(Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development, is the author of 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)
The dangers of trying to say something profound and political on Twitter is that 140 characters restricts you to a pithiness that can give rise to ambiguity. I tweeted the other day, "Javadekar says he wants to abolish the Information & Broadcasting Ministry. We heard the same thing from his predecessor LK Advani - in 1977!" Some read that tweet as implying dismissiveness of the idea. Far from it: I was just pointing out that we'd heard this a long time before, but for good or bad reasons, it had never been done.
This is not to doubt Mr Javadekar's sincerity in wanting to do himself out of a job. (Or rather one of his jobs - he's also the Minister of State for Environment and Forests, and while some of his party's backers might well want to see that Ministry abolished too, Mr Javadekar isn't suggesting it yet.) Speaking on television recently, he said that both "philosophically and ideologically" he believed his ministry ought not to exist, adding for good measure that I&B "has no place in a democracy". But he needs to give us reason to believe that the outcome of his philosophical and ideological views will be a little more conclusive than those of Mr Advani turned out to be nearly four decades ago.
Mr Javadekar added, in the same interview, that he would consider appointing a professional editor-in-chief for Doordarshan and AIR with full freedom to cover the news as he or she thinks fit. He promised not to interfere in appointments, transfers and promotions in Prasar Bharati, which he said for good measure he wanted to make accountable to Parliament and not "only" to himself. If he follows through on those intentions, he could certainly take a meaningful step towards the withering away of his own ministry.
So what does I&B do that would no longer be done if it ceased to exist?
It would no longer run the Government's PR arm, the Directorate of Audio-Visual Publicity (DAVP); presumably the Government would have to decide whether it needed a PR arm at all, or whether it would simply hand out contracts to private sector PR agencies when it needed paid publicity. (This could be done through the e-tendering route trumpeted by the Modi government in the President's Address.)
It would also stop running Doordarshan and All India Radio (once dubbed All-Indira Radio by the critics of that formidable Prime Minister in the early 1970s), leaving that task to an autonomous public-sector Prasar Bharati; even Mr Modi's most passionate acolytes have not taken his faith in minimal government to imply that our venerable public service broadcasters would be privatized. Some BJP ideologues want the Modi government to deregulate news and public affairs on radio, which would give us the same cacophony on FM that we currently get on TV. But the public-service duties of a government-funded broadcaster - notably relaying information in the border states and getting out authoritative and authentic official messages in times of national emergency - would be lost if Prasar Bharati were privatized.
There's a case, therefore, for keeping Doordarshan and AIR in the public sector, but not necessarily for preserving I&B to oversee them. If I&B were abolished, an autonomous Prasar Bharati would no longer have a political boss to be accountable to - but as long as it is even partly funded by taxpayers, it needs political oversight. The solution is to make it answerable to a committee of Parliament, which is also the body that votes its funding.
The I&B Ministry also plays a key role in the world of Indian cinema. It appoints and runs the Film Censor Board (and its regional affiliates), conducts national and international film festivals, and funds and runs such worthy institutions as the National Film Development Corporation, the Film Finance Corporation, the Film and Television Institute of India and the National Film Archives. These are all things that need to be done, but there is absolutely no reason why, in the 21st century, they must be done by the Government.
Why not oblige the film industry to do the job itself, by creating a Cinema Corporation of India or a National Motion Picture Association as in the US, with regional versions for each language in which films are made in our country? The Government could transfer its assets to these bodies in return for equity, and ask the industry to finance itself thereafter. Can the film industry be trusted to censor itself responsibly? Other democracies have proved that it can, because the market is often a more sensitive barometer of public tastes and of what society will tolerate than a bureaucrat or politician might be. One area where the industry might be less willing to do what the government has been doing is to finance and encourage the making of experimental or innovative films with limited commercial appeal. It could either be obliged to do so by law, or these functions - and these alone - could be retained by the government under the rubric of the Ministry of Culture.
One task we haven't discussed is that of the I&B Minister himself, as the principal Spokesperson of the government and boss of the Press Information Bureau, which diligently puts out press releases daily about whatever the government is up to (or says it is up to). The Government obviously needs a Spokesperson, but this role could be performed by a Minister in the PMO instead, with the PIB assigned to his or her supervision. Or if that makes the PMO too heavy, park the task in the Cabinet Secretariat, which after all has the responsibility for co-ordinating the work of all ministries, and which could easily house the government spokesperson too.
In other words, I&B could indeed be abolished, with other ways of ensuring that its essential functions are still performed inside or outside the government. So dear Mr Javadekar, I wasn't trying to dismiss your intent - merely trying to say that we've seen this movie before. It's your job to ensure that this time the tangled and long drawn-out tale of your own ministry's demise has a different ending.
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