitating the process.”
Scaling up the experiment, on 26 January 1967, Doordarshan launched a 20 minute programme dedicated to farmers called Krishi Darshan.
The programme would go down in the cultural history of urban India as the nation’s best medicine for insomnia.
While it is unsurprising that city-viewers failed to appreciate the programme – they came to see it with amused distaste, actually, because it took up a daily slot on the only channel available to them – two researchers of the Haryana Agricultural University were astonished to find that even in the villages, Krishi Darshan was “accorded low priority and was not watched regularly”.
Writing about their survey in his book Communication Technology, Media Policy and National Development, VS Gupta says part of the reason for this was the show was telecast at a time of the day when there were power cuts or when farmers were not free. Also, the recommendations of the experts were mostly suited to large farmers. But there was another reason linked not to utility but aesthetics: people in the villages did not find Krishi Darshan appealing as most of the programmes “were studio-based monologues with low visual content and appeal”.
Change and continuity
Much has changed about Krishi Darshan. It is no longer a one-size-fits-all programme. Regional and local versions are broadcast by 180 transmitters of Doordarshan, five days a week, with five transmitters, on an average, sharing the same programme. Five different regional versions can be telecast in Uttar Pradesh, with three in Maharashtra. Attempts have been made to enliven it by taking it out of the studio and into the fields.
Yet, some patterns persist. Media scholar Sevanti Ninan points out in this recent column in Mint that the programming continues to lose out on account of power cuts and its scheduling at 6 pm “when farmers are not home yet”.
Rural viewers continue to make “unflattering observations” about DD’s production values.
And farmers continue to question the practical utility of the advice dished out on Krishi Darshan and its local variants. “What’s the point telling us how to produce more? We need information on marketing,” farmers in coastal Andhra Pradesh told Ninan.
But Ninan says there is great demand in rural India for farm telecasting, and it is for this reason that Arun Jaitley’s announcement during the budget of investing Rs 100 crore in a channel dedicated to farmers – to be called DD Kisan – is a good idea.
The problem, she says, is that it is unclear whether the government has given much thought to the finer details.
Farm telecasting is relevant only if it is produced in local languages with localised content. Doordarshan’s local variations of Krishi Darshan are telecast on the terrestrial beam, which has gone out of fashion. “Even the poor who are buying their first TV,” said Ninan, “go directly to DTH (direct to home)”.
If DD Kisan is a satellite channel, there rises the problem of how to schedule localised content at different time slots for different regions, and if it is terrestrial, then the problem of access remains.
Scroll.in made several attempts to contact officials at Prasar Bharati and the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting for more details on DD Kisan, but could not get any response.
Without thinking through these questions, DD Kisan could go the way of its earlier, stillborn avatar. Few remember that in January 2004, when the National Democratic Alliance government was in its last leg, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched an exclusive channel for farmers, called Kisan TV, with great fanfare. Many saw it as an instrument of pre-election propaganda. But even before the elections could commence, it started to sink as cable operators simply did not bother to add it to their channel bouquets. After the elections, Business Standard reported, it stood little chance as the new government did not have the will to keep it running. It delayed the release of funds and even called off tenders.
While Vajpayee's government was voted out of power and could not implement its idea of Kisan TV, this government has no such excuse. The Rs 100-crore allocation to DD Kisan, although not a huge amount, will be watched closely.