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SERIAL GRAFT

Set up to counter Pakistani propaganda, Doordarshan's Kashir channel has lost its way in a maze of corruption. India Today's Sayantan Chakravarty reports.

On January 4 this year, T.K. Das, Doordarshan's Controller of Programmes (COP) for the Kashir channel, was arrested by the CBI along with Assistant COP M.A. Beg for allegedly accepting a bribe from a Delhi-based producer. Both Das and Beg confessed to taking 25-40 per cent of fees or Rs 2.5-Rs 3 lakh per episode from producers.

In another CBI raid around the same time, a Kashir channel COP was caught from a Delhi hotel with a "female escort" trying to dispose of used contraceptives. And earlier this year, the Assistant News Editor Bashir Ahmed Mallick along with his personal assistant, Bashir Ahmed Mir, were also arrested for allegedly embezzling Rs 72 lakh.

For a channel that was set up to counter Pakistan's propaganda, the Kashir channel could do with a public relations exercise of its own. Commissioned on January 26, 2000, the channel was based in Delhi to allow the displaced Kashmiri migrants in the capital to produce programmes. Nearly three years down the line, the Prasar Bharati (PB) and DD are doing a rethink.

An assessment last month by the brass revealed inefficiency and corruption at the channel's Mandi House centre, prompting its immediate shifting to Srinagar. The evaluation also prompted a visit to Srinagar by a 20-member team led by PB CEO K.S. Sarma and included DD Director General S.Y. Quraishi, key deputy DGs and engineers.

"Several steps have been taken to put things back on track," says Quraishi. These include reduction of the high fees being paid to producers by Delhi-based DD officials: from Rs 2.5-Rs 3 lakh per episode the rates have come down to Rs 2 lakh per episode for fiction serials and Rs 1.5 lakh for non-fiction.Not only was Delhi DD wont to producing programmes in Kashmiri at the expense of dialects like Dogri, Pahari and Gujri, it also faced allegations of shooting at "exotic" locales in Himachal Pradesh instead of Kashmir, as declared.Between March and July this year, 180 producers were invited by the DD for oral representations. Of these, 46 were found to be bogus producers and also included timber merchants, walnut sellers, an 18-year-old boy, even sundry grocers. Eight producers had suspected links with terror outfits in Kashmir. "Now we are clearing the names of producers with proven track records only," says Deputy DG R.A.P. Rao. Of the 1,200 applicants screened this year, only 350 have been processed, of whom 154 are based in Delhi, the rest being in Jammu & Kashmir.A ceiling of five episodes per producer has also been fixed; earlier a producer was allowed two serials of 26 episodes each. So far, nearly Rs 17.7 crore worth of programming has been cleared involving 170 producers from Delhi. Another Rs 2.1 crore has been released in Srinagar, and Rs 20 lakh crore each at Jammu and Leh. Besides, the PB has asked the Union Home Ministry for Rs 50 crore this year-against a sanctioned budget of Rs 82 crore last year, only Rs 31.5 crore was spent, three quarters of which was raked in by Delhi-based producers.

These corrective steps, including shifting of the channel's headquarters, may enthuse Kashmiri producers but it may be a while before the results start showing.

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