Hindi Radio Service (BBC)

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.