And now it is the BBC `Rath Yatra’ which has hit the road. Though they call it a caravan the bus carrying a team of broadcasters, correspondents and producers belonging to its Hindi service somewhat resembles the chariot of modern day politicians in India. The primary objective of their visit to every nook and corner of a vast part of North India is to promote their brand. Collecting some news on the way was only a secondary objective. A unique method of marketing in the post-Hutton Commission days indeed!

But what is the BBC. Call it by any name you wish. It can be the Blair Broadcasting Corporation as the British Prime Minister has now proved. Or is it the Bush Broadcasting Corporation as its head office in London is situated in the complex called Bush House. And in the aftermath of 9/11 the Blair-Bush Corporation does not sound very outlandish. At present it is Bharat Broadcasting Corporation as its team is criss-crossing Ganga-Jamuna belt. At least for its Hindi service one can conveniently use the sobriquet Bihar Broadcasting Corporation as, according to its own version, almost half of the journalists working in Delhi and London studio are from this benighted state.

Incidentally, of all the states in the country it is on Bihar that the team is concentrating most. In this almost two months long caravan the BBC team visited 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh, mostly in its eastern half, while the tour of Bihar is still underway. Here they will visit 26 districts, including the state capital Patna. Though Hindi is spoken––or at least understood––almost all over the country save in some pockets of South India it is intriguing as to why the World’s one of the biggest news network is concentrating only on the cow-belt.

There is a large BBC listeners in east Uttar Pradesh and Bihar––the most backward and much more densely populated region of the country––as there are fewer television sets in the rural areas and power supply is erratic. Besides, students living in hostels, shopkeepers, village folk, travellers and those hailing from the lower middle strata of the society still tune to radio. And in this post-liberalisation age backwardness sells better than anything else. Of course, the election time is certainly the best time for such an exercise. The BBC alone is not the culprit, other television channels and newspapers too sell their products according to the demand.

The BBC team is spending one day in each of these places till March 26 talking to people cutting across the social barriers and holding debates and panel discussions on the various topics at any local hotel, school or college complex. Prominent citizens of each of these places are invited and their views highlighted in evening and morning programmes of Hindi Service. They are seeking the listeners’ view on the programme and want to adjust to their demands.

Sam Miller, Managing Editor of the BBC World Service, South Asia Region, said: ``Our research consistently shows that listeners in Bihar are asking for richer and more varied content that is relevant to their daily lives.’’ It was keeping this in mind that they have taken up programmes on career and teaching of English in Hindi service.

According to Achala Sharma, head of the BBC Hindi Service, who was with the team in most of the places: ``BBC Hindi values the comments and opinions of the listeners. Through the Voice of the People roadshow in Uttar Pradesh we managed to develop on going relationships and create forums which will further allow listeners to voice their views on even broader platform. We are looking at building similar relationships with the people of Bihar.’’

The British Broadcasting Corporation has over the decades undergone a sea-change. Just like the earlier British ruler in India or in other colonies the BBC relied wholly on the white-skinned personnel in the initial days. They normally used to recruit only broadcasters in different languages as that was their compulsion. Mark Tully, Sam Miller, Eric Silver, Alex Brodie, Alexander Thomson are some familiar non-Indian names who worked in the BBC in the sub-continent. However, Mark Tully, who incidentally was born in India, is now more Indian than anyone else and can speak Hindi well.

Then came the likes of Satish Jacob and stringers like Sam Rajappa in South and Tooshar Pandit (based in Kolkata) for the East. The BBC would appoint one or two stringers in big cities and would often rely on the local correspondents of different papers for the news in respective states or regions.

However, in 1990s the phenomenon started changing. The BBC even launched a Hindi television news bulletin in collaboration with the Home TV, but the idea failed to click and within a few months it has to close down the telecast.

Gradually Bharatiya-karan (call it Indianisation) of the BBC started. Now a full-fledged office started functioning in Delhi with Seema Chisti at present its Editor. In most states it started having its own correspondent and concentration on India increased. Sometimes even small and less relevant news items were highlighted by BBC correspondents while important development elsewhere were downplayed.

Ironically, the BBC now has no correspondent of its own South of Hyderabad, which is manned by Umar Farooque. This notwithstanding the fact that there are several happening cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Trivandrum etc situated there.

The BBC team throughout the tour insisted that they honour people’s opinion and respond accordingly. But this claim can be taken with a pinch of salt. Firstly, while broadcasting people’s voice from each district in their Hindi programmes the BBC conveniently ignored those comments, which were extremely critical of its style of propaganda.

And if the BBC is so sensitive to people’s demand than one day it is feared it would end up becoming an entertainment programmes as many people would like to listen to songs rather than lend their attention to news. Thus it is not that the BBC blindly accepts the people’s demand. The big question is as to why the listeners of Hindi and Urdu Services deprived of some interesting programmes and interviews broadcast by its English Service and forced to listen to some trivial incident in India or Pakistan?

The Hindi Service bigwigs, in most of the places they went, were quick to deny that they work under any pressure or that a Lakshman Rekha, has been drawn by their bosses, which they can not cross while reporting. After Hutton Commission Report can their version be believed any more?

The BBC reporters may to some extent be fair to their professional duty. But may one ask as to why was it reminded of exposing the government on Iraq war after everything was over, thousands of innocent lives lost and the American and British soldiers failed to find a single weapon of mass destruction (WMD). In the pre-Iraq war days the BBC never launched any concerted campaign against the American and British design against Iraq when every one, including UN weapon inspectors, was saying that post-1991 Iraq cannot afford to make any small weapon, not to speak of WMDs.

The world knows that the BBC is run on the grant from the British government and whatever they may say about journalistic freedom the fact is that those working in it can not cross a certain boundary.

In this age of media war 8,000 correspondents and cameramen from all over the world, obviously most from the West, converge on the difficult terrain of Afghanistan. These unarmed tribe of scribes reached there even before the western forces could arrive. Incidentally, the number of western army on the Afghan soil was less than these journalists. The US and British forces fought their whole war from the air and actually started landing only when the Taliban finally left.

It is not the BBC alone, which has undertaken the damage limitation exercise. In the post-Iraq days the Voice of America too has changed its policy. Now its Urdu Service is called Radio Aap ki Dunya and not Voice of America, as the latter sounds unpleasant to the Muslim listeners.

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