BBC Hindi changes stations

BBC Hindi is undergoing a major policy shift and it will not be good news for those tuning into its short wave radio service. The media giant has decided to close down its last remaining state bureaus in Lucknow, Patna, Mumbai, Raipur and Hyderabad, thus imperiling its regional coverage. Industry observers interpret the move as a preliminary exercise to shut down the short wave service by March 2014, the deadline to meet 16 per cent budget cut of BBC World Service. While BBC Hindi's editor Nidheesh Tyagi claims there is no “imminent” threat to the short wave transmission, the shift in focus to digital media, offering both audio and visual content, indicate signal disruption, if no dead end yet, for shortwave transmission.

The end of short wave?

Since FM radio is not yet open for news broadcast by private players in India, BBC's short wave service remains the only independent source of information for a large mass of the population having little or no access to Internet and private TV channels. In 2007, there were 19.1 million listeners of BBC shortwave service which fell to 11 million by 2010 and are now unofficially estimated at 8.5 million. Despite the declining numbers, mostly from urban areas, the coverage is significant and continues to form the largest language audience of the BBC World Service after English.

But now the closing down of state bureaus will confine the whole staff to Delhi with major focus on the BBC Hindi website. BBC is also looking at online and mobile options to make the radio content reach its audiences digitally besides reaching out to worldwide Hindi audience. Such a shift in focus will inevitably target a smaller population segment of urban, more technically advanced audience which ironically has access to multiple sources of information. Tyagi, however, believes that across India,  the number of internet users is now more than the people who use short wave radios. “If you look at the forecasts for digital media, you notice that robust growth is already under way in tier 2/3 cities, where the first language is not English. It is important we make BBC Hindi available to those audiences too, and we are making a good progress here,” he said in an e-mail reply.  

“Keeping up with the times” was also the motto adopted by Voice of America and German broadcaster Deutshe Welle when they put an end to their Hindi in 2008 and 2011 respectively. However, more than the wish to take content to the new segment, it’s the necessity to reduce costs that is pushing hands of broadcasters.

In case of BBC World Service, it will cease to receive grant-in-aid from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office from April 2014 onwards and will instead be largely dependent on the annual licence fee collected from the British residents owning TV sets. A six-year freeze on hike in licence fee has made matters worse. Starting 2011, BBC closed down several language services, made job cuts, replaced permanent full-time employments with short-term contract-based tenures and shifted focus from radio to “future mediums” including online, television and mobile.

Starting 2011 when transmission in seven languages, including Russian and Mandarin, was announced. In 2012, English short wave service was reduced, from between 7 and 19 hours a day depending on the region, to six hours per day, Arabic short wave service in the Middle East except Sudan was closed, Arabic and English medium wave services were reduced in the Middle East and a short wave transmitting station was shut down in Cyprus. On the other hand, "Future media, transmission and distribution" was the only sector in which BBC World Service registered a rise in operating expenditure from 2010-11 to 2011-12.

This was done with the argument that short wave listeners have declined while there is growth in audiences on TV and digital media. However, this policy shift does not bode well with countries like India. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament recognised this fact in its December 2012 meeting with Peter Horrocks, the BBC Global News Director.  “We believe that the World Service must continue to take into account significant audiences in certain parts of the world, such as rural India and Africa, who currently rely on short-wave radio,” it said while noting that cost per user figures for radio broadcasts were highly cost-effective in comparison to those for TV or online mediums. Horrocks also admitted that financial pressures had occasionally forced the World Service's hand, pushing it to make changes sooner than might have been ideal.

The BBC Hindi service was earlier scheduled to close down in 2011 along with five other language transmissions but was given a reprieve by the foreign Parliament's committee citing India's emergence as a rising economic power and need to improve bilateral relations with the country on priority basis. Mark Tully, whose name is synonymous with BBC in India, led a campaign against closure of the Hindi service in 2011. Talking to The Hoot, he says a large segment of listeners will still be affected if BBC decides to curtail or completely close down short wave transmission.

Short wave service, though costlier to maintain, offers more editorial independence as it cannot be intercepted and clamped down on through censorship, unlike internet and FM. In fact, BBC recently got into an ugly spat in Sri Lanka with the state-owned broadcasting corporation which repeatedly censored its FM retransmission related to the UN Human Rights Council's session on war crimes in the island nation.

On to future media

Though news and current affairs programmes are not allowed on FM, BBC has partnerships with private FM networks for broadcast of its magazine programmes on their platforms. It is also producing a weekly television programme, Global India, which is broadcasted by ETV. For the last one year, BBC has been further developing the online offer, including on mobile. However, Tyagi says this does not mean radio is being ignored. “We have launched a new morning radio programme on short wave, 'Namaskar Bharat'. All three platforms are important as our audience is increasingly seeking news across radio, TV, digital and mobile,” he said adding that BBC would consider other opportunities if news were to be an option on FM. 

“We will continue to play on our strengths, high quality journalism and an ability to reach audiences on a range of platforms. We can bring the whole range of the BBC’s journalism from across the globe including stories as diverse as Brazil and India competing on beef exports, and the impact of IPL on county cricket in England. We also provide original stories in Science, Technology, Health and Environment from around the world,” Tyagi said. However, the fact is that it’s the credible coverage of domestic rather than international events that earned BBC its loyal audience. Starting from wars with China and Pakistan, Bangladesh Liberation War to The Emergency years, Operation Blue Star, Indira Gandhi's assassination (BBC broke the story) and anti-Sikh riots, the radio service offered unbiased coverage unlike the state-controlled All India Radio. And things have hardly changed.

“It is widely projected that India today has a free and fair media which represents the interests of most countrymen. However, as evident, the urban-centric mainstream media is not free from influence of the market and politics and hardly represents the rural masses. This is why a credible and easily accessible information source like BBC short wave service with its in-depth coverage is as much needed today as it was in the past,” says Naleen Kumar, a former BBC staffer.

Glorious past to uncertain future

It was on May 11, 1940, that the first Hindi transmission of BBC crackled to life after Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of Britain. Named as the BBC Hindustani Service, it was targeted mainly at soldiers from the subcontinent who were serving the British war effort in the second World War. The Hindustani service was partitioned with the country in 1947 and the Hindi Service was relaunched in January 1949. Former Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral also tried his broadcasting skills in the Hindi Service during the 1950s. 

In mid-90s, BBC Hindi started increasing its footprint in India with a full-fledged office in Delhi and a correspondent in several Indian states. These one-man bureaus were also the eyes and ears on the ground for the BBC World Service English which had no state correspondent of its own. However, things started changing when in 2009, the  Chandigarh and Ahmedabad bureaus were shut down while Srinagar, Kolkata, Jammu, Jaipur, Bhopal were closed in 2011. On this issue Tyagi said: “BBC Hindi is changing the base of its regional correspondents so that we can make more effective India wide deployments for all our output and we are also developing a nationwide stringer network.” However, skeptics believe this will impact the coverage from regions which also have maximum listeners of BBC Hindi.

The job cuts

The main reason for closing down of regional bureaus is seen by old timers as a step to replace full-time permanent positions with short-tenure employees attuned to digital media. The corporation recently advertised for post of multimedia producer with one-year contract.

According to sources, the present five regional correspondents were asked to shift to Delhi or face termination of services. While Mumbai and Raipur correspondents concurred, others refused transfer on the same pay scale citing significant difference between living costs of the national capital and their present stations. The corporation also denied them redundancy benefit on the pretext that it was not closing down positions but offering transfer.

After a round of negotiations, the correspondents have now been offered 15 days salary per year of service as compensation, which is half of what the BBC's redundancy policy provides. Tyagi, however, stressed that BBC is a responsible employer and will treat any staff not transferring location in an “appropriate manner”. 

This story first appeared on The Hoot

Deconstructing "change"

Every other day, a new mail drops into the inbox asking you to 'change the world' by signing a petition. It can be as serious an issue as seeking justice for an acid attack victim or as trivial as asking Justin Bieber to have a live concert in India. For an increasing number of urban Indians bred on concepts of equality and justice but frustrated by trappings of age-old power hierarchies of this country, the idea is promising. You don't need to be a kurta-wearing social activist sitting on dharnas or a donor writing cheques to fund campaigns. Just filling in your name, email Id and postal code would do.

Petitioning around social campaigns has been in practice for decades but never has its impact been more pronounced than today when a call to 'stop rape' can gather 59,000 signatures in just 24 hours (On last count, the petition had 6.64 lakh signatures). For every signature, the decision makers get an email (many petitions also request the supporters to call the officials) thus ensuring constant pressure on them to act.

Two government school teachers in Jharkhand get paid after four years, five asphalt factories in Rajasthan shut down for causing air pollution, a discriminatory temple ritual is banned in Karnataka...the list goes on about the impact online petitions have made, though not singularly.

Online petitioning picked up pace in India after 2011 when Change.org, the world's largest e-petition platform, started its operations here. Today, it has close to 6 lakh users with 600-800 petitions started every month, up from 11-15 petitions two years ago. Worldwide, it has operations in 18 countries and boasts of 35 million users.

Change.org also scores over other online platforms because of its support team, which helps build a communication strategy around selected petitions. In India, a small five-member team sends emails to users, talks to the media and suggests ways to engage with decision makers around campaigns which are bound to get popular support like the anti-rape petition started in wake of the Delhi gang-rape. The team works on 14-16 campaigns a week.

Everyone's invited

One palpable difference online platforms have made in the field of campaigning is democratisation of the petitioning tool. Anybody can mobilise support for a cause they strongly feel about. Namita Bhandare, who started the anti-rape petition, had never participated in protest marches or candlelight vigils. She wrote the petition just to give vent to her anger and feeling of helplessness after the Delhi gang-rape. “At first, I questioned myself what would a petition do. In fact, now I realise that the recommendations we made in the petition were very basic and the Justice Verma Commission went much beyond as it factored in marital rape, action against armed forces and redefined sexual assault. However, filing that petition was cathartic for me. The tool lends power to the people who were earlier completely dependent on media or NGOs to mobilise support,” she says.

However, critics believe that e-petition promotes slacktivism or armchair activism which is also the reason it is so successful. It gives “false power” to those who feel helpless in face of problems they can't control and prevents many of the supporters from participating in on-ground action. Preethi Herman, Campaigns Director at change.org laughs off such criticism. “We tend to assume that people just sign petitions. Online platform is the first point of engagement. They make telephone calls to decision makers, participate in offline events and help spread the word further. You can't equate mobilisation with activism as it's more about developing a larger support base for your cause. Most of the supporters are not activists but they do want a change,” she says.

Bhandare agrees: “ E-petition does sensitise one to the cause. You can't just start a petition on rape and go to a cocktail party. I am sure many of the signatories to my petition also joined the on-ground protests.”

Change.org also collaborates with Video Volunteers and CGNet Swara, the two grassroots-level organisations which use video and audio media to highlight issues in rural India. “It was important for us to adapt to Indian conditions where Internet penetration is still very low. We work with Video Volunteers and CGNet Swara to identify issues in their areas which could be promoted online and hence bridge the gap between rural and urban population,” Herman says.

Tania Devaiah, the impacts manager at Video Volunteers, confirms that getting numbers behind a cause through online petition lends an institutional approach to the campaign. “Constant flow of emails and phone calls does build pressure on decision makers in comparison to a single approach of making and screening of videos. We pick up issues for online campaigns where either it's difficult to make the authorities act or the cause has a universal appeal,” she adds. The next frontier change.org wants to conquer is to make the platform available in Hindi and adapt it to mobile phones.

The loopholes

Change.org believes that to get the desired impact, online petitions should be supported by on ground action, exposure in local media and interactions with decision makers. However, in many cases, the offline or on-ground mobilisation may be completely missing, thus putting a question mark on sustainability of the impact generated. For instance, a petition by Video Volunteers against a discriminatory practice in a Rajasthan village where a traditional practice of Dalit women carrying their footwear in their hands while crossing the houses of upper caste families garnered 5,480 signatures.

Acting on the petition, the District Collector along with other officials held a meeting in the village apprising them of the law banning caste discrimination and ordered that the practice be disallowed. However, the villagers did not even know that there was a campaign running on this issue and unknown people were playing their saviours over the Internet. The impact has been that the Dalits are now much more scared to talk about the discrimination, as mentioned by this report in Times of India. Herman refutes this claim, saying that the correspondent of Video Volunteers had mobilised Dalit women against this practice and villagers might be scared of talking to the media due to local power equations. However, independent inquiries made by The Hoot confirm that the action taken by the officials was solely on the basis of the online petition and there was no local campaign against the practice.

Verification of facts reported in the petition is another sore point. Though some petitions do carry images and videos related to the issue, there are chances that you might end up supporting a wrong cause. For instance, an incident in Hyderabad got two separate petitions running on the website. Girl college students coming out of a pub after a farewell party were accused by the regional news channels of creating nuisance at a public place and depicted as uncultured while the students blamed the media of moral policing and wrongful depiction. The chances are you may end up signing one of these petitions without getting to know the other side. Herman says since numerous petitions are created daily, it's not possible to substantiate the facts presented in each of them but whenever the Change team works on and pushes a petition, the facts are verified in detail.

Values shortchanged?

Change.org claims to be a corporation using the power of business for social good. It made revenue by allowing sponsored petitions from progressive groups willing to shell out dollars to promote their campaigns. The concept has helped the company generate enough profit to make its functioning self-sustaining.

However, something changed in October last year when a leaked internal document revealed how the organisation was replacing its value-based advertising policy to an ‘open’ approach allowing even conservatives and corporates to use its resources. This invited widespread criticism from the progressive community which felt that the vast user database it helped build through the years was being sold to the opposition camp.

On the other hand, as underscored by Isaac Luria of Groundswell, organisations running social campaigns don't get a full contact list of their supporters whom they could later invite to attend meetings, join local groups, or donate. “Of course, I could have bought the names that signed the petition on Change.org for around $500,000 or about $2 per name if I had the foresight before the campaign was launched or had the money,” he adds.

Change's founder Ben Rattray responded to the criticism by arguing that the organisation “cannot maintain an open platform and simultaneously block all ads that don't fit a particular political view” and ads from controversial groups would only be accepted if the platform has users interested in their work. He also emphasised that an open advertiser policy was essential to avoid being “regularly forced into unsustainable positions.”

However, not everybody was impressed with these clarifications. Kamayani Bali Mahabal, an online campaigner who has initiated a petition asking Rattray to come out clean, says the definition of openness pushed by Change.org is not in consonance with progressive principles. “I used to laugh at some of the inane petitions like the ones promoting homophobia or anti-abortion, as I was sure change.org will not give any support and the petition will die its own death. But with the new policy, anyone is eligible to advertise. So, after I sign a petition for human rights, I might find a link to a sponsored petition on giving legal recognition to khap panchayats,” she says.

Mahabal has now been trying other online platforms but is not happy with their technical support. For the time being, she is using her own blog to mobilise online support and is hopeful that Indian activists will have their own independent platform soon.

Meanwhile, as they say, every change is accompanied by discomforts. The question is how well can we deal with these.

Official recognition Online petitioning is officially recognised in the US where the right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The White House hosts an online platform 'We the People' where any petition which gets 1,00,000 signatures within 30 days elicits a government response. The threshold before January 2013 was 25,000 signatures and one of the petitions which got the White House speaking was seeking 'genocide' status for the 1984 Sikh riots in India. The petition had more than 30,000 signatures.

This story first appeared on The Hoot