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BBC WORLD SERVICE: A MODERN DAY TOWER OF BABEL
BY: T.R.KBBC World Service is a modern day Tower of Babel filling the ether with Radio noise in 41 languages, six of which are from the Indian subcontinent. With an annual budget of some 173 million pounds and over 2000 employees in four corners of the globe, through Radio and the World Service Television it is heard by some 130 million people in over 120 countries.
Recently I visited this astonishing ship of a building beached in London's Aldwych, next to India House, filled with the activity and bustle of a cruiser ablaze with light. After half a day in the company of a few producers, editors, technicians and broadcasters involved in this task, all I could sense was the rich matrix of cultures, languages, ethnic and national groups each one with a story to retail that would add up to a thousand testaments. I am surprised that no latter day Isaac Singer or Saul Bellow has trawled these waters for a rich, inexhaustible and polyglot harvest of stories.
Heather Bond, a senior producer of South Asian Services, listened to by some 52 million representing a massive 42 percent of World Services audience typifies the dedication and the silent dynamism of the World Service. Heather Bond bustles around with immense energy; soothing the frayed nerves of its editors, technicians, its collection of journalists and its guests, and its announcers whom one sees through a glass darkly. There are days, she told me when she steps into the breach of an absentee announcer or a journalist and unflappably conducts interviews, does link announcements, her voice poised mid pitch in classless BBC-speak as she takes over the microphone. A visit to the studios beaming to a sleepy Indian subcontinent in Urdu and Hindi, critically aware of the time slot that was available showed the skills required to keep the broadcast on course. This was like an ambidextrous jeweller threading pearls, and I was made aware with increasing astonishment how a slack of some 30 seconds with no material to fill was in itself a technical hitch that the silent watchfulness of the producer concealed. An extended jingle took care of the gap. Like a Jumbo taxiing perfectly to a stop, the programme ended on time without a hair our of place. In minutes the studio was empty ready for the next broadcasters to thread their pearls. A large number of World Service staff seem to have spent a lifetime in these corridors: Heather's husband Peter, now retired was himself a broadcaster specialising in Sports. At 60 something, he had not lost any of his BBC voice, rich and resonant without being theatrical, and as expected he was a raconteur of stories from times past, and such times they were too!
A visit to the BBC Club full of World Service staff and sundry visitors has the effect of being immersed in a giant vat of polyglot syllables, effectively drowning me from all sides. Bulgarian to Pushtu, Swahili and Afrikaans at the same table; Dutch and languages of the African diaspora, a microcosm of mankind at play. I was not to be disappointed in my fantastical surmise that this would be a rich and fertile ground for a thousand life-stories. A senior editor of the 53 year old Bengali service joined us and genuine hospitality flowed as more drinks arrived and life stories unfolded effortlessly. This sober-suited and youthful editor's persona concealed a compelling story teller. His was the story of transformation from a soldier in the Pakistani Army in 1970, notionally required to wage a war against his own fellow Bengalis in what was to be the future Bangladesh. The swift conclusion of this historical war that created Bangladesh left him interned as a hostage of war in a prison near Khyber Pass for two years, and used as a pawn in the game of political bartering to release some 90,000 Pakistani soldiers who were India's prisoners of war. After a happy ending, this enterprising young man joined and stayed for a decade in the Bangladeshi army, coming to England on a British Government fellowship in 1983. Once again the genuine talent and boundless dynamism, true hallmarks of the journalists I have met on the international circuit were in full evidence here. He variously edited a newspaper, worked in a factory, did a Business Management placement course in Hungary and worked as a marketing executive for a pharmaceutical company in Dacca and finally came back to England to complete a Doctorate at King's College, which is virtually across the road from BBC's Bush House. One evening fate intervened in a local pub where he met a fellow Bengali who turned out to be a senior editor of South Asia Service. He is now likely to be a "lifer" with the World Service.
In relation to the Indian subcontinent, the BBC World Service has Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Nepali and Sinhala, in addition to English as the main languages in which it broadcasts, and Telugu as an experimental new service produced and broadcast from its major studio complex in Delhi. This new service generated some 2500 letters over a five week period, and has encouraged the South Asia section to consider launching new regional services.
In London, to maintain a regional cohesion, the editors of all these sections along with their colleagues from the South East Asia sections meet each day to agree on the core news bulletin of the day. Typically, on a 2 hour broadcast a day in any one of these languages, core news takes about 20 minutes followed by 12 minutes of a magazine programme of interviews and talks on a wide band of subjects of interest to women, children and on matters as varied as the 21 century technology and child care perhaps in Calcutta nurseries. Then the service hands back to its regional office for a 20 minute trawl through sports, finance, even University campus news. The Bengali broadcast for example is audible on short wave from Japan to the Red Sea. The news bulletins go their own way to news stories about their regional neighbours, after the core news provided by the BBC' World Service's giant news-gathering machine is read. I understand that the whole of the BBC South Asia staff including stringers are meeting for what is a first time training session, but in truth a beano for these dedicated men and women on the ground to meet each other.
The BBC World Service has six divisions covering South Asia, the Americas (including South America), Asia-Pacific (Japan, Korea), the former Soviet Union and Central Europe. In India there is a major bureau in Delhi with studios in Madras, Calcutta and Dacca, linked to a network of "sponsored" stringers who are essentially BBC employees and freelancers scattered throughout, providing pre-scripted "packages" of news and comment from the ground.
This Tower of Babel that even resembles Pieter Bruegel the Elder's medieval painting of this mythical structure, has been a beacon to millions of people through war and peace, its voice hopefully unblemished by partisan geo-political interests, purveying news about their own countries to civilians beleaguered in war zones, and to silenced citizens living under brutal tyrannies.
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