New Delhi: State-owned broadcaster All India Radio (AIR) has stopped the transmission of its Tibetan service for nearly two months now — seemingly due to administrative issues, ThePrint has learnt.
While an AIR official said the move is part of an operational revamp, a few contractual staff earlier associated with the service said the transmission of fresh content stopped as the broadcaster lacked qualified professionals to keep the Tibetan service programmes running.
There has been no fresh Tibetan service content since December 2020 on either the NewsOnAir application of AIR, or the AIR World Service website and its YouTube channel.
The development comes amid the continuing months-long standoff with China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
A former contractual staff, who refused to be identified, blamed the AIR’s rules of engaging casual assignees for language services. Under the rules, assignees cannot be engaged beyond a certain number of days in a year.
“Only a limited number of Tibetans qualify for AIR and possess the requisite language proficiency and other qualifications. They were thus engaged for the Tibetan service programmes beyond the number of permissible days and weren’t paid for the additional days,” the source said.
“As a result, many colleagues (Tibetan casual assignees as well as from other language services) moved on for better lucrative offers.”
In June last year, a day after the Galwan valley clash between Indian and Chinese troops, AIR’s parent agency Prasar Bharati had asked viewers to tune in to AIR’s Chinese world service for “authentic news and programmes in Chinese language”, which had broadcast commentaries relating to Chinese transgression at the LAC in eastern Ladakh.
On the same day, Prasar Bharati had also urged the audience to tune into its Tibetan service for “authentic news for and from Tibet”.
Listen to All India Radio's Tibetan World Service for authentic news and programmes for and from Tibet. @AkashvaniAIR pic.twitter.com/JMFp8wypKo
— Prasar Bharati प्रसार भारती (@prasarbharati) June 17, 2020
Subsequently, AIR was meant to make a renewed focus on its Tibetan service, and turn around its content with a deeper emphasis on news and commentaries with a spotlight on India’s viewpoint — a departure from what used to be lighter programmes on culture and Buddhism.
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‘Part of revamp’
ThePrint reached Prasar Bharati chief executive Shashi Shekhar Vempati via texts for a comment but there was no response until the time of publishing this report.
Sources from the AIR, however, said no such policy decision has been taken and the latest change is only the result of an operational revamp on the timings and frequency of the services, among others.
“We have recently consolidated foreign services into two world service streams and two neighbourhood streams. They are now also available on DD FreeDish apart from NewsonAir app,” a senior official said.
The official emphasised that operational adjustments are currently under way so shortwave transmitters as well as satellite and internet can carry these streams.
Speaking about the Tibetan service, the official said it will cease to be a standalone service, as it was in the past, and will be part of the two world service and neighbourhood streams.
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Tibetan World service
The Tibetan service started as a dedicated AIR ‘world service’ in December 1956. The daily one-hour evening broadcasts between 5.45 pm and 6.45 pm were aimed at the border population of Ladakh, and Northeast states like Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
The Tibetan service transmissions were put on hold briefly during the lockdown last year, as were many other language services, but were eventually restarted.
While the service had been running constantly for decades, experts said China keeps jamming radio signals for both the Tibetan and the Chinese services.
Broadcast engineers had earlier told ThePrint that China is traditionally known to have not allowed streaming services from any country.
Jose Jacob, a contributor for the World Radio TV Handbook and an expert on shortwaves, had told ThePrint that China has been jamming frequencies carrying the AIR Chinese service as well as the Tibetan service with music and other noise.
‘Need to project soft power to Tibetans inside China’
Jayadeva Ranade, former member of the National Security Advisory Board, told ThePrint that while AIR always had an infrastructure for its overseas news services, both the Chinese and Tibetan services are practically non-existent.
“In today’s day and age, when propaganda and perception management are so important, there is all the more need to beam out our views, and also project our soft power to Tibetans inside China and the Buddhist community at large as well as the Chinese,” said Ranade, who heads the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.
“There would be an idea of what our audience would be interested in and the news and entertainment could be suitably tailored to suit their needs. Experts in the private sector should be hired to formulate and run the programmes,” he said.
Ranade said this is important if India doesn’t want to cede space to China, given that Tibetans are unhappy with Beijing and would be willing to listen to another viewpoint.
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