AMRITSAR: The agitating employees of All India Radio and Doordarshan went on a four day strike and AIR and Doordarshan remained off the Air from Thursday to Sunday,
The Joint Action Forum of the AIR and Doordarshan employees at Jalandhar has gained little from its four-day stir beyond an assurance that its demands will be considered. The agitation, which ended with the resumption of transmission, only helped in advancing the cause of the militants as it came to hinge around their dictates to the electronic media.
The JAF harmed its own cause by shifting its emphasis from demanding a program policy to a policy on the code of conduct dictated by the militants.
If the agitation was initially regarded to be a spontaneous outburst against the Center’s callousness in being a silent by stander as the station-in-charge of AIR, Patiala, M.L.Manchanda was Killed, the cause of the stir gradually turned suspect.
The natural concern of the staff for their security in face of the mounting threats of the militant Outfits to the electronic media was obscured.
The employees were in a biter mood for various reasons. Neither they nor the family members of Manchanda were allowed to make an appeal to the militants on radio and television though this had been allowed earlier in similar circumstances,
The severed head of Manchanda was brought in a tin from Ambala by the police. The Doordarshan team was not permitted to take a shot of the body of Manchanda. Moreover, the policemen accompanying the body to Panipat demanded’ money for tea and food from the relatives of the deceased,
The JAF took the decision to discontinue transmission on May 28 at a general body meeting. A Six-member team was appointed and a comprehensive charter of demands prepared only to be changed a day later. It had originally asked for “2 clear-cut program policy for all Doordarshan kendras and AIR stations in Punjab.” But the demand was for “a clear-cut policy vis-a-vis the code of conduct given by the militant organizations for the Punjab region.”
The militants had demanded that regional kendras in the state should shift to Punjabi language with emphasis on the Sikh culture, delinking of the national program, eviction of the non-Punjabis from the state and preference to Sikhs in recruitment and promotions,
The outfit which had carried out the abduction had asked the government to give wide publicity to the militants’ programs and that the letter of Harjinder Singh Jinda and Sukhwinder Singh Sukha, the alleged assassins of General ASS. Vaidya, should be read out on the AIR and Doordarshan at prime time. The JAF insisted that it was not seeking implementation of the code of conduct but a set of uniform guidelines for the use of the provincial language at the regional centers of the AIR and to squelch doubts being expressed about the agitation.
The most likely scenario, as an employee of the AIR explained, was that a few articulate individuals who pleaded for accepting the “reasonable demands” of the militants carried the day in the absence of any dissenting voice, partly because of the shock and revulsion over the murder and also from a lack of will.
A woman employee said that if the government accepted the demands others would soon be expressed and the process may never end.
This, however, should not undermine the need for a comprehensive policy on the use of regional languages on the electronic media, The visiting team of the ministry of information and broadcasting had said that the government would soon appoint a task force to go into the entire gamut of issues, The task force should be fairly representative in Character to be acceptable to all the states. The JAF also took the wind out of its agitation by resorting to suspension of transmission so early; the momentum could not be sustained. A section of the employees also realized that the move could boomerang. By giving the militants a taste of such widespread publicity they would invite more such strikes.
Only the government was blamed. The silence of the human rights organizations on the murder did nutrias any indignation. And the perpetrators of the murder, woo, escaped any scathing attack.
The JAF demand that all victims of militant violence be paid compensation is quite unlikely to be accepted as those serving in electronic media can’t be treated differently from those serving in the Para-military forces, police and other departments,
To argue, as the JAF spokesman did recently, that since the director-generals of both the organizations had come to Jalandhar to assure them on their demands they were calling off the stir smacks of convenience. Failure of leadership has proved to be the JAF’s undoing.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 12, 1992
