Hindi Radio Service (BBC)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This is an important Adjournment debate about the future of the BBC’s Hindi radio service. At the moment, it is broadcast for three hours a day, divided between the morning and the evening, and reaches no fewer than 10 million listeners, mostly in the northern Hindi-speaking regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. Hindi is the second largest language audience of the BBC World Service worldwide—of course, English is the first—and it is precisely these three poorer states in India that the Department for International Development has committed to support until 2015 to the tune of £280 million.

The BBC is cutting its shortwave Hindi service, which costs £1 million a year, but once cut, it will save just 2.5p per listener. This, I contend, is the wrong saving to make, and I very much hope that the BBC will think again. The BBC Hindi service began in May 1940, on the very same day that Churchill became Prime Minister, and it employed I. K. Gujral, who later became the 13th Prime Minister of India. The Hindi service was also the first news outlet to break the news of Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

There has been a so-called partial reprieve—I would call it a climbdown—after the massive outcry over the total abolition of a radio service that serves 10 million people, and which most radio stations in the world would give their eye tooth to have. However, all that will do is save one hour of Hindi broadcasting for just one year, and that is not enough. The work schedules of the poorest Indians mean that they can often hear only one broadcast or the other. Many listeners want their radio news in the morning. This decision will wipe out a large proportion of the audience overnight.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is widespread concern across the UK about the decision that the BBC appears to be making? Many of my constituents share his concerns about the future direction of the BBC on this service.

[Mr Leigh]

I am grateful for that intervention, which shows the wide cross-party support on this issue, in a well-attended debate, and a lot of determination, in all parts of the House, to resist the BBC’s short-sighted decision.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate on what is a ridiculous decision by the BBC. Running the service costs very little compared with the audience that it gets. This decision has been made by people who do not understand that millions around the world rely on ordinary, old-fashioned, shortwave broadcasting. They are not part of the digital revolution, and if this kind of cut goes through, they will not even be informed about the digital revolution.

[Mr Leigh]

That is precisely the point. The false argument that the BBC makes is that there is a revolution in India and elsewhere—as indeed there is—and that more and more people have television, but the poorest of the poor in those states depend on shortwave radio. We provide a relatively cheap and effective service, and we should maintain it.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

As a former director of Diabetes UK who was involved in setting up health care programmes in India, I would echo that point. Quite often the service is the only way that messages about health care or things that are happening in a particular province can reach people.

[Mr Leigh]

That is absolutely right.

Let me read out a couple of quotations by ordinary people from an article in The Times:

“Vijay Kumar Pandey…every day at 6 am, takes his battered transistor radio and places it on a small table outside his house. Through the shortwave crackle a burst of familiar Indian classical music announces the beginning of a half-hour news bulletin.

Other villagers arrive to listen to the world’s most important events. They have been doing this since 1940, gathering at dawn and dusk to hear BBC Hindi’s twice-daily news programmes.

‘I am in shock,’ said Mr Pandey, a farmer in…Uttar Pradesh. ‘It’s like a family member departing from me.’”

The article continued:

“My life would lose its meaning if BBC Hindi stops its service,”

said Tarachand Khatri from Rajasthan.

“Can you imagine living with somebody throughout your life and, suddenly, that person is gone? BBC Hindi was a person; we used to interact with it through its programmes; we used to share our happiness, feelings, thoughts and concerns.”

The respected Indian news weekly Outlook reports that some villagers have threatened to burn David Cameron in effigy—something that we would all deprecate. Mohammed Hasnain Khan, a schoolteacher from Ghazipur, has threatened to immolate himself if BBC Hindi is shut. Ravindra Chauhan of Assam says that hearing that BBC Hindi will close was as if

“someone tells you that your parents will die in March.”

And so the arguments go on. This decision is an attack on people who have no way of hitting back, and I think that we should protect them, especially as the Department for International Development is set to continue funding the poorest states in India to the tune of £250 million.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Given the BBC’s enormous revenue, which is something like £4 billion a year, and how many correspondents it sends across the world in batches, does my hon. Friend agree that this incredible waste—in respect of which he and I fought to bring the BBC’s accounts within the purview of the National Audit Office—is completely disproportionate to the value that is attached to this service? Lastly, he might be fascinated to learn that 10 May 1940—the day on which the service began—happens to be the day I was born.

[Mr Leigh]

It is a very notable anniversary.

At this precise moment the BBC is wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on a regionalisation programme—a programme that involves moving the headquarters of “Question Time” to Glasgow, for instance, even though it will continue to move around the country—while it is cutting a valued service in India.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on getting the climbdown from the BBC, but does he agree that this reprieve is not enough? We need to settle this matter once and for all and acknowledge the important contribution that the Hindi service makes. We need not just a temporary reprieve but a permanent one.

[Mr Leigh]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The purpose of this debate is to illustrate that we are saying, loud and clear, from all sides of the Chamber in the House of Commons, that this is only a partial climbdown. The BBC did not realise the extent of the outcry that would be caused by its decision. Some of the service’s best staff will go, and people will stop listening to it. They will no longer be able to listen in the morning; the service will be available only for one hour in the evening. That is not good enough, and we must fight the decision.

We often talk about soft power, and about proclaiming our values. Service such as these represent soft power. They are increasingly recognised as a hugely effective means of delivering diplomacy and our values, with few of the risks associated with more heavy-handed foreign policy interventions. Unlike other countries, Great Britain has a medium through which it can engage with a wide range of Indians, and not simply with the urban elite. That is the point that the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made. We are not simply engaging with the urban elite online; we are engaging with the rural poor.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

The service is empowering people in some of the most rural parts of India who might not otherwise get the information that it provides. Providing that information empowers them to become masters of their own destiny and to know what is going on around them, which they might otherwise not do.

[Mr Leigh]

Absolutely. One of the values of the service is that it is a news service. Of course the BBC can go on broadcasting on FM radio, but hon. Members might not know that it is not allowed to put news on FM. It can broadcast news only on shortwave radio. One person has written to ask me what the point is of the BBC just beaming out Bollywood-type programmes on FM when it can beam out real independent news on shortwave radio.

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says about soft power, and about this decision perhaps not having been taken on the basis of a solid cost-benefit analysis, but why, if he believes in markets, does he believe that only the BBC can provide independent, impartial news in India, which has a very vibrant media sector?

[Mr Leigh]

Of course India has a vibrant economy and many other news outlets will come into the picture, but the fact remains that many radio programmes in India do not have the tradition of real independence and unbiased reportage that the BBC Hindi programme has.

The service also reaches large numbers of listeners in areas affected by Maoist-inspired violence in central India, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as the most serious threat facing the country. Many BBC Hindi service listeners might be forced to switch to China Radio International or, for Muslim listeners, Radio Voice of Iran, if the service is shut. I would point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) that the only domestic competition that the BBC Hindi service faces is All India Radio, which has a poor reputation for news and current affairs programmes and is often seen as a Government mouthpiece. In contrast, the BBC Hindi service has built up a strong reputation based on its unbiased coverage of news and current affairs.

Of course news and information will be available via the internet and other new media, but most of the listeners who have access to that technology have already shifted to it. More than 10 million listeners do not have reliable access to the internet or to television, and they would be cut off from the BBC completely if the service were to close. The existence of the BBC’s Hindi broadcasting augments the depth of the BBC’s English language coverage, granting reporters access that they might not otherwise have. Politicians, especially those from the Hindi-speaking north, know and interact with the BBC primarily through the Hindi service. The service has a wide range of local part-time correspondents and information suppliers who provide critical input that goes to the rest of the BBC as well.

The BBC will try to pass the buck to the Minister. It will say that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has stated that it believes that £25 million of World Service expenditure counts as official development. It is talking about commercial opportunities, and it will ask for funding from the Department for International Development, but I want to put the spotlight firmly on the BBC, which has taken this decision.

Let me end on this note. During the battle of Crete, Admiral Andrew Cunningham was criticised for using Royal Navy ships heavily exposed to assault from German aircraft to evacuate the Army to Egypt. Cunningham, however, was determined that the Navy would not let the Army down, no matter how many ships it lost. Admiral Cunningham said:

“It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition.”

For 70 years, the BBC has built a tradition of unbiased reporting to the poorest people in the world. We must not let this service down.