Doordarshan, an autonomous public service broadcaster founded by the Government of India, owned by the Broadcasting Ministry of India and one of Prasar Bharati's two divisions, is one of the most watched and famous channels on India. One of India's largest broadcasting organizations in studio and transmitter infrastructure, it was established on 15 September 1959 and is considered as the pride of Indian broadcasting channels. But all does not seem to be well now. With several missing Doordarshan documentaries, footage, exclusive interviews and serials, the channel has come to a low point. 

No official in the public service broadcaster initiated by the government of India on September 15, 1959, has an answer to the missing documentary footage, exclusive interviews and several of its commissioned TV serials. Filmmaker and writer Sai Paranjpye, who incidentally was among one of the first six women to be recruited as a producer at DD in New Delhi, stated, “For years, I went blue in the face asking officials—senior and junior—to locate four of my programmes. I should have persisted for an answer. Admittedly, now I’ve become lackadaisical because of the who-cares! attitude about the disappearance of its treasure trove.”

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The documentaries/tapes which are now missing are Paranjpye’s documentaries on Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, revolutionary of the independence movement, on movie-hoarding painters including bytes from M F Husain, a human-interest story The Little Tea Shopon a feisty woman running a dhaba single-handedly on the Delhi-Agra highway, and a portrait of the revered composer and singer Pankaj Mullick.

According to a source in the capital, a 1980s documentary on the proposed statehood of Gorkhaland featuring the first teleinterview of the leader of the Gorkha National Liberation Front, Subhash Ghisingh, and the then West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu, is untraceable. A programme on Tamil Nadu politics including an interview with Jayalalitha after the passing away in 1987 of the state’s chief minister MG Ramachandran, is either inaccessible or has been binned. The same fate has befallen the original video-tapes of the two-part documentary Footprints Across India on the global media baron Rupert Murdoch’s visit to India in the 1990s, as well as a bold account on the dacoits of the Chambal Valley.

These are just a small part of the actual missing DD footages. A majority of the official as well as independent producers and directors are no longer living. Most of the surviving filmmakers contacted shared the view, “Why re-open wounds? Over the decades, the various chiefs of Doordarshan have pinned the blame on their predecessors.”

There is no news either of the tapes of interviews with the legendary actors Jeanne Moreau from France and that of Vanessa Redgrave from Britain – in the course of their visits to the International Film Festival of India.

On being quizzed about this, Gavaskar had described the incident as “unfortunate” adding that perhaps in the 1980s technology wasn’t as advanced, leading to the loss of an incalculable number of files, tapes and papers. “At least from now on, they should ensure that they archive stuff properly,” he had suggested.

In response, a Doordarshan official had stated that of late tapes are being digitized to ensure there is back-up support in case a tape has to be re-used. Seemingly, earlier there wasn’t an option. In the absence of “proper guidelines, it was easy to overwrite a tape.” Easy? The word speaks for itself.

Filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who has consistently demanded the need for preservation of documented footage, stated candidly, “It’s a crying shame really. Supposedly DD is required to hand over its material to the National Film Archive of India in Pune. How many have been handed over is a mystery. The archive is meant to store and preserve our national heritage of cinema and TV series. Clearly, the archive has never been looked after or given any priority.”

Although some episodes of Benegal’s seminal series Bharat Ek Khoj (1988)– based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s book Discovery of India --have been officially uploaded on YouTube, the original tapes shot on 35 mm gauge have disappeared. “The storage facilities at the archive are awful,” Benegal remarked “I am clueless about how many of the 53 episodes are still surviving.”

His documentaries revolving around the subject of the various forms of music like rhythm and melody were given to the archive but are no longer accessible. Any salvaging operations possible? To that, Benegal replied, “None that I can think of. Except to raise the consciousness that it’s never too late to start preserving filmed material.”

(Source: Mumbai Mirror)