India's public broadcaster Prasar Bharati is looking to spread its wings overseas, digitally. Along with deciding to phase out analog terrestrial TV transmitters of Doordarshan and move towards a digital network in its board meeting, Prasar Bharati (PB) has moved a proposal to the Union government seeking approval for the launch of 'Digital Prasar Bharati' as "a globally respected digital news platform advocating Indian national interest". The proposal was first made by a special committee headed by PB chairman A Surya Prakash in 2016. After receiving in-principle approval from the PB board, it was submitted to the information and broadcasting ministry earlier this year.
The committee's report suggested that the digital platform be used to report international news with an Indian perspective to a global audience, and also create mindshare for India's strategic interventions. One of the stated missions of Digital Prasar Bharati (DPB) will be to "challenge the anti-India narrative in foreign media through hard and compelling commentary". Speaking to TOI, Surya Prakash said, "My idea is for the digital platform to be operated through a special purpose vehicle in which Prasar Bharati has a stake."
The proposed English language digital platform will focus on global economy, geopolitics, international terror, global crises and soft power. It has also proposed that it should be a platform for news items that show "India speaking and acting", and where DPB can control the discourse on environment, nature, animal rights and human rights "on our own terms". Likely to cost a tenth of what it takes to run a linear television platform, the broadcaster has, in its note to the government, said the DPB must "fight the tendency in elite English news and academic discourses to constantly assume that universal rights discourses are somehow attained only by reducing one's cultural identity and 'nativity'". Emphasising that there must be "political will to show the mirror to others in the name of universal rights discourse and morality", the PB board cited instances of Russia Today, which gives play to negative news from the US, and Al Jazeera English, which shows its western audiences their own problems.