Taking Indian Heritage to every corner of India

One of India’s unique advantages and great treasures is our cultural heritage consisting of music, dance and other art forms. Today this is not available to most of the youth in this country..

Many organizations like SPIC MACAY tried to do this by introducing the lecdem (lecturedemonstration) format to present Indian classical art forms in a comprehensive manner in front of today’s youth, who have little or no understanding of it. The meanings of the basic mudras and bhavas and the structure of the ragas had to be explained. This change in presentation has been instrumental in popularizing our art forms amongst the youth.

While  such organizations were successful in urban areas and towns, they have not been able to take our culture to every part of India – they have not been able to reach villages, smaller towns, and remote areas. A lot more that can be done to present this valuable national heritage to all citizens in every corner of India, if we can understand and overcome the contraints.

The constraints – The why?           

Our heritage is taken in the form of live performances by accomplished artistes. There are many constraints that prevent the scaling up of this activity.

·       The number of accomplished artistes is limited,

·       Many of them have hectic schedules and spend many months touring various parts of India and overeas.  Some of them live abroad for some part of the year.

·       Students don’t have the werewithal to pay for these live programs. Sponsorship is not easily available for this kind of activity.

·       Since the artistes also have to be economically sustained, the time they have available for giving programs for small honorariums is limited.

·       The population of India is increasing and we have great geographic spread.  Live performance limit performance to destinations with very good train or plane connectivity and good auditoriums – this immediately precludes most village schools.

·        Logistics and cost factors also severely limit the ability of any organization to take to the masses.

·       To have live performances at different places requires a large on-going organization at every location – a very difficult and costly affair.

·        In many of the cities, parents are working and with the weakening of the joint family concept, it is becoming difficult for children to attend these concerts and they hardly get to experience this national heritage. 

Due to these practical difficulties, India heritage and art form is not reaching areas beyond 300 towns – thus a large portion of India’s children are growing up without experiencing our rich heritage.  This is a very unfortunate situation and we as a society need to find a creative response to solve this problem and we need to universalize access to our Indian heritage and make it available to one and all. 

After much thinking, we believe there is a way out and perhaps it is the only way out–Technology.

The Concept – How?

Today’s communication technologies namely Radio, TV and internet offer an excellent opportunity to take this heritage to all corners of our country. We have done some blue sky thinking and believe that if we as a nation, use technology in the following manner – we can take the best of Indian heritage to each and corner of this country.

·       Create one National AM radio channel for Indian music and art forms:  This should be located centrally in a location like Nagpur with sufficient power to reach all parts of India. This will minimize management requirement of managing the channel.  It should be managed by All India Radio (AIR). This could be done simultaneous to the opening of national AM channels to other commercial broadcasters.

o   Why one channel? It will be very costly and difficult to have several channels across the country and manage them.

o   Why AM? AM channels are not favoured these days by commercial broadcasters as the music fidelity is low and most of demand is for FM channels which are used primarily for entertainment. Most of India’s AM bandwidth is unused and there is currently no opportunity cost of using AM channels.  This will also help in increasing penetration of AM across the nation.

o   Why AIR? AIR has adequate staff, studios, technology and infrastructure which could be used without any new expenditure or with marginal expenditures.  Protecting and spreading our national heritage is a national cause and the right and best entity to do it will be the National broadcaster.

o   Why simulaneous opening of commercial AM radio channels? Since infrastructure will need to be set, this will involve costs and fund outgo.   This tower infrastructure could be used to co-locate more AM channels and the tower costs could be shared by simutaneously auction of several national AM channels. The government has also set national goals for using ICT for education.  This will aid AIR economics and the running costs of this channel could come from the co-location costs and licence fees from the channels.

·        Create a TV Channel or Slot: A similar TV Channel or adequate slots on existing channels is also necessary because visual arts like Bharatnatyam, Kathak, and Kudiyattam among others require a visual medium. Since there may not be adequate content to fill the TV channels everyday, we could have a dedicated TV channel operating only a for limited hours or alternately we could take up time slots on existing TV channels. The TV channel should have very high reach thro terrestrial, cable and DTH platforms. This should be managed by Doordarshan as they can optimize on all resources such as studios, network and broadcast infrastructure.

·       Internet website: This could be used to reach areas which have signal problems or which have scheduling problems (different school schedules – dailiy timings and holidays, area with chronic power cuts).  Schools and colleges, parents could download this content and show them to their children.

Organization structure – How to do it?

In order to make it a success, this should be done is such a way that the entity which has experience take up the right task ie right man for the right task principle.  Thus the Government arms namely AIR and Doordarshan can fully manage the carriage and the network infrastructure for which they have the competence and the resources available readily.  

The government should outsource the task of creating content ( Like the program Satyameva Jayate ) to agencies  willing and able to take on the task of creating and providing the content for all the mediums. In today's age it is not enough to high quality content. Presentation has become very important especially for the youth. This is not the time to debate this issue. We have to accept it and use it constructively by creating world class presentation of these programmes.

These agencies will work closely with DD and AIR in the production of the content.  The management of the website could be given to a competent third party.

Benefits of this arrangement

Creation of national culture mission with low resources:   This will ensure that we have created a national culture mission at a very low cost without any duplication of effort or resources.  We will create a national culture mission without setting up any more studios, offices or hiring more management staff or creating more entities.

The assets created for National AM channel could be used for also increasing national AM penetration goals, raising revenues by auctioning more commercial AM channels which can be co-located on the infrastructure.  This move will bring in licence fees, auction fees, service taxes and will actually be revenue positive to the Government of India.

Meeting larger national goals and better use of resources: Currently AM is a vastly under-used medium and it is the only medium that reaches interior parts of the country. The citizens in leading towns and cities have access to numerous FM channels but those in interior areas have limited choice. If we set up a national AM channel under AIR, the network infrastructure set up can be easily used to also open up and auction more AM Channels and for Educational ICT goals.  This will also ensure that we as a nation have greater AM penetration – one of the goals of the Five year plans.

Better use of AIR and DD resources: The Government has adequate staff and technology and infrastructure which could be used more productively.  AIR and DD are also the right entity to manage the carriage infrastructure and all other managerial matters. With provision of news and entertainment by private entities, many issues are raised about rationale for a Public broadcaster. This move will create a clear rationale for a public broadcaster.

Outsourcing of expertise in managing content: In this day of outsourcing, where Government is  reaping the benefits of outsourcing through higher efficiency, effectiveness and lower cost ( Example: tasks such as PAN CARD processing (very senstitive),  Credit history maintenance, production of armanents of high national and strategic import   are being outsourced),  this partnership will ensure that this program can effectively run at a very small cost.This will be a highly productive and cost effective solution for the Government.  

Last but not the least: Almost 75% of India is Hindu. So the budget for this should be allocated based on the ratio of population of India belonging to each religion as per the last census. This is not to exclude anyone - the content of each community is available to all but merely to avoid certain sections of society from politicizing this  issue in terms of "communalism" and "secularism."