Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
Prasar Bharati
Introduction References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics
Quick Facts
Date:
1997 - present
Areas Of Involvement:
radio
broadcasting
television
See all related content
Britannica AI Icon
Adding us as a Preferred Source tells Google you trust our content, so our articles show up more often in your Google Search, Discover feed, and AI Overviews.
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites

Prasar Bharati

Indian company
Written by
Saayan Chattopadhyay
Contributor to SAGE Publications's The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society (2020) whose work appears in Britannica as part of a joint publishing agreement with SAGE.
Saayan Chattopadhyay
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
History

Prasar Bharati is the largest public service broadcaster in India and one of the largest in the world. Established by a law passed in the Indian parliament in 1990, it includes the Doordarshan television network and All India Radio, which were previously regulated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting initiated efforts to reform broadcasting policy, including proposals to establish an autonomous public broadcasting authority; broader liberalization of the airwaves to private entities developed more fully in the 1990s. Due to shifts in political power in India, Prasar Bharati was not established until 1997. This entry discusses the origins and operations of the public service broadcaster.

The debate over autonomy of broadcasting in India gained momentum particularly following the state of emergency from June 1975 to March 1977, when the government imposed extensive censorship and controls on the press and broadcast media. The newly established government that followed the state of emergency promised genuine autonomy to the electronic media. A working group formed in August 1977 and headed by former newspaper editor B. G. Verghese suggested the establishment of an autonomous National Broadcasting Trust, entitled Akash Bharati, which would be a nonprofit organization licensed to operate under a parliamentary charter and accountable to Parliament. While the working group did not endorse the idea of constituting two independent trusts for radio and television, it insisted on two well-defined domains for the two broadcast media under the umbrella organization Akash Bharati and recommended that the trust be allowed to issue licenses for educational stations through a board for education and extension broadcasts.

In 1980, the Congress party returned to power, and rather than going forward with proposals for greater media freedom from government control, the government initiated an era of telecommunication development and commercialization. In 1990, the bill, by then known as the Prasar Bharati Act, was passed in Parliament, although it was not brought into force until 1997. This delay coincided with broader policy developments, including a 1995 Supreme Court ruling affirming that airwaves are public property and should be regulated in the public interest. The judgment directed the government to set up a public authority to regulate the use of the airwaves. In September 1997, the government of India issued a notification that allowed the Prasar Bharati Act of 1990 to come into force. The law provided for the establishment of a broadcasting corporation of India, to be known as Prasar Bharati, and disassociated Indian national television and radio broadcasting from the direct control of the government.

Prasar Bharati, with a workforce numbering in the tens of thousands, now supervises Doordarshan, which operates dozens of television channels, while All India Radio maintains a network of several hundred broadcast stations across the country. The president of India appoints the chairman of the Prasar Bharati board and the other members, except the ex officio, nominated, and elected members. In recent years, Prasar Bharati has embarked on digitalization efforts, including efforts to digitize archival material in the possession of Doordarshan and All India Radio.

The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.

Saayan Chattopadhyay